Odell Beckham Jr. couldn’t have paid one of his Hollywood friends to write a better script for the start of his Giants sequel.
A Giants-Cowboys game on Sunday Night Football at MetLife Stadium — the stage that made him internationally famous because of his one-handed catch as a rookie in 2014 — feels to him like proof of his belief in a higher power’s mysterious ways.
“I always talk about God’s plan,” Beckham said after Friday’s practice. “Right when I was [trying out] and I was seeing all these things happening, the NFL was like, ‘Giants, Sunday night, Cowboys.’ It’s just crazy because everything that’s happened with that. You just try to be in the moment and not overthink.”
But Beckham, 33, fed into the throwback storyline by dyeing his hair platinum blond — his signature color — after wearing it black all summer. He kept a helmet and hat on when cameras were around this week to keep the look secret for the Sunday audience.
“I kind of got a request from a couple of the young guys, like, ‘We need to see the blond. I need that as a core memory,’” Beckham said. “It’s always fun to switch it up. I can have black hair forever. I can’t fry this forever, and it might grow back. Now was the time.”
Beckham had all the time in the world ahead of him on Nov. 23, 2014, when he reached over his head while drawing pass interference, grabbed Eli Manning’s pass with three fingers and fell backward into the end zone for a touchdown. The Giants’ loss that night became a postscript.
The result Sunday — in John Harbaugh’s first game as head coach — is not meaningless.
“They asked me, like, ‘Are you going to recreate it on Sunday?’” Beckham said. “I’m like, ‘Bro, I didn’t try to do it.’ It just came with the preparation and the practice. I’m like, ‘I’ve dropped a lot of one-hands, too.’ But it changed my life forever … for better or for worse, because people try and amount the whole career into one play.”
One-handed catches instantly became part of football practices from Pop Warner to the NFL. The catch’s degree of difficulty has been matched but Beckham’s is most memorable.
“I have four boys and one of them is a receiver at Kansas right now,” Giants offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said. “And I know for the past, like, six years in the offseason, they’re always trying in the offseason to do one-hand catches.
“I got to see Odell when he was in his prime then and just had a ton of respect for him. And to see him now with where he’s at in this part of the career, I think you really start to appreciate where you’re at and now it’s the team part and he’s embraced that.”
After looking washed up with the 2024 Dolphins and sitting out all of 2025, a healthy Beckham beat the odds by making the Giants’ 53-man roster in training camp. He is one of only four receivers, so he should see snaps.
Sunday will be his first regular-season game with the Giants in 2,842 days — since Week 13 of 2018. In that game, the electric Beckham Version 1.0 caught a touchdown, threw a touchdown and misplayed an onside kick.
Former teammates have texted Beckham to remind him that he is playing for another era.
“They always talk about, ‘We’re living through you,’” Beckham said. “I see guys who I played here with and they’re like, ‘It’s just crazy. It’s a tremendous amount of top off to you and the work that you did to get back here.’ But not too many people get a chance to have this kind of story written up, and I just want to take advantage of that.”
If the preseason is any indication, Beckham will do his traditional one-handed catch end-zone warm-up before the game, and the home crowd will cheer his every move.
“If I get that opportunity to run out and I could hear this stadium, which I feel like is just going to erupt, I think that’ll be the moment where your chest tightens up a little bit and eyes might get a little watery,” Beckham said.
“I just love this game and I’ve sacrificed my whole life for it. And I just want to give this city, this organization, these fans, every last bit of me. Whatever that is, I came to give it.”
