Lagartixa
Well-known member
The thing about Beckham is that he's massively overrated and overpriced. I'm not a sports psychologist, and I've never had a conversation with Mr. Beckham, so I can't offer any opinion on the sort of stuff ("attitude," for example) about which know-nothing talking-head sports mediots constantly offer their uninformed opinions. Let's just stick with what's measurable: on-field performance. And in those terms, Beckham just ain't that good. Despite how bad he's been lately, I don't think he's necessarily a bad player, but I'm very confident that he's not worth even nearly what casual fans think he is. The Venn diagram of top-quality players and very famous players has a lot of overlap, but Beckham is not in that overlap.
An analogy for those who remember baseball from 1995-2014 is Derek Jeter's defense. For most of his career, Jeter was a bad defensive shortstop if you measure defense by how good a player is at turning batted balls in his area of responsibility into outs. But Jeter was a great athlete who made spectacular highlight-reel plays (and he was an outstanding hitter for a shortstop, and even though it shouldn't, that affects people's assessments of how good a player is overall), so people whose exposure to him was through SportsCenter thought he was a good (or even... tee-hee... great) defensive shortstop. In fairness to Jeter, I'll admit that once the Yankees got A-Rod and put him at third next to Jeter, A-Rod's range allowed Jeter to cheat over to the second-base side, and so Jeter's defensive numbers got a lot better, even if a lot of the balls to the third-base side of the shortstop's area of responsibility were snagged and turned into outs by the third baseman and not by Jeter himself. Through most of Jeter's career, Yankees fans who watched many games got to hear the phrase "past a diving Jeter" many more times than they'd like to admit.
Similarly, Odell Beckham Jr. has not been all that good as a receiver in over six years, but he's made some absolutely spectacular plays that everyone got to see in sports highlights, so he's got a much better reputation as a receiver than his actual overall performance merits. He's as famous as if he were one of the top ten receivers in the league, and he's paid well, but his performance doesn't make him look like one of the top thirty receivers in the NFL. Most teams have at least one WR I'd rather have than OBJ. The Seahawks obviously have at least two, and may have as many as five (here I'm taking age and salary into account, along with current and recent performance).
Beckham looked great in his rookie year and pretty good in his second year, and really hasn't been above-average since then. He has been pretty bad since 2019. Even though he was noticeably below-average in 2019 and has been downright bad in 2020 and 2021, I think he's not as bad a player as his performance this year would indicate (in a vacuum), but he's still light years away from what you'd expect of a player as famous and well paid as he is.
I think Carroll and Schneider know that Beckham's actual on-field value isn't anywhere close to what his fame and salary would indicate. Still, I took as great news the headline I saw this morning saying that Beckham wants to join a playoff contender, because that makes me optimistic that the Seahawks' record this season would keep him away even if Carroll and Schneider wanted him.
An analogy for those who remember baseball from 1995-2014 is Derek Jeter's defense. For most of his career, Jeter was a bad defensive shortstop if you measure defense by how good a player is at turning batted balls in his area of responsibility into outs. But Jeter was a great athlete who made spectacular highlight-reel plays (and he was an outstanding hitter for a shortstop, and even though it shouldn't, that affects people's assessments of how good a player is overall), so people whose exposure to him was through SportsCenter thought he was a good (or even... tee-hee... great) defensive shortstop. In fairness to Jeter, I'll admit that once the Yankees got A-Rod and put him at third next to Jeter, A-Rod's range allowed Jeter to cheat over to the second-base side, and so Jeter's defensive numbers got a lot better, even if a lot of the balls to the third-base side of the shortstop's area of responsibility were snagged and turned into outs by the third baseman and not by Jeter himself. Through most of Jeter's career, Yankees fans who watched many games got to hear the phrase "past a diving Jeter" many more times than they'd like to admit.
Similarly, Odell Beckham Jr. has not been all that good as a receiver in over six years, but he's made some absolutely spectacular plays that everyone got to see in sports highlights, so he's got a much better reputation as a receiver than his actual overall performance merits. He's as famous as if he were one of the top ten receivers in the league, and he's paid well, but his performance doesn't make him look like one of the top thirty receivers in the NFL. Most teams have at least one WR I'd rather have than OBJ. The Seahawks obviously have at least two, and may have as many as five (here I'm taking age and salary into account, along with current and recent performance).
Beckham looked great in his rookie year and pretty good in his second year, and really hasn't been above-average since then. He has been pretty bad since 2019. Even though he was noticeably below-average in 2019 and has been downright bad in 2020 and 2021, I think he's not as bad a player as his performance this year would indicate (in a vacuum), but he's still light years away from what you'd expect of a player as famous and well paid as he is.
I think Carroll and Schneider know that Beckham's actual on-field value isn't anywhere close to what his fame and salary would indicate. Still, I took as great news the headline I saw this morning saying that Beckham wants to join a playoff contender, because that makes me optimistic that the Seahawks' record this season would keep him away even if Carroll and Schneider wanted him.
