It was a wide-open Odell Beckham Jr. who beat Casey Hayward with a double-move and caught a 48-yard touchdown from Eli Manning early in the fourth quarter against the Chargers, before Beckham’s ankle and season were fractured before a horrified MetLife Stadium crowd.
The date was Oct. 8, 2017. It marks Beckham’s last visit to the end zone.
When Drew Brees and the Saints come marching into MetLife Stadium on Sunday, Manning and the Giants will need Beckham back in the end zone, where he belongs.
“It’s gonna come,” Beckham vowed, “and when it rains it pours.”
Beckham is worth every penny of the $95 million the Giants will be paying him. He has grown into a respected team leader and infectious Energizer Bunny, but he knows the fastest way to become legendary is by catching touchdown passes.
“I’ll score plenty of touchdowns,” Beckham told The Post. “We’ll be all right.”
You will score plenty of touchdowns … “I will and I have,” Beckham said. “We’ll be all right.”
Even as Beckham (24 receptions for 271 yards this season) shakes off the emotional and physical rust from nearly a year away from the game he loves more than most, he has helped make the rest of his teammates better by his mere presence.
And not only on the field. Even in the pregame huddle reminding his teammates to have fun, even in the locker room before the game purposely shattering the quiet, and even on the sidelines in the heat of battle for the first time, where he now exhorts and implores teammates as never before.
In a private moment at his locker, Beckham told The Post:
“I tried to break out of my shell and give some more, even though it’s very difficult ’cause it’s never been me. I’ve never been the rah-rah guy, I’ve always led by my play. I’ve always played on teams where there was somebody else who would give the speeches or whatever it would be.
“It’s hard for me, it’s awkward, but to get to places you want to go you have to do things you never did, I guess, and I’m just trying to do that.”
It had nothing to do with the $95 million either.
“It was gonna be before that,” Beckham said. “It’s like God had appointed me in a position of leadership for the longest time. I don’t want to say I ran from it, but I have in a way. Like I didn’t want to embrace that. I didn’t want to really fully do that, and that was hard for me because I know what He was calling me to do, and then not be able to do that, it was tough. But it’s just something I’m trying to do.”
His teammates love him for it. They love him even more when he is imposing his will on a game with touchdown catches. He has 38 in his career. With the defense having to worry about Brees, the Giants need Marshon Lattimore and the Saints to worry about Beckham.
“I let the defense worry about that, but at the same time, this is Drew Brees and the Saints we’re talking about, I mean, I grew up in New Orleans,” Beckham said. “He gave life to a city when I don’t want to say hopeless, but we were all down. And this is a team who’s scoring 40 points a game, what they’ve been doing over there is ridiculous.”
Beckham was beating himself up for not taking a slant to the house in Houston.
“I’m always waiting to break out, I always feel like I’m one play away. … There’s still been times where you’re coming back and I’m used to everything, but it’s like you’re scared to just hit it like you used to,” Beckham said. “It was a slant, and it cleared out for me, it was perfect, and I kind of slowed down and just hesitated a little bit for a second.
“And that could’ve been the difference. That’s the ones that go 60 or 70,” he said with a laugh. “I was a little upset by that. … I’ll regret that moment for life.
“Now that I know, I think that was a big step for me.”
The last time he was in the end zone, Beckham administered CPR to the football.
“The game needed life. I put my heart in it,” Beckham said.
He left his heart in the end zone would be the best of all possible legacies for Odell Beckham Jr.
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