A showdown between Odell Beckham and the Giants now appears to be inevitable

A confluence of events has created a climate around their ongoing contractual saga with Odell Beckham that very well could be pointing to a late-summer showdown between the incredibly-talented-but-sometimes-maligned receiver and the only NFL franchise he has ever known. An awkward mix of factors continues to feed an undercurrent of foreboding between these sides, and nothing that has occurred in this brief but hectic offseason has altered the landscape for the better.

Market forces are working against the Giants, with marginal wide receivers receiving $10M a year on new contracts in a wild tempest of free-agent signings, with a dink-and-dunk slot receiver getting traded on a $16M-plus franchise tag and with Sammy Watkins – arguably not even the best receiver on most of the pedestrian Bills and Rams teams he has played on – re-setting the market with an outlandish $34M guaranteed over the next two years in Kansas City. Oh yeah, OBJ noticed all of that, further fueling the argument that he should be worth $20M a year at least on a short-term deal if Watkins is worth $34M. And don't forget about Kirk Cousins becoming the first player in league history to receive a three-year, fully-guaranteed contract, a benchmark that players beyond quarterbacks will be seeking to attain.

Add in the fact that the Giants are caught somewhere between contending (or pretending to be contending) and rebuilding, with a new head coach and general manager but the same ol' Eli Manning under center, along with the newly-crowned Super Bowl champs also now in their division, and decisions about how to handle Beckham get even murkier. And then, not that this negotiating dance needed any more hurdles or potential pitfalls, the emergence of a video of Beckham and a model and various potentially controlled substances only codified the uncomfortable stance between the superstar and his employers.

Which brings us to the comments from owner John Mara over the weekend about no players being untouchable but Beckham not being actively shopped to other teams, hinting at an ambiguous transactional purgatory that will do nothing to pacify a restless fanbase that is trying to determine whether to start cutting the emotional cord with a player who has both confounded them with his athletic prowess and stupefied them with some of his antics and outbursts.

Welcome back to New York, Dave Gettleman, and, yes, Pat Shurmur, you ain't in Minneapolis anymore!

So, what happens next?

Well, as the Dolphins' trade of Beckham's longtime buddy Jarvis Landry to Cleveland for just a fourth-round pick reaffirmed, landing top value for a player who will demand a record contract from his new employer is rarely easy. Beckham is a far more dominant and explosive player than Landry, to be certain – it's not even close – but the reality of taking on someone in the middle of Beckham's situation with the release of that video, and paying him perhaps $60M over the next three years, and then also parting with a high first-round pick to do so, may be far more than the Giants could realistically hope for. Teams can smell their vulnerability, they fully realize the extent of the plight gripping this organization and its new regime, and good luck getting close to Beckham's on-field value in trade.

As to that on-field worth, you can make the case that Beckham is the best receiver in the game and that his first four NFL seasons are as impactful as most of the legends who have come before him. Since Beckham entered the NFL in 2014, only Antonio Brown has been targeted more per game (11.3-10.6), or caught more passes per game ( 7.7-6.7), and only Brown (104.1) and Julio Jones (103.6) average more yards per game than Beckham's 94.1. Yet where Beckham truly excels is the one aspect that should get you paid above and beyond any other metric – he hits pay dirt at a ridiculous pace. Despite missing almost all of 2017 to injury, Beckham's 38 receiving touchdowns since 2014 (in 47 total games) are second only to Brown's 44 (in 61 games). The Giants are 5-12 in the 17 games Beckham has missed due to injury or suspension (his one-game penalty for brawling with Josh Norman in 2015).

Which brings us to the other mitigating factors. Beckham's attitude – whether it be the dog-on-a-fire-hydrant celebration or the sideline flare-ups or the sparring with opposing defensive backs or his offseason pursuits – has rubbed people the wrong way at times and created headaches for the Giants. Of course, I'd point out that's not exactly an anomaly for a dominant receiver and to this point his only suspension came from an incident with Norman which frankly both sets of head coaches and myriad assistants on the sidelines allowed to escalate far too long. Whether this incident on the video tape results in NFL discipline is the obvious elephant in the room, but Beckham hardly carries the kind of rap sheets (DUIs, weapons-related charges, domestic violence arrests) that didn't preclude far lesser players from still earning copious NFL paychecks.

If you don't believe there is a team out there that would pay Beckham $40M, guaranteed, for two seasons of work given the explosion in the receiver market, you are being naïve. Two teams have already moved on from Watkins – selected 10 picks ahead of Beckham via a perverse trade from former Bills general manager Doug Whaley – Watkins's foot malady has consistently kept him from remaining fully healthy and he's been flashy but largely just functional since entering the league. He ranks 50th in receptions per game (3.7), 39th in targets per game (6.7), 29th in yards per game (58.7) and 17th in receiving touchdowns (25 in 52 games) in that same span as Beckham.

Beckham should be shipping a crate of Hawaiian shirts to Andy Reid in Kansas City right now.

But given all of the baggage for Beckham in New York, would the Giants be willing to be the team to pay that price to keep him? Mara is certainly hedging his bets, but the problem is, the Chiefs already gave all that money to Watkins and Landry already landed in Cleveland and Oakland gave $15M for two years to a 33-year old Jordy Nelson and the Jaguars already conspired to guarantee $28M over the next two years to Donte Moncrief and Marqise Lee (gulp!). And the teams that have continued to sniff around remaining free-agent pass catchers, like Baltimore and Seattle, are looking for bargains now. Owners set their budgets before March and general managers generally blow them out in the first week of the market and then prices go down.

Beckham would be an exception, but if teams don't think he's long for New York anyway, they'll be willing to wait. Trading him now is hardly impossible, but it would've been a heck of a lot easier before the flurry of over a dozen trades that already were agreed to before the market even officially opened. And the prospects may not get better until or unless he is in the clear from the league office regarding the video tape.

This much is clear – despite his personality conflicts – Beckham is one of the faces of the NFL, he enjoyed no shortage of marketing and commercial campaigns and industry execs suggested he could be pulling down $10M per year in that area alone. Now, of course that money goes away if he isn't playing football, but Beckham is fortified for a holdout if need be. Make no mistake.

The odds of him playing out this year on the fifth-year option figure of $8.5M are bleak. Or, I should say, the odds of him reporting for work in Week 1 are beyond slim under that scenario. That's $1.1M less than Moncrief is guaranteed for this season (not including the millions more Moncrief can earn in incentives). Not happening. And he's not reporting to any team that may trade for him unless a fat contract extension is forthcoming, either, from everything I gather.

He's played four seasons for a total of $10.4M despite being one of the NFL's primary attractions. He'll be a bargain no more.

And if he's not extended or traded before the season, then one need only go back to Duane Brown's conflict with the Texans from a year ago to find a template for Beckham. He'll sit out into the season's midpoint – one can only wonder how the Giants would fare without him for at least the first eight games – and then report just in time to receive an accrued season toward unrestricted free agency. Not the cloud any team would want hanging over a new coaching staff coming off a 3-13 campaign. Saquon Barkley with the second-overall pick better be instantly transformational to overcome this potential mess.

Mara's consternation may be far from over. The best player on his team, still just 25 years old, has ample leverage at a time when the Giants have fallen well below expectations. I don't envy Mara's position, and as has been the case too often in recent years (the handling of Tom Coughlin's ouster and Josh Brown's suspension and Manning's benching), Giants ownership is getting national attention for reasons they'd rather avoid.

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