Cleveland Browns general manager John Dorsey appeared on NFL Network Monday. During his interview, he talked about Odell Beckham Jr. even as he said he wasn’t allowed to talk about Odell Beckham Jr.
John Dorsey just now @nflnetwork – "Jarvis Landry was his teammate and Adam Henry was his coach, but I can't talk about the player (OBJ)."
— Andrew Siciliano (@AndrewSiciliano) March 26, 2018
Now, The NFL defines tampering as “Any public or private statement of interest, qualified or unqualified, in another club’s player to that player’s agent or representative, or to a member of the news media.”
While Dorsey didn’t necessarily say he was interested, he definitely inferred there could be interest, based on past relationships with Jarvis Landry and Browns wide receiver coach Adam Henry.
The Landry angle is particularly interesting. Especially considering OBJ’s old college teammate was doing some hard-core recruiting trying to lure him to Cleveland on social media Monday morning (more on that here).
It’s not hard to imagine the New York Giants might find Dorsey’s comments to be at the very least infringing on the very fine line that is tampering. Giants co-owner John Mara recently threw down the gauntlet on his star receiver and indicated OBJ could be traded, just like anyone else on the team.
In fact, one report even goes so far as to indicate how much the Giants are looking for in return for Beckham, and the New York Daily News reported Monday that the Los Angeles Rams have talked to New York about a trade.
So, this is clearly a volatile situation. Dorsey might have just thrown a bit of jet fuel on this growing fire, and we’ll be very interested to see if the Giants ask the NFL to investigate whether he tampered with OBJ with his comments.