'I thought it was over': Behind Odell Beckham Jr.'s unlikely comeback with the Ravens (2024)

Tears of joy, tears of devastation.

Tears streamed down the cheeks of Odell Beckham Jr.

It was the second quarter of Super Bowl LVI against Cincinnati, and Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford had just thrown him a pass on a shallow crosser. The ball hit Beckham’s hands and bounced back toward the quarterback, a brick off a rim, and the wide receiver dropped to the ground without being touched. He grabbed his left knee.

Beckham knew right away. He couldn’t play anymore. Not that February night in 2022, maybe not ever. One season prior, he had torn the ACL in the same knee, and he remembered what it felt like.

And so the tears flowed as he lay on the field.

He was already damaged goods. In March 2019, the Giants traded him, seven months after making him the highest-paid wide receiver in history with a $95 million contract extension. Just over a year and a half later, he was sacked in the middle of the season by the Browns after a failure to connect with quarterback Baker Mayfield. That same week, the Rams signed him to a three-month contract.

Shortly after, team physician Neal ElAttrache told him he needed to see him. Beckham had breezed through rehab after his ACL surgery in 2020. The knee, however, never felt quite right.

ElAttrache told him why. His physical exam showed the surgery had not repaired anything. There was no ACL holding his knee together. The suggestion was to stop playing and have a second surgery.

Beckham looked ElAttrache up and down.

“There’s no way I’ve been through everything I’ve been through and came here just to have surgery,” he told him.

Only a select few on the team — Stafford, Cooper Kupp, Von Miller and Jalen Ramsey — would know. Beckham didn’t make it public until the following summer.

Every week, the doctor asked him how he was staying on the field. After the NFC Championship Game, Beckham told Kupp he was relieved there was only one more game because he didn’t think his knee would hold up for two.

During pregame warmups before the biggest game of his life, Beckham was in a zone. “When the ball was coming at me, I could see the dots on the ball and the word ‘Wilson,’” he says. “That’s how laser-focused I was.”

It would be, he was certain, the best game of his career, his redemptive performance.

The first points of the game were scored by Beckham when he turned around and reached over the head of Bengals cornerback Mike Hilton, then held on as Hilton swatted between Beckham’s arms.

Then, a moonwalk. Finally, he tossed his gloves into the stands.

Vintage Odell, all of it.

Beckham had a 35-yard reception that led to another touchdown. While watching the game on television, Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta thought Beckham was the best player on the field.

Then came the injury.

After the Rams won 23-20, Beckham wore the champion’s hat and T-shirt like his teammates. He smiled and hugged. But he cried, too. Cried hard. The feelings were powerful and confusing, unlike any he had ever experienced.

He thought he would be the Super Bowl hero and be rewarded with a contract that would enable him to finish his career in Los Angeles, the city for someone like him.

Now? He had just played for his third team in four years, had missed 25 games with injuries in five years and would be 30 years old before he could play again.

So many thoughts.

History, destiny, legacy.

His secret truth is he was contemplating retirement.

As the tears flowed, his mother, Heather Norman, looked him in his glassy eyes.

“What do you want to do?” she asked him after the game. “If you fall out of love with football, you’re done. You won’t get a good rehab. You have to love it. If you don’t want to play, so be it. No one says you have to play. It’s up to you.”

Odell Beckham Jr. had a decision to make.

On a Sunday night in November 2014, Beckham maneuvered around Cowboys cornerback Brandon Carr so smoothly that if Carr had a pocket, Beckham could have picked it. He bent backward as easily as a pool noodle, and with his right arm telescoping out far behind him, he used three fingers — that’s all he needed — three fingers that must have been as sticky as a Gecko’s foot.

“The Catch” made Beckham something more than a football player, more famous than his accomplishments suggested he should be.

He became “Odell.”

OBJ still may have the most ridiculous catch of all time 😱

(via @nflthrowback)pic.twitter.com/kDVP80ZyJc

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 21, 2020

“Celebrity, stardom, I mean, it happened,” Beckham says. “It was about the timing, the place, the moment. And that moment changed my life forever and put me in these situations to where I’m like, good for life. Any catch that happens still to this day, they bring it up, which is cool, great and a blessing. It was cemented in time. It’s crazy.”

How else can 17.2 million Instagram followers be explained? That’s 11.6 million more than Patrick Mahomes, the second-most followed NFL player has, and 3.3 million more than recently retired Tom Brady.

Drake didn’t just sing about him; he asked him to house-sit. Justin Bieber, various Kardashians, Conor McGregor and DJ Khaled have been in his circle. In recent months, he attended the Monaco Grand Prix, Kylie Minogue’s birthday bash and Michael Rubin’s White Party.

