6 winners and 5 losers from the Odell Beckham Jr. trade to the Browns

The Giants and Browns shocked the NFL world by agreeing to a trade of superstar receiver Odell Beckham Jr. The Browns sent back their 2019 first-round pick (No. 17 overall), one of their 2019 third-round picks, and safety Jabrill Peppers to the Giants.

Like any deal, there are parties involved that go beyond the individual pieces in the trade itself. Here are the winners and losers from the mega deal between the Giants and the Browns.

Mayfield has to be the biggest winner from this trade. The Browns quarterback was sensational as a rookie, throwing for 27 touchdowns to 14 interceptions in 14 games last season. He went from uneven first-year signal caller to legitimate offensive rookie of the year candidate after putting up massive numbers following Hue Jackson’s firing and Freddie Kitchens’ promotion to interim offensive coordinator.

Now, Kitchens is the club’s full-time head coach, and Mayfield gets one of the top receivers in the game to play with — and he already had Jarvis Landry, David Njoku, Antonio Callaway, Rashard Higgins, Duke Johnson, and Nick Chubb. There is a ton of playmaking talent and, from the looks of it, they’ll have the right guy throwing him the ball.

Judging by his reaction to the trade, Mayfield is understandably pumped too:

Beckham doesn’t have to play with an aging Eli Manning anymore. To remind you how bad it’s gotten, just watch this throw from their Monday night game against the 49ers last season.

Beckham finished his 2018 season with a perfect passer rating after completing both of his gadget play passes for touchdowns. Manning had a rebound season that stands as his statistical best since 2015 — and he still had only the league’s 21st-best passer rating. That was enough for Beckham to publicly (and tamely) call out his quarterback last October in an ESPN interview with Josina Anderson.

Manning just turned 38 years old. Unless he gets on the TB12 plan, this situation isn’t going to get much better for him.

Poor Barkley. Now that Beckham is headed to Cleveland, Barkley becomes the clear-cut No. 1 weapon for the Giants’ offense. There won’t be any big-time receiving threat to scare defenses from loading up the box, unless Sterling Shepard has an extreme breakout season in 2019.

Barkley had 352 total touches on offense in his rookie season. He did turn that into 2,028 total yards, 15 touchdowns, and the NFL offensive rookie of the year award, but that was when he has sharing the field with Beckham for 12 games.

Now Barkley will be dealing with a depleted passing game while becoming a bigger piece of the offense. There’s no reason to think why he wont approach 400 total touches next season.

In the words of the great Steve Smith: “Ice up, son.”

Landry and Beckham have been friends for years, dating back to before they took the field together at LSU from 2011-13.

Beckham and Landry are reunited again now in Cleveland, where they’ll hope to pick up where they left off from their time in Baton Rouge — a reunion Landry’s been publicly hoping for for nearly a year.

The move also reunites the playmaking, do-it-all duo with wide receivers coach Adam Henry, who served in that role with LSU from 2012 to 2014 and has been the Browns’ positional coach since 2018.

This will be the best situation that Landry has played in since he joined the NFL. He has bonafide No. 1 receiving option across from him for the first time and saw the upside that Mayfield can bring during the back half of last season.

The good news for Manning: He’s got the starting job with the Giants and $23.2 million coming in 2019.

The bad news:

The Giants are probably going to add some more weapons before the season starts. But it’s gonna be bad.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Giants handle having two first-round picks in the upcoming NFL Draft. Will they draft their future quarterback this year, or add two players that secure a foundation for a quarterback in the 2020 draft?

Either way, the Giants will have to add a successor at quarterback to eventually replace Manning. Playing with Beckham and Barkley would’ve made life easier for any young quarterback, but now Beckham is gone.

New York does have some pieces outside of Barkley in receiver Sterling Shepard, tight end Evan Engram, left guard Will Hernandez, and the recently acquired right guard Kevin Zeitler. But they don’t quite pack the same punch that Beckham did.

In his time as general manager, Dorsey has turned the Browns into a legitimate AFC contender. He’s ferociously attacking the window that Cleveland has with its rookie quarterback by trading for guys like Beckham and Olivier Vernon.

Now, the Browns arguably have the best roster in the AFC North and are poised to make a deep run into the playoffs. That’s not a bad turnaround for a team that was 0-16 in 2017 and 1-15 in 2016.

Browns safety Damarious Randall might’ve called it all along. A couple weeks ago, he tweeted:

After the Beckham trade, he followed it up with:

Have to throw some love to Sashi Brown, too. He kind of set up the assets for all of this talent infusion to be possible.

When Gettleman was fired by the Panthers in July 2017, it was abrupt, surprising, and probably not undeserved. He’d already run Steve Smith, DeAngelo Williams, and Josh Norman out of town, and the Panthers fired him before he could screw up contract negotiations with Thomas Davis and Greg Olsen.

Sound familiar, Giants?

Just a couple months ago, he promised Beckham wasn’t going anywhere.

Before trading away Beckham, he shipped off Vernon to the Browns too. Meanwhile, New York is still going to be on the hook for a significant amount of both players’ paychecks.

On top of those two trades, the Giants allowed Landon Collins — their best defensive player — to walk in free agency.

And just like that, Gettleman scrubbed three of the best players from the roster for reasons that are hard to explain. Do the Giants actually have a plan? Because it sure doesn’t look like it.

If only the Giants had listened ...

Here are the Cliffs Notes for Cleveland’s offseason so far:

Sure, Peppers might turn into something special and losing a first-round pick hurts, but the Browns are cashing in their assets for veteran contributors and now, on paper, look like a real threat to win the AFC North. Mayfield is surrounded by weapons. The pass rush is going to be powerful inside and out. Every other team in the division is having issues:

Ever since the beer fridges unlocked in Cleveland last fall, it’s better getting better and better to be a Browns fan.

Perriman verbally agreed to a one-year, $4 million deal with the Browns on Tuesday before the Beckham trade broke. That didn’t last long:

Beckham’s presence blocked Perriman’s potential ascension to a starting role — though he only started two of his 10 games with the club. Rather than take on a supporting role, the fifth-year pro — who has career totals of 59 catches on 126 targets for 916 yards — will try to fulfill his potential with the Bucs.

He’ll get the chance to fill DeSean Jackson’s vacated role in Tampa, but will that really be better than seeing absolutely zero double teams as the Browns’ third wideout option behind Landry and Beckham? Perriman could have shined in limited snaps and put together the kind of season that makes Washington throw a four-year, $40 million contract his way. Instead he’ll take his chances with Jameis Winston.

A month ago, The Athletic’s Glazer made a self-described “bold prediction” when he told his readers that he thought Beckham would be traded this offseason. Then everyone lost their damn minds so much that Glazer tweeted this poetically profane message to his, as Shakespeare would scribe, haterz:

Who’s laughing now, fucksticks?