Injury sidelines Beckham, brings Giants to crossroads

Odell Beckham sat on a cart Sunday afternoon holding up his broken ankle with one hand, while his other hand covered his face with his jersey. This is why underpaid players hold out for new contracts.

This worst-case scenario of Beckham’s season — the Giants confirmed he had a fractured ankle while NFL Network’s Kimberley Jones said Beckham will undergo an MRI to look for ligament damage — mirrors the Giants’ franchise dive into 0-5 irrelevance following Sunday’s 27-22 loss to the Chargers. The conversation in New York will turn to coach Ben McAdoo’s job security and the possibility of earning the No. 1 overall draft pick next April. NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported Sunday morning that McAdoo is not currently on the hot seat, “the Giants believe he is still a future very successful coach,” per Rapoport. For Beckham, it makes an uncertain future even cloudier.

Beckham has spoken about his desire to be the highest paid player in the NFL at any position, wanting to help “change the game” by getting superstar money in the same manner as the NBA’s biggest names. Beckham chose not to withhold his services during training camp this season despite his $1.839 million salary in 2017 placing him outside the top-60 highest paid players at his position. Team owner John Mara said this summer that the Giants were “going to pay” Beckham with a long-term deal more fitting of his talent. Mara allowed that it was a “possibility” Beckham could get that deal next offseason, although the aftermath of this injury will make it more complicated.

Beckham is under contract through 2018 after the Giants picked up the fifth-year option in his rookie deal, which should pay him in the range of $8.5 million. (That figure comes from averaging the third through 25th-highest paid receivers in football.) Beckham’s recovery timetable has yet to be established, but the team eventually will have to decide whether it wants to offer a top-of-the-market deal to a player coming off a serious injury. Giants brass might have to balance their significant leverage with what Beckham has clearly earned through his superlative play in his first three-plus seasons.

This was supposed to be the season that Beckham took his incredible star wattage to another level. Nike signed him to the highest-paid shoe contract in NFL history this summer, but this injury puts all his touchdown celebrations and brand building on hold. The same could be true for this Giants offense and its entire season.

When Beckham got to his knee Sunday to pump life into a football after scoring a 48-yard touchdown, it was easy to imagine a different type of Giants season. In this alternate universe, Beckham never suffered a high-ankle sprain in the preseason that handicapped the start to his season. The Giants season that so many imagined ending at the Super Bowl surely wouldn’t have included fellow starting wideouts Brandon Marshall and Sterling Shepard also getting sidelined Sunday with their own ankle injuries. It wouldn’t have the team’s vaunted defense ranked No. 28 in Football Outsiders’ metrics entering Week 5, before it gave up 10 fourth-quarter points Sunday to the Chargers.

Beckham carried this offense last season in a manner that few, if any, NFL receivers could. His Week 1 absence and limited health in September helped prove that point all over again. Now the weight of salvaging respect for this Giants season rests on the shoulders of McAdoo, who hasn’t always looked up to the task because of predictable play calling and questionable game management decisions. The Giants head to Denver next week and then host the Seahawks before what could be an extremely uncomfortable Week 8 bye without a victory.

Beckham’s contract will be put on the backburner while he recovers and his franchise attends to the pressing matter of this depressing 2017 season. While quarterback Eli Manning has hardly been the Giants’ biggest problem over the last three weeks, he and McAdoo will need to find a way to win some games before Beckham steps on the field again.

If not, the Giants could find themselves in position much like 2004: Drafting a new franchise quarterback for a brand-new head coach.

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Nate a big rainmaker in East after leaving sighs of relief in South

BILOXI, Miss. – Nate slogged its way across the U.S. East Coast on Monday, dumping heavy rains and bringing gusty winds to inland states, a day after Hurricane Nate brought a burst of flooding and power outages to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Nate spared the region the kind of catastrophic damage left by a series of hurricanes that hit the southern U.S. and Caribbean in recent weeks.

Nate – the first hurricane to make landfall in Mississippi since Katrina in 2005 – quickly lost strength Sunday, with its winds diminishing to a tropical depression as it pushed northward into Alabama and Georgia with heavy rain.

By 5 a.m. Monday, according to the National Hurricane Center, Nate was about 20 miles southwest of Akron, Ohio and 85 miles northeast of Columbus, and moving swiftly to the northeast. It was classified as a post-tropical depression, with maximum sustained winds of 20 mph.

Nate was expected to bring 3 to 6 inches of rain to the Deep South, eastern Tennessee Valley and southern Appalachians through Monday. The Ohio Valley, central Appalachians and Northeast could also get heavy rain before the storm exits Maine on Tuesday.