It’s all about The Catch. To people who don’t really know him, Beckham is The Catch.

There were 530 other catches and more receiving yards in his first 62 games than any other player over an equal span in the history of the game. Eli Manning once said he was the most gifted teammate he had known in 19 seasons.

But the other catches and yards often aren’t talked about as much as the fact that Beckham was the guy in the middle of the infamous party boat that some blamed for the Giants’ 2017 playoff loss.

Or that he is the one who wore a $200,000 watch during a game. And a $2.2 million watch for a pregame warmup. He is known as the player who punched a water cooler, a kicking net and a wall. And the originator of the peeing dog touchdown celebration, as well as the driver of a blood orange-colored Rolls-Royce Cullinan with a hood ornament of The Catch.

Beckham is the athlete who made his body into a human version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, with tattoos of The Creation of Adam, Jesus, a stairway to heaven, Martin Luther King, Mike Tyson biting Evander Holyfield’s ear, Michael Jackson, former President Barack Obama, the Statue of Liberty, Bob Marley, an ape from “Planet of the Apes,” and enough animals to fill a zoo — a lion, lioness, tiger, elephant, hippo, gorilla, zebra, giraffe, snake, shark, goat and owls.

Beckham is judged by Twitter fire bombers, “First Take” screamers, head-shakingscolds and almost anyone with a podium.

It is tempting to judge. Or misjudge.

“People,” Beckham says, “think I’m an a–hole.”

They think he’s Diana Ross elbowing in front of the Supremes.

Nike came out with an Odell Beckham T-shirt that read “So Misunderstood.” “Misunderstood” also is the word his former Rams teammate Ramsey used to describe him in 2021.

“I love the guy,” says Andrew Whitworth, who played with Beckham on the Rams. “The idea of him being a bad teammate couldn’t be crazier. You see so many kids now that are stressed and wear themselves out with such little, minute things. He loves what he does and brings an energy and vibe where he makes everybody laugh and try hard.”

Rams coach Sean McVay says Beckham brought instant swagger and joy to his team.

“He had a great feel for when we needed some humor and laughter, but also when to lock in and go to work,” he says. “I really can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed working with him. Love Odell, and I am really grateful for our time together.”

Whitworth goes so far as to say the Rams would not have won the Super Bowl without him.

“When you saw him do things that were otherworldly when it comes to athleticism, it really brought a confidence to our group,” he says.

There is a magnetism to Beckham, maybe borne of his celebrity, but enhanced by authenticity and warmth.

He is known to be a giver, having bestowed entire teams with king-sized mattresses, cleats and Beats.

“If anyone doesn’t know him, he’s a people person,” says Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken, who was Beckham’s offensive coordinator in Cleveland in 2019. “He wants to be around people. He loves to help. He loves for you to help him. He loves to be gracious and thank you.”

The Catch is nearly nine years old, which, in NFL time, might as well be 90.

So much has changed. The quarterbacks that day were Manning, now cracking jokes on Monday nights, and Tony Romo, who is preparing for his seventh season as CBS’ lead NFL analyst.

Beckham is a father now. Four days after the Super Bowl victory, his girlfriend, Lauren Wood, gave birth to a boy, Zydn.

Five days after that, Beckham had his ACL and meniscus repaired.

The emotions of Super Bowl Sunday barely had subsided, and now, more waves, higher and harder.

It was one thing for a grown man to ask his mother to help him go to the bathroom. It was another to ask her to comfort his crying baby for him.

“I couldn’t hold him, cradle him or love on him the way I wanted to,” he says. “It was a lot. It was hard.”

What came next, he says, were dark days — literal dark days when he didn’t want to see light, talk or be spoken to. His mom remembers opening blinds to try to change the mood.

At one point, he slept for the better part of two days. “I went through a lot the last couple of years, and I thought it was over,” he says. “I didn’t want to get back up on the horse and do the same song and dance all over again.”

In the early stages, he wasn’t getting much satisfaction from rehab.

“Some days are like, we get a gold star for straightening out the knee,” Norman says. “But he’s a high achiever, so he wants huge milestones, like, ‘I don’t want to straighten my leg, I want to run.’”

She kept a football beside him and encouraged him to feel and think about it.

Beckham loved Los Angeles, loved McVay (“A great man,” he calls him), and loved being a Ram.

In the offseason after the Super Bowl, he tried to talk Miller into re-signing with the team. He helped design the team’s Super Bowl rings, suggesting that they pay tribute to SoFi Stadium, which they did. When McVay was married in June, Beckham crashed the party.He was there when they unveiled the championship banner before the opening game of 2022. The Rams kept his locker intact for that entire season.

Both sides kept acting as if he would be a Ram again. But the Rams didn’t have the cap space, and he didn’t have the knee.

