Odell Beckham Jr.’s second run with the New York Giants ended before it ever really got going.

Three games. Nineteen offensive snaps. One target. Zero catches.

That’s the whole stat line from a reunion that was supposed to give Beckham and the Giants a cleaner ending than the first time around. Instead, New York released him Tuesday and used the roster spot on Braxton Berrios, a receiver and returner who can help in more than one phase.

It’s a tough ending, but it’s also an honest one.

Beckham didn’t play special teams, and Malik Nabers, Malachi Fields, and Darnell Mooney had taken every wide receiver target but one through three games. There wasn’t some secret plan keeping him buried. There just wasn’t a real role for him. As John Harbaugh put it:

Tough, but we just weren’t getting enough. It just wasn’t working for us. I told him I wanted to be able to give more. I wanted him to be able to do more. I wanted to get him on the field more. And we just, for whatever reason, we weren’t able to do it. Put it on us. We weren’t able to get it done. At this point in time, that’s kind of where we were. And needed to move on.

That’s how quickly nostalgia runs into an NFL roster.

The strange part is that Giants fans were still trying to will one more moment into existence. During Sunday’s 12-7 win over Tennessee, chants of “OBJ” rolled through the MetLife Stadium crowd. Beckham finally got his first target of the season, but it fell incomplete. Two days later, he was gone.

For a player whose Giants career started with a catch people still replay 12 years later, leaving without one this time feels almost too fitting — in the saddest way possible.

The Legend Lives On

But those 19 snaps don’t change what Beckham was in New York.

He caught 390 passes for 5,476 yards and 44 touchdowns in 59 games during his first stint. He made three straight Pro Bowls, won Offensive Rookie of the Year, and still currently has the highest receiving-yards-per-game average in franchise history among players with at least 50 appearances. He wasn’t just the guy who made that ridiculous one-handed touchdown catch against Dallas. He was the reason a bad Giants team became appointment viewing.

They didn't treat him like it.

The first goodbye came with all the chaos you’d expect from that version of Beckham’s career. The Giants made him the highest-paid receiver in football in August 2018, then traded him to Cleveland seven months later for Jabrill Peppers, a first, and a third. It was messy and personal enough that the relationship never really felt over. It felt more like everybody walked away angry and pretended they were fine.

Everything after that got harder to sort out. Beckham had a 1,000-yard season in Cleveland, tore his ACL in 2020, won a Super Bowl with the Rams, and then tore the same ACL again during the game. He sat out 2022 and followed it up with a decent year in Baltimore, but then he caught nine passes for 55 yards in Miami in 2024. His last catch before this comeback went for one yard.

He didn’t play at all in 2025.

That’s the version of Beckham who came back to New York at 33. Not the human highlight reel. Not the guy who could take a short pass and turn it into 70 yards while the entire stadium lost their minds. Just a veteran trying to find out if there was enough left for one more season.

And for a little while, there was. Beckham made it through camp and onto the 53-man roster. He even got No. 13 back.

But he never got the ending he pictured. Most players don’t.

Sometimes there’s no farewell tour and no perfect last catch. Sometimes the end is six snaps, one target, and a transaction posted on a Tuesday afternoon. That’s the business, even when the story feels like it deserves something more dramatic.

Maybe Beckham finds another team. He certainly sounds like he expects to. But if this was the end, it doesn’t erase anything. The Giants didn’t bring back the old Odell because that player is gone. They gave the current one a real chance. And for three weeks, No. 13 was back where it all started.

All stats courtesy of Fantasy Points Data.

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