Even with injury issues throughout the offense, the Cleveland Browns have been a dynamic bunch through two weeks of the football season.
And to think, they could get better:
🚨 Odell Beckham, Jr. will play Sunday vs the Bears, barring any final setbacks, per sources. Beckham, who hasn’t played since suffering a torn ACL on Oct. 25, has worked diligently to return and re-assert himself among the league’s top receivers. He’s a Comeback POY candidate.
— Jordan Schultz (@Schultz_Report) September 23, 2021
ESPN’s Jordan Schultz reports Odell Beckham Jr. will play on Sunday against the Bears. Should Beckham not have any setbacks between now and kickoff, he is set to make his 2021 debut and his first appearance since suffering an ACL injury on Oct. 25 in Week 7 against the Bengals. When it is all said and done, it will have been a 336-day layoff for OBJ. So, yeah, that would fall under the description of being a long time coming.
Beckham, 28, is one of football’s most dynamic receivers. The LSU product is a three-time Pro Bowler who has five 1,000-yard receiving seasons under his belt. In fact, the only two years in which Beckham did not eclipse the 1,000-yard marker came in injury-shortened campaigns in 2017 (4 games) and 2020 (7 games). In other words, a healthy Beckham figures to cause fits to opposing secondaries.
The Bears will have their hands full dealing with Beckham, but won’t go into battle empty-handed. Jaylon Johnson is Pro Football Focus’ second-highest-graded cornerback and owns the site’s third best coverage grade. And Johnson is coming off a week in which he was PFF’s highest-graded defensive player (second highest grade overall!) for his performance against the Bengals. With that in mind, I imagine Cleveland will try to flex Beckham elsewhere. If not, then we’ll have a whale of a showdown with those two on the outside.