Odell Beckham Jr. at 2021 Cleveland Browns minicamp/Rob Lorenzo ESPN Cleveland
Numbers won't necessarily determine what a successful season for Odell Beckham Jr. is
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*Editor's note: Danny Cunningham is a Cleveland Browns writer for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland*
The first two seasons of the Odell Beckham Jr. era in Cleveland can fairly be characterized as a disappointment. When he arrived from New York, he brought the feeling that the team was ready to compete for more than just wins each Sunday, but wins deep into January and February. He brought the feeling that was supposed to cement what the team did in the first year with Baker Mayfield at the helm.
Instead, the trade for Beckham didn’t immediately lead to those things. It was part of one of the more disappointing seasons the Browns have had since 1999, which is an impressive feat on its own. Cleveland would like to forget that season, even if it did have some bright spots.
There was hope again entering the 2020 season, as odd as everything was across the NFL. But a slow start for the offense, which should at least partially be credited to the odd preseason, and Beckham’s untimely injury before the offense took off led to an observation that the Browns offense was better when Beckham was off the field.
That is true. The Cleveland Browns were a better offensive team after Beckham was injured. That’s factual.
What isn’t entirely factual, or at least not yet provable, is that the Cleveland Browns were better offensively because Beckham was off the field.
There were signs that the Browns offense could look great with Beckham on the field. He’s a deep threat that they can’t replicate – although Donovan Peoples-Jones one day could fill that role – and a home run threat they simply don’t have on the outside. It takes no more than watching the game tape against the Dallas Cowboys to see what the ideal game plan looks like when Beckham is on the field.
The challenge for head coach Kevin Stefanski is to find the best possible ways to get Beckham the ball one-on-one in space against a defender. That’s a battle he’s going to win more often than he’s going to lose it. But when he’s back on the field, the attention that he’s going to see from opposing defenses will be greater than any other player the Browns have on the outside, and likely second on the team to only running back Nick Chubb.
The other challenge that the Browns have on their plate is figuring out the connection between Beckham and Mayfield. For whatever reason, that pairing has seemed much more forced than it needs to be. One of the reasons it’s easier to say that the offense was better without Beckham is because there was a clear flow to it when he was gone. The question that needs to be answered is whether or not Beckham was a cause of that, or if it was just the team maturing into a comfort level it was unable to reach due to relative inexperience with the lack of repetitions.
Beckham may not be the guy that once racked up over 1,300 yards in each of his first three seasons in the NFL with the New York Giants. But the Browns don’t need him to carry the offense. Success for Beckham would be fitting in to his role as a game-breaking threat and thriving in it. There may not be a perfect way to determine that from a statistical stand point, but it’s something that everyone will know when they see it.
Picture the Dallas game from last year again. Using Beckham like that on a regular basis eliminates any thoughts that the offense is better without him, and it makes the Browns a true Super Bowl contender, too.
