Free-agent receiver Odell Beckham, Jr. worked out on Friday for any and all interested teams. A dozen showed up.
So here’s the next question. Will Beckham continue to decline to work out for individual teams, at their facilities?
During his three-team tour late in the 2022 regular season, Beckham declined to get on the field for the Bills, Giants, or Cowboys. (The Bills and Giants showed up for the session; the Cowboys didn’t.)
It’s unusual for a player to hold a joint workout for any and all teams. Colin Kaepernick did it more than three years ago (after the league tried to set it up and the two sides couldn’t agree on the terms of a waiver) due to concerns that, if an individual team brought him in, there would or could be sharp blowback from 30 percent or so of the fanbase.
For Beckham, there’s no such concern. Instead, the implicit message from Beckham could be that he shouldn’t have to do it, given his past accomplishments and his ongoing celebrity.
That may not get him the contract he covets. Last year, at least one report pegged his expectations at $20 million per year. It would be a surprise if anyone gives him that now, even if he supplements yesterday’s come one/come all workout with individual performances.
The performances that truly matter will happen on a football field. In 2023. It likely will take a one-year deal now, with the hope of setting himself up for a multi-year deal later.
There’s also a chance that, if appearances matter to Odell (and they quite possibly do), he’ll sign a multi-year deal that will be widely reported by the no-questions-asked crowd as, say, five years, $100 million, but that will actually be something like a one-year, $7 million contract with a team option after one year to unlock up to three real years followed by a phony final year that pushes the total average to $20 million annually.
Regardless, if the goal was to parlay one workout on, by all appearances, a single day’s notice, into the contract offer he has yet to receive, that likely won’t be happening — unless, again, he signs a deal that creates a flurry of $20 MILLION PER YEAR! headlines but that is something more closely aligned with his current reality, as a 31-year-old receiver who is barely a year removed from a second ACL tear, and whose best NFL days quite possibly are fading into the rear-view mirror.
Before he gets what he apparently wants, he’ll need to prove that: (1) his age is just a number; (2) his knee is fully healthy; and (3) he’s still capable of doing the things he used to do.