Giants sign OBJ, Smith-Schuster and Berrios
Mike Florio and Devin McCourty react to the New York Giants bolstering the wide receiver room by bringing back Odell Beckham Jr. as well as signing JuJu Smith-Schuster and Braxton Berrios.
Video Transcript
The New York Giants worked out four receivers on Monday.
Braxton Berrios, Juju Smith-Schuster, Odell Beckham Jr., and Anthony Miller.
I don't know how it feels to be Anthony Miller today, cause he's the only one to get signed.
He's And it came out one after another.
Like, the first one was bl- or mid-morning, "Braxton Berrios signing with the Giants."
Like, well, sorry Juju, sorry OBJ.
Oh, yeah.
And then a little bit later, "OBJ signing with the Giants."
Well, sorry Juju.
And then a little bit later, Juju Smith, like what the hell are the Giants doing?
It's like, what is Anthony Miller doing that workout that was so bad that those three guys got signed and he didn't?
Like, dude, they had that They coulda made room for one more.
Why not?
It O- OBJ signing back to the Giants is just, is just an awesome story.
Is it, is it gonna work out?
I have no idea.
It The past would tell us probably not, but you, you hope it works out.
But signing Berrios, Juju, and Odell Beckham all in the same day was like, wait, what, like, what's going on here?
How It g- what And I saw s- so many of the reports, they showed Malik Nabers at another celebrity softball game, and, and the way he was moving around didn't look great.
But And I saw people talking about that, but I'm like, Odell Beckham, Juju Smith-Schuster, Braxton Berrios, like, that's not filling the role of Malik Nabers.
Like, I don't I'm not f- I don't think they think that that's the answer to, to fill that spot.
So you just rarely ever see a team go get three veteran receivers all in one day.
Just not a, not a normal thing right there.
Well, and the contract is gonna be key.
I haven't checked, because yesterday became Miles Garrett and then A.J.
Brown day.
I haven't seen what Odell Beckham Jr. is getting paid.
What he's getting is going to reveal what they expect his role to be.
Is it the veteran minimum?
Is it more than that?
I remember when the Ravens signed him in 2023- Yeah to a one-year $15 million fully guaranteed contract.
I thought that was a mistake.
Now, I think at some level the Ravens thought that it was a money well spent because it helped lay the foundation to get Lamar Jackson to sign his new contract, and I do believe that the Ravens believe that signing Odell Beckham Jr. helped break the ice on the Lamar Jackson situation.
So Odell Beckham Jr. was the unintended beneficiary of that- $15 million outlay.
But then he went to Miami, and I think it was maybe $7 or $8 million, and it didn't work out.
He was cut during the season.
He hasn't played in more than a year.
And I think the challenge is, especially if you're going back to the team you played for where you were a star, he never had a bad year with the Giants.
To go back and wear that same uniform and be in that same stadium, but not be the guy that you were, and at some level you have to know he's not delusional.
He knows he's not that guy anymore.
Where do you fit on the depth chart?
Where do you fit in the game plan?
How many passes are gonna come your way?
We talked earlier about this.
How high are you gonna be as it relates to special teams?
Are you gonna avoid special teams?
They got 14 guys on the depth chart now at receiver.
OurLads, which has updated, I give them free pub all the time because they've earned it, their depth charts are always up to date, and it's jarring to see Odell Beckham Jr. as a third stringer.
It's jarring to see Jalin Hyatt, who's got Odell's number, 13, as a fourth stringer.
They go all the way down to fifth string- with Dalen Cambrey and Ryan Miller.
I mean, why even bother if you're that far down on the roster?
But that's how deep they go after adding four guys yesterday.
Yeah.
I just wonder what, what do they see in their depth chart that made them feel like, "We need to have veterans in this locker room."
Because, like you said, the contract will tell us a lot about, you know, all three, and obviously all eyes will be on OBJ's contract.
But when you sign all those guys, usually there's a need of what you feel like, "Hey, even throughout this whole off-season training camp, we want this presence to be in our locker room," because the more guys you have at one position means the less guys you have at other positions that, hey, some of these guys that you might need to come fill a role, they miss We just talked about it with A.J.
Brown.
They miss practice time where they could be with this team.
So when you have that many receivers, how are you splitting reps throughout these OTAs?
How are you splitting reps throughout training camp?
And then are other guys in other position groups practicing more just because you don't have the numbers?
And we've already seen the Giants deal with some injuries this off-season so far, with Gunner Olszewski going down, one of the defensive linemen got hurt.
Like, so figuring that out to me is just, it, it's a weird thing to see that many receivers, and maybe because they have nothing but question marks across the board for all of their receivers, and they don't know who is gonna be the starting receiver.
So, training camp will be interesting to watch and, and even, you know, leading up to training camp how they can figure that wide receiver room.
I wanna throw out an idea very quickly.
I know we have to break, but when you consider what the Giants have dealt with internally over the last week or so, at some level is it beneficial for the remainder of the off-season program to have a couple of big personalities show up and just kind of distract everyone from the stuff they went through last week?
Here's OBJ.
Here's Juju Smith-Schuster.
Forget about last week.
Get to know these guys, and let's just ride out this off-season program, and then we can cut them after the off-season before training camp starts.
I don't know.
I'm just throwing that out there because it has been a unique situation for the Giants over the past 10 days or so.
