As electrifying and heart-stopping as the Cleveland Browns’ 49-38 big-play victory over Dallas was, it will not be what animates, years from now, the memory of a person who values deep and abiding friendship and what it can do.
What this type of person will surely follow is Odell Beckham Jr.’s lead, as did the Browns from start to finish against the Cowboys. Since former General Manager John Dorsey traded with the New York Giants for All-World OBJ before the 2019 season, Browns fans have been waiting for Beckham to gaze into his Snow-White-and-the-Seven-Dwarfs mirror and receive a positive personal blessing to that most egotistical fairytale question: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?
Though he had his moments as he struggled through an injury-plagued first Browns’ season, Beckman could not have appreciated the response he might have received. It likely went something like this: Not you, Dawg. You look more like the most overrated superstar of them all, one who should be ranked no better than fair on the mirror meter.
Friendship cracked that mirror in Jerry World, the Cowboys’ home sweet palace in the Dallas metro city of Arlington. Not coincidentally, the Browns’ best and richest defensive player, Myles Garrett, grew up nearby and quarterback Baker Mayfield won a High School State Championship at Austin’s Lake Travis by playing as he did in a break-away first half against the Cowboys.
Dean of the Browns writers and Lord of TheLandonDemand.com, Tony Grossi ranked the half best by the New Browns since their reconstitution in 1999. It began with Beckham taking advantage of Coach Kevin Stefanski’s bold offensive genius to grab a 37-yard touchdown pass not from Mayfield but from his longtime friend Jarvis Landry.
A fellow receiver, Landry morphed into a southpaw pitcher of passes. In truth his perfect strike looked like a fastball right down the middle of Landry’s earth-to-the-moon-sized catch radius. If OBJ had dropped it, he would never have heard the end of it from Landry, the friend he met while still in high school and with whom he set records at LSU.
“I would not trade that play,” Beckham said, “for any [number] of touchdowns in the game or if I was the one to throw it to him. That is my brother, like for real . . .”
It was such a solidifying moment for the Browns—not to mention a layer added to this admirable and remarkable friendship—that Beckham might not even trade it with his most memorable catch ever, one that made him famous in New York, media capital of America, during his 2014 NFL rookie season.
That iconic play also occurred against the Cowboys, a “leaping, gravity-defying one-handed catch … that changed his life,” ESPN’s Jordan Raanan remembered four years later. “It put him in an unprecedented superstar stratosphere and left him needing to prove he was more than just that one spectacular grab.” He never quite managed that with Giants: “It’s bittersweet because I think my career is much more than one catch.”
Though he caught 74 passes for 1,035 yards during 2019, his first Browns’ season, the unbridled promise of rejoining Landry, “his brother,” got lost in the pain of an unrelenting groin injury (sports hernia) and a 6-10 team that crumbled and contributed to costing Freddie Kitchens, the coach who had professed his love of Beckham, his job.
When they were first reunited, Landry and OBJ’s unrestrained joy was impossible to miss. “I think this moment is going to be more iconic than we all realize right now,” Beckham announced at his introductory news conference.
As it turned out their reunion season proved more ironic than iconic and swept out Kitchens and Dorsey, the man who gave him the job over Stefanski. When that mistake was turned on its head and those who had favored Stefanski were given the go-ahead to try their hand and their man with his offense in particular and the team in general, change began that not even a COVID-19 pandemic season has been able to block.
What Beckham unleashed has begun to prove he is indeed more than one-over-the-head-unforgettable grab, even if it a highlight of highlights. He put Dallas in a hole with his 37-yard first-quarter touchdown catch from Landry and tossed a final shovel of dirt on Dallas to close out the victory that lifted the Browns to 3-1, a first since 2001.
Stefanski not only facilitated OBJ as passing-game threat from the get-go but also did what no New York or Cleveland coach had succeeded in doing: He turned him into a feared runner. The debate has been how to get him, Landry, a bevy of tight ends and running backs who can catch enough opportunities to make plays. Simple: The Run. On his 50-yard pitch-pitch-pitch-dodge-turn corner-go like a bat out of hell that any number of reviewers described as something looking like a Josh Cribbs punt return. Given another run of 23 yards, Stefanski saluted OBJ for “making plays all over the field.”
Since I am a writer of interpretation and reflection rather than play-by-play or even the common football analysis, OBJ’s run reminded me of the graceful, swooping hawks I see each day in Northeast Ohio skies and with which I grew up in Oklahoma where even more wind comes sweepin’ down the plain. It was as if he had caught the jet stream dropped to earth to carry him forward, then up, then sideways, then down and around. Photos could not quite do this justice. It was a work of art. A pigskin painting.
All I could think about was the wind beneath OBJ’s wings, Jarvis Landry, the friend who threw him that first touchdown pass and set in motion this wonder of a game and perhaps breakthrough victory. I will forever remember it not by the score but by the compelling friendship with which it was built and the team that can learn from that.
