Giants’ chance to prove they were right about Odell Beckham is here

From the moment they traded Odell Beckham Jr. to the Browns, the second-year regime of the New York Football Giants has time and time again extolled the virtues of TEAM.

“I feel like we’re a better football team right now,” Pat Shurmur said, “and this is a team sport.”

Shurmur and GM Dave Gettleman will either be proven right or delusional, and there is no better time to be optimistic and/or defiant than now, when you haven’t lost a single regular-season game in the days before Sunday’s opener on the road against the hated Cowboys.

Shurmur doesn’t mention Beckham, the superstar headache that Gettleman didn’t sign to trade, but everyone recognizes that when he and Gettleman trumpet the culture of the 2019 locker room, they came to the conclusion that Beckham was part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

So now they get to put their money where their mouths are, now they get to prove that the 2019 Giants are BWB — Better Without Beckham.

The naysayers, and there are plenty of us, beg to differ.

Sure, there is Saquon Barkley running behind an upgraded offensive line, and it is the second year in Shurmur’s offense, but Beckham is gone and so are Landon Collins and Olivier Vernon, and Eli Manning is 38 and on the clock, and Golden Tate is suspended for the first four games, and the rebuilt defense is for the most part young and inexperienced and therefore suspect.

“I don’t care what everybody outside thinks,” Shurmur said.

That’s his job, to make sure his team ignores the noise, which no one does better than Bill Belichick, of course.

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On the other hand, even as Shurmur and the Giants profess they don’t listen to the slings and arrows from outside, of course they do, and you better believe they are using it as motivation.

“It definitely puts a chip on our shoulder,” Evan Engram said. “We don’t let it affect us, but we definitely feel it, and we’re gonna put it on the field, and that’s all that matters.”

BWB.

“A lot of guys in this room,” Engram said, “might not have a lot of big names, but there’s a lot of talent in here, and a lot of guys are gonna show that this season, and show y’all.”

The faces change but the expectations do not. That has forever been the Giants Way. But they were 5-11 last year. They are 8-24 over the last two seasons. They haven’t won a playoff game since Super Bowl XLII.

“We don’t care what anybody else thinks outside this building,” Engram said. “We know what we’re capable of, we know our standards and our expectations. We know the work we gotta do, and that’s all that matters.”

For the Giants to have any chance of being BWB, Engram will have to help new No. 1 receiver Sterling Shepard by fashioning a breakthrough-breakout season, and when someone suggested that he is being counted on more now “since Odell’s gone,” Engram said: “Along with a lot of guys in this locker room, yes sir. Definitely I got bigger responsibility, and more of a leader as well, and a lot of guys are gonna get a lot of opportunities to make plays, and we just gotta step up and get it done.”

Shepard, no longer wearing a splint on his broken left thumb, is fully confident Engram is ready to get it done.

“He’s a matchup nightmare, and I’ve said that since Day 1 since I seen him — the man looks like a wide receiver, he runs like a wide receiver just in a tight end’s body,” Shepard said.

Engram, who turned 25 Monday, is a well-conditioned 237 pounds.

“I feel like a jack in the box, just ready to spring out,” he said.

Beckham will be catching slants from Baker Mayfield and taking them to the house now.

Manning will look to spread the wealth among Cody Latimer and Bennie Fowler and Russell Shepard as well as Engram and Shepard … but only after getting it in Barkley’s hands early and often.

A white board in the middle of the locker room gives the draw of the Giants’ pingpong tournament, and a table sits adjacent to it.

“You can feel when a team is very close,” Shepard said.

Most of the players genuinely liked Beckham. But he won’t be competing for their pingpong championship. Because Gettleman and Shurmur decided the Giants were Better Without Beckham in their locker room.