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To paraphrase 21st century philosopher Shawn Carter, the Giants have 99 problems, but Odell Beckham Jr. is not, in fact, one of them.

The Giants fell to 1-4 with a 33-31 loss to the Panthers on Sunday. Beckham caught eight passes for 131 yards, including a 53-yard touchdown reception, and added a trick-play touchdown pass to Saquon Barkley.

But you would think that Beckham was responsible for the loss, the Giants' poor start, global warming and our fractured political landscape.

Beckham, you see, chirped to ESPN's Josina Anderson in an interview broadcast before the game about the Giants' lack of energy and heart—and about Eli Manning's inability to get the ball downfield or into Beckham's hands.

The actual comments were relatively benign, though. The "Odell called out his teammates" paraphrase is much juicier. But Beckham brings boffo box office, and everything he says can and will (always) be used against him in the court of public opinion.

Head coach Pat Shurmur was "absolutely livid" with Beckham about the remarks, per a Jay Glazer report on the Fox pregame show, with Beckham reportedly apologizing to the team Saturday night after getting called on the carpet.

"I'm not going to give the public a pound of flesh on this," Shurmur said after the game (and, by the way, it's never a good sign when football coaches start quoting Shakespeare in Week 5). "That would make me small, not strong.

"These are the kinds of things, in my opinion, when you have the locker room that we have, that will help galvanize them. The locker room took care of it. That's all I'm saying on it. Finito. Done."

Um, Coach, the "Finito" thing doesn't make you look really big. It makes you sound like a middle manager throwing a hissy fit about a dirty break-room coffee pot.



The Giants' problem isn't that Beckham is running his mouth. It's that Beckham is right.

The Giants defense tackled like it was playing two-hand touch in the first half Sunday. The whole team lacked energy until Beckham energized them with his touchdown pass.

As for Eli, the Giants didn't have a big passing play until Beckham himself did the passing. Manning's two late touchdowns would be more impressive without the two interceptions that made them necessary.

Beckham also made a critical mistake, letting a punt bounce off his leg deep in his own territory to set up an easy Panthers touchdown. And he dropped a fourth-down pass, though a catcher's mitt may not have even helped him nab Manning's low-and-away slider.

But Beckham also spent several days getting poked and prodded by reporters about his "frustrations" (we fed him that word several times during a Thursday press conference, hoping he would regurgitate it back to us) and remained diplomatic until finally musing aloud that, yes, it would be nice if his quarterback found him when he got open deep.

If Shurmur doesn't want Beckham to get get needled into honesty, he needs to fix the problem instead of looking for apologies.

Eli is toast—and has been for at least a year. The Giants defense is low on talent. Shurmur looks more like the guy who coached the Browns to 9-23 than the cog in the Vikings machine we saw last year. And the Giants would not have even kept Sunday's game close if not for Beckham and some unforced errors by the Panthers.

Beckham just said what we all were thinking.

But when Beckham is involved, you better believe that the messenger's going to bear the brunt of the blame.