Jerry Jones says Odell Beckham Jr. plane incident doesn’t affect Cowboys pursuit
By Josh Wilson
Odell Beckham Jr. was kicked off a commercial flight on Sunday morning. Apparently, it has no impact on the Cowboys’ desire to sign him.
On Sunday afternoon, all eyes were on Odell Beckham Jr., despite the fact that he has yet to sign with an NFL team. The star wide receiver was the subject of a scandal in which he was removed from a commercial flight in Miami (scheduled to head to Los Angeles) for allegedly refusing to buckle his seatbelt.
The situation is quite murky, with the details contested by both sides. Here’s everything we know going back to Sunday, but the general basis is the Miami-Dade police and airport personnel claim that Beckham was in and out of consciousness and refusing to buckle his seatbelt. They claim they feared for his health and safety and brought the plane back to the gate to address the situation, which resulted in Beckham being removed (he was not detained, nor arrested, he left on his own power).
Beckham, via his lawyer, claims that he was simply sleeping on the flight and wasn’t asked to buckle until the plane was already back at the gate.
Regardless of what actually happened, the situation is a little concerning, and one has to wonder if it would impact what teams in pursuit of his services as a player might think. Though it’s impossible to know exactly what every team thinks, we now have a feel for how the Cowboys are viewing the situation.
Jerry Jones doesn’t seem concerned about Odell Beckham Jr.’s plane incident at all
Jerry Jones, owner and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys, was asked about whether or not the incident impacts the team’s calculus in deciding to pursue or not pursue Beckham. Evidently, it does not:
Jones provided the usual quotes similar to what he’s said about OBJ the last several weeks. The Cowboys’ pursuit of Beckham has been extremely public, with Jones suggesting repeatedly that they’d love to have OBJ and several players recruiting him publicly and privately on social media and via text messaging.
Beckham’s in-person visits are with the Cowboys, Giants, and Bills. He’s left the door open for the Chiefs as well but it doesn’t seem as though there’s legitimate smoke there.
For now, it doesn’t seem like the plane incident was anything more than a very big misunderstanding. It’s going to take a lot more than that to get the Cowboys to peel off of their pursuit of Beckham.