Rams managed to hide Odell Beckham Jr.’s lack of ACL in 2021
One thing that became clear during Thursday’s press conference with his new team was that Odell Beckham Jr.’s prior team managed to hide the fact that Beckham had no ACL in his knee for his entire stay with the team in 2021.
Beckham explained that, when he signed with the Rams, team physician Neal ElAttrache told Beckham that he had no ACL.
“That whole season I was playing without it,” Beckham said. “It was a crazy thing. I signed with the L.A. Rams, and I remember ElAttrache comes down there and he’s like, ‘I’ve just got to inform you that you don’t have an ACL. You know, we can redo your surgery right now.’ And this was Week Nine of the season.
“And I just told him, I was like, ‘I’ve been through way too much to come here and sign. There was way too much talk on my name. You know, the past year, like I came here to win a championship.’ And I told him I’d die on the sword.”
The sword eventually fell during the first half of the Super Bowl. It wasn’t nearly the surprise for Beckham as it was for the rest of us, since he knew there was no ACL in the knee.
The injury reports issued by the Rams during Beckham’s tenure never mentioned a knee injury. Other than a hip in Week 13, Beckham had no injuries disclosed during his time with the Rams.
Whether the failure to list Beckham as having a knee injury violates the rules is a different issue. The ACL was missing when he signed. As long as he received no treatment on his knee, and wasn’t missing practices or games because of it, it’s likely a non-issue for the NFL — just as Tom Brady’s fully-torn MCL was a non-issue when the Bucs hid the injury in 2020.
Still, Beckham was constantly at enhanced risk of having his knee do what it eventually did during the Super Bowl. To the extent that folks were placing bets on Beckham-based props or relying on him to deliver for high-stakes fantasy games, it would have been useful to know that his knee was a ticking time bomb.
Rams managed to hide Odell Beckham Jr.’s lack of ACL in 2021 originally appeared on Pro Football Talk
