EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J — Some might describe the feeling as antsy or restless.
Odell Beckham Jr. instead describes his 2025 season away from football as “unsettling in my soul.”
“My whole life, for better or worse, is pushing it to the limit …” the again-New York Giants receiver said Wednesday. “I’ve never surrendered or quit or felt like I’ve given up on myself or anything. It just wasn’t sitting with me well.”
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So Beckham ignored the reality that he’d missed all of the 2025 NFL season, in part as he served a six-game suspension for violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancing substances. Beckham set aside the lingering knee rehabilitation that limited him to just nine catches with the Miami Dolphins in 2024, and he committed to working through the restrictions that trailed his left ACL tears from October 2020 and February 2022.
Yes, Beckham is now 33 years old, hardly spry in pro football years. And yes, he once left the Giants with a bang after a spectacular rookie year and four 1,000-yard seasons in five tries.
No matter: On Monday, the Giants signed Beckham. On Wednesday in a practice open to reporters, he was practicing. Beckham warmed up with curtsy lunges and hamstring stretches, and he caught short passes before integrating into routes on air and eventually some team drills.
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Head coach John Harbaugh, who coached Beckham in Baltimore in 2024, was left opining that Beckham “seems like he’s healthier” than he was in 2024. He looked better in a workout this Monday than he did in an April workout with the Giants, Harbaugh said. And now Beckham will try to earn — he and Harbaugh both emphasized that he’ll need to earn, not be given — a spot on the Giants’ 2026 roster.
“The biggest thing is him being in really, really good shape,” Harbaugh said Wednesday. “We talked about this, he would tell you this: ‘You can’t just be OK. You’re Odell Beckham. You’ve got to come out here and you have to be performing at a high level in workout. You’ve got to be performing at a high level in practice. You got to be a guy capable that we can see would have a chance to make a difference in NFL games …
“Who knows better what kind of player that is than Odell Beckham?”
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But how did Beckham work to get back?
Harbaugh on Beckham: ‘He’s healthier now’
Nic Hill says he and Beckham reconnected to train in Miami back in November before Beckham moved to Phoenix in February for more full-time training.
Beckham integrated into a routine that averaged four days a week at EXOS, where Hill has spent the last decade as a performance specialist.
Sessions emphasized speed and mobility, factoring in the ideal weight for Beckham to compete in the NFL at 33 years old. While Beckham has competed at 210 with more muscle, Hill said, the benefit of strength didn’t outweigh the detriment to his speed. So since February, they worked to get Beckham down from 210 to the 198 pounds at which the Giants are now listing him.
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“Making sure that he felt strong, he felt powerful, but he also felt fast and bouncy and fluid,” Hill told Yahoo Sports by phone Wednesday night, so that “he moved really well and he wasn’t too stiff and he could be mobile and rotate.”
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Back muscles, for example, would interrupt Beckham’s rotational ease. For a player known for acrobatic (and sometimes one-handed!) catches, power was not the primary goal.
In a typical four-day week this spring, Beckham worked three linear speed days and one change-of-direction day, Hill said. On linear speed days, exercises emphasized acceleration, top-end speed and transitional speed in sprint and straight-ahead fashions. On change-of-direction days, Beckham worked deceleration — important, but also sufficiently taxing on the body that Hill didn’t want to overprogram it. On high-intensity field days, weight training featured high-intensity work. On high-volume field days, weight training mirrored volume, too.
There’s no guarantee Beckham, or any player, can stay healthy. But Hill credits the three-time Pro Bowl receiver with a sharp attunement to his body that could help manage aches and pains that come up.
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“I do think he’s healthier right now,” Harbaugh said, comparing Beckham now to their 2023 Baltimore stint together. “Seems like he’s healthier than he was then. That was a few years back. He was dealing with a lot of knee issues back then …
“He has to show that he can stay healthy and practice day after day.”
In his first stint with the Giants, Odell Beckham Jr. tallied four 1,000-yard seasons in five years. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)
(AP Photo/Adam Hunger)
Trying to defy Father Time, Beckham ‘going out on my sword’
If Beckham makes the Giants’ roster this fall, he’ll be one of the oldest receivers in the league.
Only four receivers older than Beckham were active last season, per Pro Football Reference data. None are currently signed to a roster. Rams receiver Davante Adams, who is 49 days younger than Beckham, is the closest in age.
But Beckham told Harbaugh he’d rather try and be cut than not try to make the Giants’ 2026 roster.
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“Listen, I’m going out on my sword either way it goes,’” Beckham said he told Harbaugh. “If that’s what you’ve got to do, you see I’m not best or fit, then by all means I’m good with it. I can live with it.
“I can’t live sitting at home not doing it.”
He wants to show his 4-year-old son, Zydn: “We never give up in our house. You go after what you believe in.”
So in team drills on Wednesday, Beckham raced down the left sideline as quarterback Jaxson Dart targeted him, Beckham tangling with 2023 first-round cornerback Deonte Banks as the duo ultimately fell out of bounds. Later, Beckham lined up left on a second-team snap: After Beckham cut in, Jameis Winston hit his extended arms in the middle of the field.
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Safety Raheem Layne broke up one pass intended for Beckham with some contact.
Another time, with Beckham lined up, Dart targeted Calvin Austin III.
“I feel good now,” Beckham said. “I’m fast. I’m moving well. It’s now just about the repetition: Building up your football endurance, back to the football IQ, knowing spatial awareness, knowing where people are at. Things that will come back.
“Like everything else, it takes a little time.”
Will Beckham also, in his best-case scenario, be able to turn back time?
There’s no question Beckham’s last Giants stint was dominant, from when he led the league with 108.8 receiving yards per game as a rookie to when he crossed the 1,000-yard mark every year except when he underwent surgery from a broken ankle.
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But the bulk of his career 575 catches for 7,987 yards and 59 touchdowns predated his 30s. He hasn’t hit 50 catches or 600 yards in a season since 2019.
Beckham and Hill believe his speed, sure hands and momentum-swinging energy can still influence the NFL in 2026. The Giants are willing to let him try to prove that.
Even after missing the entire 2022 NFL season, Beckham chipped in 565 yards and three touchdowns to the 2023 Ravens. Contributions can look different and still be effective. Hill and Beckham insist he hit top speeds of 20 miles per hour while training in Arizona, Hill touting “deceptive speed” for Beckham’s age.
“I’m still finding ways to get open,” Beckham said. “It’s not going to be the 195-pound, 2014 No. 1 receiver who knows the ball is coming to him every single time [and could] cheat with a lot of things.
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“It will be very attentive to detail, very locked in, knowing, ‘This is your opportunity. It’s a different game.
“But I’m still ready, you know? 33, it’s a great age.”
And it’s great, Beckham feels, to be back.
“Taking a step away from the game was what was best for me,” Beckham said. “At a time in my life where you love something so much that it kind of became detrimental, it became bad for me.
“Being able to take that time off, be with my son, be with family, re-prioritize what was important to me, knowing that I still love this game so much…
“Looking at this stadium, it’s a pretty surreal feeling.”
