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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED AUGUS T 26–SEP TEM
BER 2, 2019
Keep your head in it. I see you open, it’s going to come.
“It’s been hard,” Beckham says. “We both needed
each ot her.”
For Beckham fame came in just the seventh game
of his career, with a spectacular one-handed catch
against the Cowboys on Sunday Night Football. He was
instantly one of the most marketable players in the
league—good-looking and charismatic, with a trade-
mark two-toned faux-hawk, infectious smile and dance
moves kids would emulate. With sweeping popularity,
though, came scorching criticism. “I was talked about
as if I was a celebrity who had the luxury of playing
football,” he says. “It got to the point where it wasn’t
really about football anymore. It was politics.”
He takes partial responsibility for some of this. “I
can’t be like, ‘I’ve never done anything wrong,’ ” he says.
His emotional outbursts—whether fighting cornerback
Josh Norman or a kicking net—invited that scrutiny.
But Beckham believes he got more attention for those
lapses than for his exceptional play on the field; he feels
everything I ever got, and a lot of people in Cleveland
do the same thing. They are looked at as never being
good enough.”
The same can be said of his young quarterback, who
carries with him the anger of perceived recruiting
slights in college, seemingly making headlines every
other week with another display of confidence—or
arrogance, depending on your perspective. It’s an at-
titude Clevelanders say is perfectly tailored to a city
that has long been dealing with an inferiority complex,
and Kitchens has no problem with it. “Why would I
want to change Baker?” he asks. “That’s what makes
him him. Nobody is going to change me—why would I
change someone else?”
Dorsey made it a priority this offseason to surround
the young passer and the first-time coach with more
talent on both sides of the ball. In February he signed
2017 NFL rushing leader Kareem Hunt, whom the
Chiefs cut last year after a video surfaced showing
him kicking a woman. (Dorsey drafted Hunt in Kansas
City and, for better or worse, says he believes in second
chances.) In March the GM traded for Giants defensive
end Olivier Vernon and signed free-agent D-tackle
Sheldon Richardson, both former Pro Bowlers; paired
with end Myles Garrett, the No. 1 pick in 2017, they
form one of the most formidable lines in the league.
Dorsey wasn’t done, though. Four days after the
Vernon deal he called back New York GM Dave Gettle-
man and asked a simple question. “What about Odell?”
JARVIS LANDRY has started to fill in Odell
Beckham Jr. on the Browns’ history: the early
dynasty, the move to Baltimore, the cosmic connection
between city and team. Everything Landry learned last
season he now gets to share with his best friend.
When the receivers first met as high schoolers in Loui-
siana, living just 50 miles apart, they each quickly found a
kindred spirit: Both are passionate, heart-on-their-sleeve
types. They decided to play together at LSU and openly
daydreamed about reuniting in the NFL, owning houses
nearby, “doing legendary s---,” Landry says.
Beckham was naturally gifted, but he credits Landry with
teaching him how to work. The two would break into the
Tigers’ facility in the middle of the night to train, launching
footballs at one another from close distance, catching them
with one hand. “That all came from him,” says Beckham.
The 2014 draft sent them separate ways, and both
became instant stars. But they were also disgruntled,
playing on noncompetitive teams in unimaginative of-
fenses. If one was watching the other on TV, he would
send encouraging texts at halftime. Keep working.
RO
N SCH
WAN
E/AP/SH
UTTERSTO
CK
ODELL, YEAH!
In Beckham,
Dorsey (below
left) saw a
guy with 44
TDs in five
years. Period.
