The Penultimate Act Of The Odell Beckham Jr. Show

The 2021 season represents a critical crossroads for the remainder of the enigmatic receiver’s NFL career.

Before we officially kick off the 2021 NFL season, let’s quickly jump in the National Football League time machine and take the “short” trip back to 2016. Of course, I put quotation marks around the word “short” because five years in the NFL feels closer to five decades in real life; talking about what happened during the 2016 regular season feels like you’re harkening back to the days of the war in Vietnam.

For those who can recall, right around this time five years ago:

• Tom Brady was still in search of his (eventual) fifth, sixth, and seventh Super Bowl championships (and the idea of him leaving New England seemed utterly and totally preposterous)
• JJ Watt was the undisputed best defensive player in the NFL, coming off his third season with more than 17 sacks in a four-year span
• Football fans in Los Angeles were excited to see what the pairing of Head Coach Jeff Fisher and rookie quarterback Jared Goff would look like for the newly-relocated Rams
• Patrick Mahomes, just days before his 21st birthday, decided he would give up playing baseball at Texas Tech, and…