When he left Los Angeles for Arizona, where he trained, it was a difficult day. “I remember when we got him in the vehicle,” Norman says. “It was really, really hard, the unknown.”

Eventually, the knee and his spirits came around.

By the fall, interested teams started inquiring. Ravens coach John Harbaugh made a personal pitch. The Chiefs, Cowboys, Giants and Bills reached out.

What if he could latch on to a contender for a playoff run and stay with that team in 2023? Intriguing.

But Beckham needed a break. He decided to sit out the season.

In the spring, the Ravens, Bills, Chiefs, Cowboys and Giants had not backed off. And the Jets had joined the chase. There were incentive-heavy offers and a three-year offer for a lower-than-he-wanted average.

Beckham waited. He didn’t need to play. A tattoo written across his impossibly large, 10-inch left hand reads, “KNOW YOUR WORTH.” It forms a cross with the words “GOD CREATED YOU DIFFERENT.” The last word stretches to his ring finger, which takes a size 12 or 13 ring, he says.

During the NFL owners’ meetings, he created a stir by showing up in the lobby of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel. The Ravens seized the opportunity and met with him in a conference room. For about an hour, DeCosta, executive vice president Ozzie Newsome and Harbaugh sat with Beckham. But they didn’t talk much about football or his knee. They spoke of his hopes and dreams, and being a father.

Remembering that Beckham signed with the Rams instead of the Chiefs, 49ers, Packers or Patriots in 2021 because he said they made him feel wanted, Ravens owner Stephen Bisciotti made the unusual decision to involve himself, calling Beckham multiple times. Quarterback Lamar Jackson was trying to get a new contract of his own at the time, and he also spoke with Beckham about teaming up.

Beckham still had to answer his mother’s question. “What do you want to do?”

Beckham could have spent the rest of his life golfing, beaching, daddying and being Odell.

“It wasn’t like I felt I had to prove something to anybody else,” he says. “I know who I am. I know what I’m capable of. I’m secure with myself and my life. But it’s more about my people, for my son to be inspired. If he sees his dad work hard, maybe he will want to work hard at something and give it a go at whatever.”

At one point, Beckham thought he would surpass career records set by Jerry Rice. Then came the injuries and the circ*mstances beyond his famous reach. “That will always be something I have to live with, part of my story, which sucks,” he says.

He still could shape the story’s ending, but he did not envision doing it with a black bird on his helmet.

“If I’m honest, I was resistant,” he says. “There were other places I wanted to go. I wasn’t necessarily a Ravens fan because the Ravens always whipped my ass.”

The Ravens kept making him feel wanted. They made Beckham an offer unlike any other team — one year, $15 million.

They were willing to pay Beckham more because they saw value beyond receptions and yards. The Ravens knew what he did for the Rams. They thought he could be a force multiplier in games, and, thanks to The Catch, he could put points on a team’s financial scoreboard through social media bumps and jersey sales.

Beckham still needed more to convince him, though.

Five years ago, Beckham made his way through the reeds growing on the banks of the Jordan River and into the brown, murky water to be christened where John the Baptist dunked Jesus Christ some 2,000 years ago.

“I wanted to be close to where Jesus was, and I could feel it running down my spine in my spirit and my soul,” he says. “It was amazing.”

The faith that brought him to Jerusalem would bring him to another destination this spring.

He prayed about if, and he prayed about where. That’s how he made his decision.

“It’s that voice you hear in your head, the feel in your gut, kind of an intuition,” he says. “Really, that’s God’s voice. I started hearing God louder than my resistance. That’s God protecting you. The signs were showing me this is the right path.”

The voice reminded him the Ravens were a contender and a premier organization. It made him dream about what he and Jackson could accomplish together. The voice told him to think about how he clicked with Harbaugh and enjoyed playing for Monken, who became the Ravens’ offensive coordinator in February.

A one-year contract wasn’t what he was looking for but probably what he needed.

“I’m thinking like this is my last year,” Beckham says. “I’m going to give it my all this year. And then if something happens after that, we can go from there.”

For the first time, he is being managed by his mother, who had been a Division I track coach for nearly her son’s entire life. Her involvement comforts him, as does the presence of Zydn, who came to Baltimore for Ravens minicamp in June.

That’s when a pass was thrown over Beckham’s head. He arched his spine and reached backward and brought it in with three fingertips — just three.

It was the kind of play that invigorates.

“That was something I’ve done for a long time,” he says of the offseason catch that caused a social media stir. “It’s engraved in me.”

By then, the answer to his mother’s question could not be more evident.

Odell Beckham Jr. wants to play football.

(Top image: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photo: Kevin Richardson / The Baltimore Sun via Getty Images)

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