Odell Beckham Jr. will serve a one-game suspension by the NFL
The NFL has found no evidence to substantiate allegations that Carolina Panthers players directed homophobic slurs at New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. before last Sunday’s game between the two teams, according to a person familiar with the league’s deliberations on the incident.
Barring new information surfacing to corroborate the accusations, the league will not discipline any Panthers players based on those allegations of slurs, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the NFL has made no announcement on the issue.
There is “no evidence of it,” the person said.
The NFL suspended Beckham for one game without pay for a series of on-field confrontations with Carolina cornerback Josh Norman during the Giants’ loss to the Panthers at the Meadowlands. The league in particular cited a helmet-to-helmet hit that Beckham delivered to Norman at the end of a play on which another Giants player was tackled.
Arbitrator James Thrash upheld the suspension Wednesday by rejecting Beckham’s appeal.
[Beckham’s one-game suspension is upheld on appeal]
Beckham issued a written apology Wednesday in which he said: “This isn’t about anything that was said or done to me. This is about my behavior, and I am responsible for my behavior. People expect better from me, and I expect better from myself.”
[It’s what Beckham does next that matters]
Several media outlets reported this week that there were allegations of homophobic slurs being directed at Beckham. Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders, now an analyst for the league-owned NFL Network, told SiriusXM satellite radio that Beckham was subjected to insults about his sexuality.
“Then you start talking about his hairstyle,” Sanders said, according to an account by the website ProFootballTalk of the radio interview. “Then you start talking about his sexuality. So now when you’re talking about things like that of that nature, it goes way off the field into something because now this is personal.”
Hall of Fame wide receiver Michael Irvin told the New York Daily News that Beckham told him he was subjected to slurs and has been “dealing with it every week.”
Irvin told the newspaper: “He deals with it a lot. For some reason, everybody goes after him with gay slurs. He’s a different kind of dude. He has the hairdo out, he’s not the big muscular kind of dude. The ladies all love him. He’s a star. I wonder why people are going in that direction. It blows my mind. I told him he can’t let stuff that people say get to you.”
Giants Coach Tom Coughlin said at a news conference Wednesday that Beckham “was provoked” beginning during the pregame and “there was two sides to this and not just one.”
Panthers Coach Ron Rivera said Tuesday he was “a little disappointed” about the “assumptions and innuendos” about his players. Rivera said there had been no corroboration of the allegations of slurs being used by Carolina’s players.
Several Giants players, including punter Brad Wing, said Wednesday that they heard threats directed at Beckham before the game but no slurs. According to the Daily News, Wing said that the reports about slurs did not have “any input into Sunday’s actions.”
The Panthers had a baseball bat on the field prior to the game and there have been reports that Carolina players used it to direct a menacing message at Beckham in a possible attempt to intimidate him.
Rivera said this week that his players’ use of a baseball bat as a motivational prop had been misunderstood but he would discontinue that practice by his players to avoid further issues. The NFL issued a reminder to teams via a memo that such foreign objects are not permitted on the field.
The NFL announced in July 2014 that it would have “zero tolerance” for players’ on-field use of racial slurs or abusive language related to sexual orientation.
“We also want to stress that there will be zero
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