Last May, Hall of Fame receiver Cris Carter mentored Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr. during the offseason, defending Beckham at a time many were criticizing him for not participating in voluntary offseason workouts.
“Odell is going to grow up,” Carter said at the time. “That why’s he is bringing other people in his life so he can grow up. If he wasn’t trying to grow up, he wouldn’t be calling Cris Carter. He’s getting people to tell him all the right stuff. He wants to be better. Not only as a player, but emotionally, as a son, friend and teammate. He’s in the process of doing that.”
Ten months later, in the aftermath of the emergence of a video showing Beckham possibly with marijuana in a hotel room with a woman who possibly had cocaine, Carter has had enough.
“I’m so disappointed in him,” Carter said Monday on his FS1 show. “I’m so disappointed, and I expect better from him. It’s enough of the excuses. Time for you to grow up, and stop acting like a little boy. If you want to be a national brand, damn act like it. If you want someone to pay you -- the highest paid receiver in the history of the game, damn act like it. All right, because enough is enough. I’m sick of talking about him and the negative aspects. I can’t talk about his releases. I can’t talk about him catching the ball in traffic. Why? Because of this. And this matters. Your images in sports will always matter. And you’re in sports, you’re not some rapper. . . .
“This guys is an unbelievable talent, as talented as anyone that I have ever seen. So I’m disgusted with the whole thing. OBJ? Call me, man. Enough of this stupidness.”
Carter’s current words become even more striking when considering the lengths to which Carter went a year ago in defending Beckham’s pre-playoff game boat trip in Miami, and it’s possible connection to his poor performance against the Packers.
“He realized he was too hyped for the game and put too much pressure on himself after he dropped the first pass,” Carter said in May. “That created anxiety. He didn’t play well. He thought he was going to have a great game against Green Bay and destroy them. He tried to do too much after the first drop and that’s when the anxiety came. . . . What about all the [Giants] who didn’t go to Miami and played like horse manure?”
It now seems that Carter regards Beckham’s antics to be bull manure, a very strong reaction for a video that was inconclusive at best, possibly shot without Beckham’s knowledge.