6. Signing Odell Beckham Jr. only to trade him
I know this one is a hot button issue for a lot of New York Giant fans, but let me try to be the voice of reason here. Many are divided on whether they like Odell Beckham Jr. or not, and whether they think he’s a total diva or just a guy that wants to win. I myself am of the belief that you don’t trade a guy of Odell’s caliber, ever, and that he more so was a frustrated player that wanted to win that a bad team guy, but I can see why he rubs many the wrong way.
However, what I’m here to tell you is none of that even matters when grading this move, and the handling of the OBJ situation in general. If Dave Gettleman would have made the determination that Odell wasn’t a guy he wanted around for the long term before handing him a record contract (that included 40M$ guaranteed), and traded him, I would have been totally fine with it. At the time, it would have been a prudent move to extract the rumored two-first round drat picks many were willing to part with for OBJ, while avoiding paying him big-time money.
Instead, in classic Gettleman fashion, he did neither. The foolish GM instead paid OBJ 40M$ for one season of play, and traded him for just one first-round draft pick, while not even letting the rest of the league know that the transcendent player was available. You heard that right, teams were reportedly upset with the GM for not letting them know OBJ was for sale, and that makes this so much worse, as the offer the Giants ended up taking from the Browns was a putrid one.
What was the rush to make that deal two months before the draft, before even talking to 30 other teams (Gettleman himself admitted he only talked to 2/32 teams about an Odell trade in 2019)? To make it all worse, the know-it-all GM spit right in our faces as fans when he proudly proclaimed just a short time before trading Odell that, “We didn’t sign Odell to trade him.”
To be fair, Odell did record a foolish interview during the 2018 season where he expressed frustration with Eli Manning and the franchise. Still, if that’s all it was going to take for you to trade a player you just signed to the highest-paid WR contract of all-time, then should you have really signed him in the first place?
Again, it doesn’t matter which side of the fence you are when it comes to the polarizing player that Odell Beckham Jr. (rightly) is. This comes down to a gross asset mismanagement, and a GM that flies by the seat of his pants far too often. You just don’t see other executives doing these kinds of things.