Odell Beckham Jr. had more bones to pick than just the Giants.

When he wasn’t criticizing the manner in which the Giants traded him to the Browns, Beckham made sure to lament the manner in which he’s portrayed by the media.

“I get made out to be some rule breaker,” Beckham told GQ. “I’m following your rules and your guidelines, but I’m just having fun doing it! It’s crazy because you give us a voice and then you want to control how we use the voice. And I’ve been having questions about it recently, because it doesn’t really make sense to me. It’s like you create a monster, but then you don’t know how to control it anymore, so then you want to tear it down. It’s all backwards.”

Beckham has been fined numerous times for detrimental conduct, unsportsmanlike conduct and illegal hits. In 2015, Beckham was suspended one game for multiple violations of safety-related playing rules. This past year, head coach Pat Shurmur demanded Beckham apologize to the team after an ESPN interview in which he said “I don’t know” when asked if the team had a quarterback problem. There was also the infamous boat trip before the Giants’ 2017 NFC wild-card game against the Packers, the kicking-net wars and the Paris video that surfaced during the 2018 offseason.

To Beckham, this is all a double standard that other athletes, such as Rob Gronkowski, are immune to.

“I watch other players in the NFL be able to go to Vegas and get wild and go onstage and be videotaped and chugging beer or whatever,” Beckham said. “Going crazy. And it’s like, ‘Oh, man, look at how much fun he’s having. Look at how he’s having a blast! This is amazing.’”

Beckham was then asked if he’s done anything more inappropriate than Gronkowski.

“Probably not,” Beckham said. “It’s the same thing. It’s like, ‘Why can’t I have fun?’ People tell me I’m supposed to be a role model. Well, what are they supposed to be? We’re human beings at the end of the day. We earned the right to play in the NFL, but we also earned a life of our own. I just had a talk with my uncle, and he agreed that my privacy is about the only thing I need back. You never hear about my personal life. You never hear about the woman I’m dating or anything like that. And you won’t. I don’t need to give you that. You want to talk about my job, football? We can talk about that. But this is my personal life. There’s two separate lines. So I always try to keep that.”

Beckhmam claimed his sideline outbursts come from the tenacity of his competitiveness. He further broke down his dilemma: If you’re not upset enough, you look like you don’t care. If you are too livid during a game you’re losing, and you look immature.

In Beckham’s mind, there is one all-important caveat to that dilemma: race.

“Race plays into everything, whether we want to believe it or not,” Beckham said. “I remember posting a video of me and Tom Brady, and I hate to even bring him in this, but he’s passionate. He cares — he wouldn’t still be playing if he didn’t care for the game the way that he did today. He throws a cup, he yells at referees, he yells at his coach. It’s because he cares that bad. He wants to win that bad. Now, because he has won six Super Bowls they validate him and say, ‘He’s won six Super Bowls.’ I want to win the same way he wants to win. Whether I hit a kicking net or whether I do whatever. I want to win that bad. I care about winning more than anything.”

Now with his coveted “fresh start” in Cleveland, Beckham has the chance to change the way he is portrayed. If he ever stops talking about New York.