The boat trip the weekend before the playoff game in Green Bay … the interview with Lil Wayne that infuriated Pat Shurmur … the video of the party in bed with a model in Paris.
And the first red flag: the brouhaha with Josh Norman.
Three head coaches of the New York Giants (from Tom Coughlin to Ben McAdoo and Shurmur) were unable to domesticate the beast within the young lion who could not fulfill his ambition to be legendary in New York.
The shame of it all is that Odell Beckham Jr. he could have had a puncher chance if Joe Judge had been his head coach from the start.
It could be that no one, not even Vince Lombardi or Bill Parcells, could have solved the riddle of the young Beckham, the one-handed capture of which brought him fame too soon and fortune afterwards.
As the Giants engage in joint practices with the Browns, I ask myself this question:
Would Beckham still be a giant if the judge were his head coach in 2014 or 2016 or 2018?
Coughlin retired two seasons from Super Bowl XLVI when then-general manager Jerry Reese gave him Beckham, the player he and Eli Manning wanted, with the 12th pick in the NFL draft … Donald, the thirteenth pick . Manning, of course, also retired two years from Super Bowl XLVI and was about to enter his eleventh season.
The kindest and softest Coughlin who won high praise for developing relationships with Giants players was, like everyone else, in love with a talent he hoped would help bring him and his aged quarterback to a third league title. Coughlin and Manning retired three seasons from their second championship when Beckham entered the WWE with Norman.
Beckham had already achieved his famous capture the previous November and had become a bigger star of life. Coughlin opted not to remove Beckham from the Dec. 20, 2015 game against the Panthers in which the receiver and Norman fought.
“I want him to win the football game,” Coughlin said.
He did not win the football match. And he missed the opportunity to teach a discipline lesson to Beckham.
“You have to learn at some point how to deal with some things on the field,” Coughlin said. “He made some mistakes today, but I hope he recognizes it and overcomes it.”
Parcells gave Lawrence Taylor more rope than anyone, but there was a lack of mutual respect between Coughlin, 69, and Beckham, 23.
McAdoo was later criticized by Beckham for not showing up on the minicamp and Beckham openly criticized Shurmur and Manning’s offense.
The loss weighed on Beckham to the point where he was more than ready to leave the bright New York stage that had lit up his star.
From the day he was hired, it became clear that the judge was the CEO that the property had failed to land in the early years of the post-Coughlin era.
It wasn’t Bill Belichick II, but the path of the giants mimicked the path of the Patriots in that sense: no one was above the team, and only winning mattered.
When I asked Judge the day he was introduced as the Giants head coach what he would not tolerate, he said, “Anything that deters the team’s ability to win.”
The Quest Diagnostics Training Center now houses a football factory, a place to work with boats and improve every day is the expectation. It’s a real football school with hired coaches because they can teach well enough to teach players how to make the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Judge’s Parcels talent to know what makes all of its tic players has helped build trust.
It’s not for everyone. But the level of acquisition he has obtained from his giants has been open.
Golden Tate shouting, “Throw me the ball!” during a Monday night loss to the Buccaneers earned him the discipline of the judge, and everyone understood why.
Would Beckham have complied with any zero tolerance policy?
Would you have bought the way the Judge Giants have bought at We Not Me?
That’s your $ 90 million question.
Belichick, of course, isn’t for everyone either, and while he had more skin on the wall then than the judge does now, the appeal of winning — even inside a rigid football factory — was being enough for people like Randy Moss and Corey Dillon (and playing with Tom Brady didn’t hurt either). The judge has been dedicated to establishing this type of culture.
Beckham’s recent injury issues have given Giants GM Dave Gettleman the current lead in the controversial trade that produced Dexter Lawrence, Jabrill Peppers and Oshane Ximines.
That would change if a healthy Beckham, now three months out of 29, is instrumental in helping Baker Mayfield lead the Browns to his first Super Bowl.
Would he be taking biases and taking them home for Daniel Jones if Judge were his Giants head coach?
We will never know.
You are the judge.