It was a Category 1 hurricane when it came ashore outside Biloxi early Sunday, its second landfall after initially hitting southeastern Louisiana on Saturday evening.

The storm surge from the Mississippi Sound littered Biloxi’s main beachfront highway with debris and flooded a casino’s lobby and parking structure overnight.

By dawn, however, Nate’s receding floodwaters didn’t reveal any obvious signs of widespread damage in the city where Hurricane Katrina had leveled thousands of beachfront homes and businesses.

No storm-related deaths or injuries were immediately reported.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant praised state and local officials and coastal residents for working together to avoid loss of life.

Lee Smithson, director of the state emergency management agency, said damage from Nate was held down in part because of work done and lessons learned from Katrina.

“If that same storm would have hit us 15 years ago, the damage would have been extensive and we would have had loss of life.” Smithson said of Nate. “But we have rebuilt the coast in the aftermath of Katrina higher and stronger.”

Nate knocked out power to more than 100,000 homes and businesses in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida, but crews worked on repairs and it appeared many of the outages had been restored within 24 hours.

As of Sunday evening, Alabama Power said it had electricity back to more than 64,000 customers and some 36,000 remained without power, while utilities and cooperatives in Mississippi said it had restored power to more than 21,000 customers who lost power during the storm. In Louisiana, there were scattered outages during the storm, while Florida utilities restored power to more than 37,000 customers.

Mississippi’s Gulf Coast casinos got approval to reopen in midmorning after closing Saturday as the storm approached.

Sean Stewart, checking on his father’s sailboat at a Biloxi marina after daybreak, found another boat had sunk, its sail still fluttering in Nate’s diminishing winds. Stewart was relieved to find his father’s craft intact.

“I got lucky on this one,” he said.

Before Nate sped past Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula late Friday and entered the Gulf of Mexico, it drenched Central America with rains that left at least 22 people dead. But Nate didn’t approach the intensity of Harvey, Irma and Maria – powerful storms that left behind massive destruction during 2017′s exceptionally busy hurricane season.

“We are thankful because this looked like it was going to be a freight train barreling through the city,” said Vincent Creel, a spokesman for the city of Biloxi.

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the four hurricanes that have struck the U.S. and its territories this year have “strained” resources, with roughly 85 percent of the agency’s forces deployed.

“We’re still working massive issues in Harvey, Irma, as well as the issues in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and now this one,” FEMA Administrator Brock Long told ABC’s “This Week.”

The federal government declared emergencies in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Nate initially made landfall Saturday evening in Louisiana, but fears that it would overwhelm the fragile pumping system in New Orleans proved to be unfounded. The storm passed to the east of New Orleans, and Mayor Mitch Landrieu lifted a curfew on the city known for its all-night partying.

“Hurricane Nate had the potential to wreak havoc on Louisiana, but thankfully, we were largely spared major damage,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a statement.

In Alabama, Dauphin Island Mayor Jeff Collier said he woke up around 3 a.m. Sunday to discover knee-deep water in his yard. Although some homes and cars on the island had flooded, Collier said he hadn’t heard of anyone needing rescue.

“We didn’t think it would be quite that bad,” he said. “It kind of snuck up on us in the wee hours of the morning.”

At landfall in Mississippi, the fast-moving storm had maximum sustained winds near 85 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Nate steadily weakened after its first landfall in a sparsely populated area of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.

Biloxi city employees worked before dawn to clear Highway 90, where sand, logs and even a large trash bin had been washed onto the four-lane, beachfront road. Despite the debris, there was little to no visible damage to structures. A handful of businesses had reopened before dawn, and the storm surge that washed across the highway had receded by 6 a.m.

Mississippi DOT crews had to remove over 1,000 pumpkins blown onto Highway 90 in Pass Christian, west of Gulfport.

Willie Cook, 75, spent his morning chopping a pecan tree that fell in his backyard. He said Nate was nothing like Katrina, which pushed 8 feet of water into his east Biloxi house.

“The wind was blowing, but it wasn’t too rough,” Cook said of Nate.

Storm surge flooded the parking structure of the Golden Nugget casino and several others in Biloxi.

Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman Greg Flynn said about 1,100 people spent the night in shelters.

“Thankfully, right now we have no major damage reports,” he said.

Hancock County Emergency Management Agency Director Brian Adam said Nate’s storm surge flooded low-lying roads, but he hadn’t heard any reports of flooded homes.

“We turned out fairly good,” he said as he prepared to survey neighborhoods.

In Alabama, the storm flooded homes and cars on the coast and inundated at least one major road in downtown Mobile.

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