The seven-year-old elephant in the room has been addressed.
On Thursday, ESPN’s David Newton asked Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo about 2015’s infamous battle between former New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and cornerback Josh Norman—who rejoined the team earlier this week. And McAdoo, who was the offensive coordinator for Beckham and Big Blue at the time, had a few words.
“I just remember it got pretty wild, right?” he said. “It was a competitive ball game. They jumped on us early, we battled back and they found a way to win it in the end—the Panthers did. I love me some Panthers now.
“Yeah, it was a battle. It was competitive. I probably don’t wanna say a whole heck of a lot about it, but it was physical. It was one of those deals where sometimes competition pushes you to do things maybe you don’t necessarily wanna do, on both sides. But it ended up being a pretty good ballgame.”
That ballgame ended in a 38-35 victory for the then 14-0 Panthers. The win, also, was somewhat marred by the continuous and excessive physicality between Norman and Beckham—who received three unnecessary roughness penalties throughout the afternoon.
A few months later, NFL owners approved the new two-strikes rule—in which a player is automatically disqualified from a game after accumulating two unsportsmanlike conduct infractions. Yep, the “Odell Beckham rule.”
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