When the 0-1 Cleveland Browns play host on Sunday to the surprisingly 1-0 Houston Texans, Odell Beckham Jr. will continue his self-assigned role as the team’s No.1 wide receiver in limbo. He’s a liminal WR1. He occupies an awkward space that is, frankly, difficult to understand without an explanation from OBJ himself as to how he feels.
Beckham has not spoken to the media since training camp and the season began.
He also not been hit.
He has, however, looked so good, fast, and OBJ-like that coaches and teammates alike have been agog and full of wonder at the speed of Beckham’s recovery from ACL surgery on his left knee November 10 of the 2020 season. The injury, the most serious of Beckham’s injury-plagued career, typically requires 9-to-12 months to rehabilitate.
When his coach, Kevin Stefanski, explained that Beckham’s absence from Game One against the Kansas City Chiefs, resulted as much from what Beckham had told the team following a pre-game warmup period during which he tested his left knee, no one argued. The Browns have bubble-wrapped him and erred on the side of caution in his return. But if a person listened to those who work most closely with Beckham, the awe his practice work ethic and performances evoked practically dripped from their words.
“Yeah, he definitely still has (his speed),” offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt told the media during the week leading up to Game One. “There’s no question. He’s powerful and explosive when he starts to run, and he digs in. He can fly. Having that speed back on the field . . . we are looking forward to that.”
Quarterback Baker Mayfield and Beckham have worked on the side of practice to improve their chemistry, which has been questioned. To some, it has seemed as if the offense—the passing game—became more effective during the stretch run to the playoffs that occurred with Beckham sidelined. Though Mayfield and Stefanski regularly pooh-poohed the notion that Mayfield had been trying too hard to get his best and most demanding receiver the ball, the fact is that a test awaited OBJ’s return to the field.
Now, it will have to wait a while longer.
The speed the Browns had to throw at the Chiefs came from world-class sprinter Anthony Schwartz, a rookie who had spent much of preseason recovering his own lesser injury. Stefanski turned to Schwartz after Beckham concluded he could not give his team the number of plays it had anticipated he might. It will be the same this week but without the suspense and last-minute adjustment from OBJ to Schwartz.
When Stefanski announced at the outset of a media briefing that Beckham would not play against the Texans, he deviated from a pattern. Transparency and sharing plans are not Stefanski priorities. Until, they are. The Texans do not have to guess whether they must devise a way to try to stop Beckham because Stefanski already has. If creating uncertainty for an opponent can be a valuable tool, it can also cause calamity in a team’s own game-planning and in preparing the players who will play. So Stefanski ended the suspense before it began, doing his No Drama Obama imitation.
Stefanski is football’s Cool Hand Luke and damned near as handsome as the outlaw movie character that Paul Newman portrayed. It will be interesting to observe how the hand the coach has dealt OBJ affects him. Is there a “failure to communicate?” A fear or unwillingness? It has seemed as if coach, quarterback, and receiver are on the same page in the recovery/return-to-field playbook. But it is nonetheless an awkward situation.
After the countless hours of rehabbing his knee and his appearance of readiness, Beckham has yet to fully test the knee by taking a hit on it. That is the abyss over which he is staring as he determines how to get safely from one side to the other. We do know one thing. Beckham has changed. When he has had previous injuries, he went into Macho Man mode. He admitted as much over the summer during a football camp at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills.
“I think what I used to get caught up in—which led me down a path I won’t go again—is you get hurt and we’re all men and we want to show everyone we’re a man and we want to come back,” he told Cleveland.com’s Mary Kay Cabot and others. “It becomes an ego challenge. I’m not really in it for all that anymore, because I don’t feel like I really have anything to prove except to myself and . . . wanting to be the best. I did want to have the fastest comeback ever and all these things, but then I’m like, what accolade is that really? I want to be able to have the best season I can possibly have. That’s why I say we’re just running our race and whenever the time is, I will be ready.”
The time is not now, Beckham and then his coach decided. But the clock is ticking, and Mayfield is awaiting on the field the return of WR1. How coach, receiver, and quarterback negotiate that return will help to determine the success of the season. Everyone is watching.
ESPN’s Stephanie Bell on a Fantasy Football segment this week said when asked about a timeline for Beckham’s return: “I’m not overly alarmed. If we get through Week 3 and we still don’t have more clarity, then I’m going to start to get more nervous.” She should. Everyone should.
Beckham has again and again made clear in the context of his chemistry—or lack thereof—with Mayfield that, in his opinion, the formula that makes it go boom between quarterback and receiver is not to be found in the lab (in the case of football, the practice field). It is forged in the fire of game competition and in situations that cannot be duplicated in practice. They have to be experienced. The opponent has to be for real.
So the ultimate question becomes: What if the opponent is yourself? OBJ plays as if he is fearless, but can anyone who has been through the injuries he has not have doubts? The answer lies on the other side of the abyss and to get to it requires a leap of faith.
