Despite Dave Gettleman saying in January Odell Beckham Jr. was not on the trade market, rumors persisted about the Giants moving their superstar wide receiver.

Gettleman on Wednesday reaffirmed his stance, saying (via Can Inman of the Bay Area News Group, on Twitter) “We didn’t sign Odell to trade him. That’s all I need to say about that.”

Beckham is barely six months removed from the wideout-record five-year, $90MM deal he signed. As presently structured, Beckham’s deal calls for $21MM in 2019 — the highest of the cap numbers involved with this pact. The Giants have a middling $28MM in cap space, but jettisoning their most proven weapon may not be a good choice considering they are planning to bring Eli Manning back next season.

The Athletic’s Jay Glazer predicted a Beckham trade would occur, and Yahoo.com’s Charles Robinson does not believe Gettleman’s language locks down the 26-year-old receiver in the Big Apple. But Gettleman again attempted to fend off the trade talk surrounding Beckham, who remains a popular player in the Giants’ locker room.

There was hope that Odell Beckham Jr. would be able to return for the Giants’ final game of the season, but the team is opting to shut him down instead, a source told Jordan Raanan of ESPN (Twitter link).

While the Giants don’t have anything to play for in terms of playoff contention, they’ve been playing with a lot of pride recently and have put forth some great efforts, so it’s not surprising that they were holding out hope Beckham would be able to play. It’ll be the fourth straight missed game for Beckham to end the season, with his last appearance coming in the team’s overtime win against the Bears.

After starting the year 1-7, the Giants have gone 4-3 over their last ten games, and very nearly shocked the Colts as massive underdogs last week. Beckham was active for three of the four wins, but surprisingly didn’t have his best games during that stretch. He averaged only 61 yards in the three recent wins, but did catch four touchdowns.

Beckham suffered a quad injury last month, but was initially able to play through it. One day he suddenly popped back up on the injury report, and was suddenly ruled out for that weekend’s game. His injury was clouded in secrecy and the team wouldn’t elaborate on what happened, until Beckham himself finally cleared the air and revealed he had re-aggravated the injury in practice on his docuseries.

He said it was a quad hematoma, which is a a collection of blood outside a blood vessel. When he talked about the injury, he seemed to hint that the coaching staff was pushing him a little too hard, but nothing ever came of those comments. He’ll finish the year with 77 catches for 1,052 yards and six touchdowns in 12 games. Having just signed a megadeal with the team after trade rumors swirled around him this offseason, Beckham will be back in New York in 2019, but it remains to be seen who will be throwing passes to him.

Odell Beckham Jr. is set to miss his second-straight game this weekend, and it sounds like we’re finally getting some clarity on his injury. Speaking on the UnInterrupted Facebook docuseries, the wideout said he’s been dealing with a hematoma to his quad, and he acknowledged that he aggravated the injury during a practice on December 6th.

We already knew that Beckham had suffered a quad injury, but many reports referred to it as a standard sprain. As Ralph Vacchiano of SNY tweets, a hematoma is described as “a collection of blood outside a blood vessel.” The reporter notes that the injury can be slow to develop, could require draining, and may be a sign of a larger, underlying problem.

Furthermore, while the Giants’ coaching staff has generally been tightlipped when it comes to their star’s quad, Beckham provided some insight into when he may have suffered the injury. The 26-year-old indicated that he suffered the injury during a late-November game against the Eagles. While the ailment was improving, Beckham seemingly aggravated the injury after going too hard at an early-December practice despite being less than 100-percent.

“I kind of had an injury toward my left quad after the Philly game,” Beckham said in the video (via Ryan Dunleavy of NJ.com). “Treated it up. Went to (face) Chicago. Played through this kind of hematoma, bruise, whatever you want to call it. It was just there. I just worked on it. I got dry needled. I got the same kind of treatments I’ve had done.

“Then Wednesday (Dec. 5) we had a very hard practice. I had probably some of the highest sprint speed distances I’ve had. I had a real good practice. I felt amazing. Thursday real amazing practice through 90 percent of the practice. I was saying to back off just a little bit, just a little bit. But I am competitive. I just kept working hard. It was the last play in the last period of practice. I went to accelerate for a ball. I just felt like something weird happen.”

One could surmise that Beckham is indicating that he shouldn’t have been going full-out to begin with, and it sounds like he’s not entirely taking responsibility for that decision. Beckham has had semi-feuds with coach Pat Shurmur and co-owner John Mara this season, and a scene from later in the Uninterrupted episode indicates that he still harbors some ill will for being “called out” by the duo. As Dunleavy notes, the team may have wanted to keep this injury information private, but Beckham is continuing to operate by his own rules.

Following an injury-plagued 2017 campaign, OBJ is having a bounce-back season in 2018. Through 12 games, the wideout has hauled in 77 receptions for 1,052 yards and six touchdowns.

There are several wide receivers who could be dealt in advance of Tuesday’s trade deadline: Pierre Garcon, Demaryius Thomas, and DeSean Jackson are a few of the bigger names that are drawing the interest of various clubs after Amari Cooper was traded to the Cowboys on Monday.

And, given the Giants’ disastrous start to the season and Odell Beckham Jr.‘s dissatisfaction with the team’s direction, plenty of clubs are calling the Giants about the possibility of acquiring the enigmatic superstar. Jay Glazer of FOX Sports (via Ralph Vacchiano of SNY.tv on Twitter) reports that, not only is Big Blue getting offers, those offers are apparently decent ones. The implication is that, if the Giants were serious about trading Beckham, they would find a vibrant market, despite OBJ’s massive contract.

But the contract, as Vacchiano points out, is one of the major obstacles to a potential deal. If New York were to trade Beckham, it would have to carry $16MM in dead money on its cap next year, and it would obviously need to replace its best player. Indeed, while the Giants are clearly not going anywhere this season, they gave Beckham his big-money deal with the intention of keeping him around at least through his prime years, and given that rebuilds in football do not necessarily take an extended period of time, it would obviously be shocking to see OBJ traded in the next couple of days.

Still, it is interesting that rival clubs think there is enough of a chance that New York would be willing to pull the trigger that they are actually making offers and not just doing due diligence with a phone call or two. Even when OBJ isn’t making drama, drama seems to find him.

When Odell Beckham Jr. finally signed his mega-extension with the Giants it seemed like the drama surrounding his antics was finally over. That apparently wasn’t the case, as Beckham caused quite a stir this week with comments he made that were critical of the team. 

First Beckham griped about his role in the offense and how there wasn’t enough downfield action in coach Pat Shurmur’s system, then he wondered aloud if Eli Manning was the problem with the offense, per Jordan Raanan of ESPN. He also refused to say whether or not he was happy being in New York, despite very recently signing the five-year $95MM extension.

Shurmur originally downplayed Beckham’s comments and suggested he was taken out of context, but he apparently had a change of heart, according to Ryan Dunleavy of NJ.com. Dunleavy writes that Shurmur became “livid” and demanded Beckham apologize to the team. Beckham apparently obliged, and told teammates it was the “wrong message” and wouldn’t happen again.

Separately, Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk broke down the situation, and speculated about Beckham’s motives. Florio thinks the public airing of grievances might be “part of Beckham’s strategy, with the goal of getting paid by the Giants and then forcing a trade elsewhere.” If that turns out to be the case, it would be a shocking turn of events after everything had seemingly been smoothed over between Beckham and the team’s front office earlier this summer. The Giants lost another heartbreaker today, dropping them to 1-4, and it will be interesting to see what Beckham has to say moving forward.