For Pat Shurmur’s sake, Giants need to lock up Odell Beckham for the long haul 

If the Giants really wanted to welcome Pat Shurmur at Friday's introductory press conference, they would send their new head coach to the podium arm-in-arm with Odell Beckham Jr. and a blockbuster announcement:

"Good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I'm thrilled to announce that Odell here has just signed a five-year, $100 million contract extension to remain a Giant for the long haul. We all are excited that Odell is committed to the Giants well into the future. He is a special player. I look forward to winning a Super Bowl one day together."

That'd be nice, right? No, really. For Shurmur's sake, the Giants need to get Odell's deal done.

The Giants of course will want to see for themselves that Beckham is fully recovered from the broken left ankle that required surgery on Oct. 10 before finalizing an extension (though if you follow Beckham on Instagram, you're aware that he looks damn good).

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And John Mara and Steve Tisch just completed the process of hiring GM Dave Gettleman and Shurmur to replace the fired Ben McAdoo and Jerry Reese. And it's still only late January.

However, the easiest way to derail a smooth Shurmur transition into his first Giants training camp would be to fail to pay OBJ what he deserves and force Beckham into a holdout to make his point, and make Shurmur have to answer questions daily about the distracting absence of his best player.

And Beckham, 25, certainly would be justified in holding out this offseason if he doesn't get what he deserves going into his fifth- and final-year option under contract on his rookie deal.

That goes especially after Beckham, whose base salaries from 2014-17 amounted only to a combined $4.5 million, per overthecap.com, skipped OTAs last offseason but eventually relented on his demand that meaningful negotiations begin and attended mandatory minicamp and training camp, only to suffer a season-ending injury that threatened his entire earning power.

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Shurmur, 52, as head coach will be charged with getting Beckham to buy into his philosophy and his program. Shurmur will need to set strict and early guidelines for all players' behavior, including Beckham's, and remain consistent in his enforcement of them. McAdoo's mistake was selective discipline and a change midstream.

The Giants obviously have confidence Shurmur can handle that or they wouldn't have hired him, but they can't lay out a land mine beneath his feet by dragging out negotiations with Beckham or making them nasty.

Gettleman has a lot on his plate, with free agency opening March 14 and the No. 2 overall pick on April 26 rapidly approaching. But for Shurmur to get off on the right foot as head coach, and for the Giants to get competitive again immediately with Eli Manning staying as quarterback, Gettleman needs to lock up Beckham for the long haul.

Encouragingly, the Giants have already shown signs that they may be moving quickly in the direction of re-signing Beckham. Mara said last July that Beckham was "going to get paid a lot of money at the appropriate time," portraying a new Beckham deal as being not a question of if but when.

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Then on Wednesday at the Senior Bowl, Gettleman glowed about Beckham in his most extensive comments about their one-on-one meeting earlier this month.

"I had a chat with Odell. I had a great chat with him," Gettleman said. "People are going to call me crazy, but in that (2014) draft the only guy I would have taken over Kelvin Benjamin, who we (as then the Carolina Panthers GM) took, the only guy I would have taken over him was Odell. That's it. … The bottom line is he's a wonderfully talented player and I'm looking forward to working with him."

Tyke Tolbert's hiring this week as wide receivers coach also was a check mark in the pro-Beckham column. Tolbert, 50, told The Courier of Montgomery County in his hometown of Conroe, Texas, on Wednesday that he has known Beckham since he was an infant.

"I played college ball with Odell's dad (Odell Beckham Sr.) at LSU, and I went to school with his mom, Heather, at LSU," Tolbert told the newspaper. "I told Odell when he was born, I held him as a baby outside of our dorm at LSU."

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Sterling Shepard's late father, Derrick, also hosted Tolbert during his recruiting visit at Oklahoma.

Tolbert's hiring is not a coincidence. He is an established NFL coach but his shared history with Beckham undoubtedly is a positive factor for the Giants. Although Adam Henry, Beckham's former LSU wide receivers coach, wasn't exactly able to reign Beckham in as the Giants' WR coach under McAdoo, it's clear familiarity with Beckham worked in Tolbert's favor here and not against him.

Now the big question is how much the Giants will have to pay OBJ. Five years and $100 million makes sense as an ask from Beckham especially in comparison to the August 2017 contract extension of DeAndre Hopkins, the Houston Texans' stud receiver whose $16.2 million average is second only to Antonio Brown's $17 million per year.

Hopkins, a first-round pick one year before Beckham, was 25 years old with four NFL seasons under his belt — the same age Beckham is now — when the Texans signed him to a five-year, $81 million contract with $49 million guaranteed by March 2018, per Pro Football Talk's initial report. The contract tore up Hopkins' fifth year and folded it into the new contract that kept him under control for six more years through 2022. And the Texans now hold a year-to-year option for the final three years of 2020, 2021 and 2022.

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When he signed that contract, Hopkins had caught 317 passes for 4,487 yards and 23 touchdowns in 64 regular season games through four years. Beckham, in his first four years, astoundingly, has caught 313 passes for 4,424 yards and 38 touchdowns (15 more!) in only … get this … 47 games.

Beckham's resume, of course, lacks a postseason triumph (four catches, 28 yards, 0-1 record), even compared to Hopkins' 17 catches for 201 yards and one TD in three playoff games with a 1-2 mark. And Beckham's maturity issues and unacceptable behavior, which drew Mara into publicly admonishing him last season, are factors.

But, quite simply, the Giants saw what their offense looked like without Beckham last season. And Beckham's $8.4 million salary on his fifth-year option wouldn't prevent him from sitting out a season, considering the five-year, $29 million Nike endorsement deal he signed last May.

So they need to get the deal done, and that will give Shurmur the best chance to turn the Giants around quickly.