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Ravens WR Odell Beckham Jr. faces another milestone as his former team, the Rams, comes to town

Childs Walker, Baltimore Sun
·5 min read

For a moment, Odell Beckham Jr. was unsure which team to refer to as “we.”

He’s a Raven, of course, aiming to be the trusted veteran with big-play juice who helps push a Super Bowl aspirant over the top. But Beckham already summited that mountain once, for the team he and the Ravens will face Sunday, the Los Angeles Rams.

In fact, the last time the Ravens and Rams met, Beckham caught the winning touchdown pass in the last minute — for the other side.

A grim year of knee rehabilitation separated his glorious run with the Rams from his fresh start in Baltimore, but he maintains a deep affinity for his former coach, Sean McVay, and ex-teammates such as quarterback Matthew Stafford and wide receiver Cooper Kupp.

“I still hit a little group chat and talked some trash to them this week,” he said, grinning after practice Wednesday. “It’s just all love and respect. McVay kind of was the person — the whole situation and organization — that brought me back to loving and having joy for football, understanding true professionalism and being prepared. It was just a great experience for me, one of the best things that’s happened in my life.”

Going against these friends and former co-workers is another happy milestone in a season full of them for the star wide receiver, who wasn’t sure he would play again after he tore his ACL in the Rams’ Super Bowl victory over the Cincinnati Bengals in February 2022.

Beckham will be one of the Ravens’ captains Sunday in recognition of the occasion. “He’s a heck of a football player,” coach John Harbaugh said. “He draws a lot of attention. He’s making plays. I think he’s really coming into his own healthwise right now, getting stronger and faster. I mean, that’s a big road back, from where he had to come from. You see it every single week. I know he’s going to make a bunch of big plays down the stretch here.”

Some players might brush past the emotions of a comeback season, insist on a tunnel-vision approach to each week’s work. Not Beckham.

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Before the Ravens’ opener, he spoke of how “the whole thing feels like a reset for me.”

After he scored his first Ravens touchdown — he had to wait for the ninth game of the season against the Seahawks — he reflected that, “When I went down, there were contemplations on whether I wanted to come back and do this all over again, and I just said to myself for any other kid out there who is watching and was once inspired, ‘What message would I send to give up?’”

Now, he’ll try to beat the guys with whom he shared a uniform, and won a championship, when his knee went out on him Feb. 13, 2022. This is by no means a revenge scenario. Beckham cherished his time with the Rams, and his love was reciprocated.

“It doesn’t feel like anything,” he deadpanned when asked how it will strike him to see old friends on the other sideline. He was clearly joking.

“It’s a special bond I had with those guys over there,” he said.

McVay and Stafford have gushed about his contributions, on and off the field, to the Rams’ Super Bowl run.

“I love that guy,” McVay told The Pivot Podcast earlier this year. “I always feel like the people that shine the brightest, when the stage is big as possible, like no moment is ever too big, he’s the kind of guy that comes to mind.”

Beckham was perhaps the most dynamic player on the field in the first half of Super Bowl LVI, catching a pair of passes for 52 yards and a touchdown before he could no longer go on his ruptured ACL.

Much as Beckham did when he bounced to the Rams after a disappointing year and a half in Cleveland, he has shown there is plenty of life left in his legs this season. At age 31, he leads Ravens wide receivers in yards per reception at 15.1 and has been particularly effective turning short slants from Lamar Jackson into longer gains.

Wide receivers coach Greg Lewis described him as a master of angles.

“Lamar delivers a great ball to him, and then the guy with the ball in his hands is very explosive,” Lewis said. “He has a DB/linebacker-type of mindset when he does get the ball. He’s physical and fast, and that’s what’s happening when he gets in space. It’s an opportunity to make plays, and he wants to take advantage of each and every one of those.”

Beckham drew a comparison between his experience in Baltimore and his renaissance in Los Angeles, where McVay’s positivity and command of detail felt revelatory in the wake of his messy experience in Cleveland. He picked the Ravens because he wanted to catch passes from Jackson and because general manager Eric DeCosta ponied up $15 million but also because he believed he was joining another potential champion.

“We’re 9-3 and this team is playing the way they’re playing, so it’s a lot easier to say it now,” he said. “But before, when I was looking at where to go and who was going to have an opportunity to be here, this was what I envisioned. Not knowing that Harbs runs this place the right way, but I just know that I always played against the Ravens, and it was always tough. It was a team that was just relentless.”

He added that Harbaugh, much like McVay, harps on accountability without becoming overbearing. “These are the little things that, if they’re talked about in the wrong manner, it seems negative,” he said. “But he talks about them in such a positive way that you see it come up in a game, and we’re prepared.”

Beckham’s first playoff experience as a New York Giant, a 2016 blowout loss to the Green Bay Packers, was no good. “I wasn’t ready for the moment,” he recalled. “And I was itching and just dying to get back to have an opportunity.”

Which explains why his run with the Rams meant so much. He’s eager to feel that way again.

Week 14

Rams at Ravens

Sunday, 1 p.m.

TV: Fox

Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM

Line: Ravens by 7 1/2