How the Rams went from an overrated receiver to an underrated receiver

The Ravens are paying as much to not have OBJ as the Rams are paying to have Demarcus Robinson

Before we get started, I must say that nobody should feel bad for Odell Beckham, Jr., a player who has made a lot of money to play only a little bit of football over the last four years. Terms like “overrated” get thrown around too often, but in OBJ’s case I think it is perfectly fair at this moment and regardless of how sizable his role was in helping the L.A. Rams win the Super Bowl in 2021, maybe the best thing that happened to the team in the tumultuous year that followed was not re-signing him.

The Rams are paying $4 million in cap space to have Demarcus Robinson in 2024.

The Ravens are paying $4 million to not have Odell Beckham, Jr. in 2024. And they will pay over $8 million to not have OBJ in 2025.

Perhaps the most UNDER-rated team swaps of the year was Robinson and OBJ switching places.

Demarcus Robinson

He wasn’t a first round pick like OBJ, he was a fourth rounder by the Chiefs in 2016 after a so-so career at Florida. Robinson also didn’t set the world on fire when he debuted in the NFL like OBJ, he didn’t make the catch of the decade like OBJ, and he was barely even a footnote to the Patrick Mahomes story in Kansas City during his run as a sometimes-starting receiver for the Chiefs from 2017-2021.

With that run, Robinson won a Super Bowl in 2019 and appeared in a whopping 13 playoff games. In those 13 games, Robinson had 14 catches for 220 yards and one touchdown. Nothing that really stands out. Even Mecole Hardman has now had a standout playoff catch with the Chiefs.

Robinson averaged just 30 catches for 352 yards and three touchdowns in his five seasons with the Chiefs, not including a rookie season with no stats. He did get a lot of playing time, usually between 60-70% of the offensive snaps, but Kansas City has proven no worse off without him.

When Robinson hit free agency in 2022, he signed a one-year, $1 million deal with the Ravens. Not much changed but he did see a career-high 75 targets, second-most on the team and most among wide receivers. In fact, it was 50% more targets than second-place Devin Duvernay. However, Robinson averaged only 9.5 yards per catch and scored only two touchdowns.

If anything, Robinson played a part in Baltimore’s decision to significantly overpay Odell Beckham Jr. in free agency last year.

Feeling like they needed to overhaul the receiver position again, including to satisfy Lamar Jackson as a free agent who would then get the non-exclusive franchise tag, the Ravens signed OBJ, signed Nelson Agholor, and drafted Zay Flowers in the first round. Not quite an “all-in” push, the OBJ decision did indicate that Baltimore is sick of losing before the Super Bowl.

Meanwhile, the Rams signed Robinson to a one-year, $1.16 million deal. He played in all but one game and caught 26 passes for 371 yards and four touchdowns. His 9.5 yards per target (not per catch like before, per target) was a career-best. L.A. gave him a one-year contract last month with a $4 million base and $1 million more in incentives.

That’s where we now stand with Demarcus Robinson.

Odell Beckham Jr.

When you hear people talk about “Who was your favorite football player from the 2000s?”, the name Michael Vick might come up the most often. He wasn’t nearly the best or most valuable player of his era, but anyone who watched football then watched Vick every week and cared the most about his performances and “What’s he going to do this time?”

Is it fair to ponder if OBJ is that player of the 2010s?

As a rookie, OBJ led the NFL with 108.8 yards per game with the New York Giants and in his first three seasons he averaged 96 catches for 1,374 yards and 12 touchdowns despite the fact that he missed a total of five games in those three years.

Nobody can take that away from OBJ and I’m certainly not saying he was overrated back then. But it is undeniable and irrefutable that OBJ has been treated like he’s the same player he was from 2014-2016, when in reality he hasn’t been that receiver for almost eight years.

Beckham missed all but four games in 2017, he had a mini-comeback season in 2018 with the Giants, then was traded to the Cleveland Browns in 2019 for a first, third, and Jabrill Peppers, signing a five-year, $90 million contract. OBJ had 1,035 yard sand four touchdowns in his first season with the Browns, then missed over half of the season in 2020. Beckham was only halfway through the contract when Cleveland waived him in 2021, allowing the Rams to sign him for practically nothing.

Since the trade to Cleveland, OBJ has averaged a 55% catch rate, 7.6 yards per target, 44 catches/614 yards per season, and scored 15 times in 51 games.

With the Rams, OBJ had 305 yards and five touchdowns in eight games, but came through in the playoffs but gaining 113 yards in the NFC Championship and scoring a key touchdown in the Super Bowl prior to tearing his ACL. OBJ had played in just one playoff game prior to 2021, when he had four catches for 28 yards on 11 targets in a 2016 loss to the Packers.

Winning a Super Bowl and playing well in the postseason certainly helped cement his status as a receiver who helped an NFL team win important games, something that rarely happened with the Giants or Browns.

There was a lot of speculation during the 2022 offseason as to whether or not OBJ would return to the Rams, sign elsewhere, or sit out the year because of his ACL. As it eventually turned out, he had to sit out the year. Now here’s what I really think it is fair to say that OBJ went from “finely-rated” to “overrated”…

Despite having only played in 21 games over the previous three seasons combined, despite only have 67 catches for 856 yards and eight touchdowns over the previous three seasons combined, despite missing all of 2022, the Baltimore Ravens gave OBJ a one-year, $18 million contract in 2023.

The contract was so prohibitive to the cap space that the Ravens actually had at their disposal that Baltimore had to put four void years on it to spread out the cap commitment. The Ravens only had a $5 million cap hit on OBJ in 2023, but they still have to pay him for four more years. His cap hit next season is $4 million and then $8.3 million in 2025 even though OBJ is a free agent.

As one could have predicted, OBJ’s 2023 season with the Ravens ended with 35 catches for 565 yards and three touchdowns in 14 games. In the playoffs, OBJ had one 12-yard catch in the divisional round and three catches for 22 yards in a 17-10 loss to the Chiefs in the AFC Championship.

You might expect an $18 million receiver to be signed to dominate a playoff game but the 31-year-old Odell Beckham Jr. is in no shape to be that guy anymore.

This is not meant to be a baseless takedown of a popular receiver who did fairly well for the Rams two years ago, it is instead a compliment to the Rams: Les Snead and Sean McVay signed OBJ at the right time for the right price, they walked away from OBJ at the right time, they signed Demarcus Robinson for the right price at the right time.

They are now paying the same amount to have Robinson as the Ravens are paying to not have OBJ. People will argue that the Ravens overpaid OBJ to appease Lamar so that he would re-sign (as if the massive amount of money they paid Lamar wasn’t enough reason), to which I say that sounds like the worst business decision of the year to overpay a player that much and hinder your cap in the future so that you can pay another player over $250 million.

OBJ 2023 vs Robinson 2023

OBJ: 35 catches on 64 targets, 565 yards, 3 TD, 55% catch rate, 8.8 Y/T, 16 Y/C

Robinson: 26 catches on 39 targets, 371 yards, 4 TD, 67% catch rate, 9.5 Y/T, 14 Y/C

OBJ: $18 million with four void years

Robinson: $1 million, re-signed for $4 million

This wasn’t a trade. But I think we know who won the player swap.