Steve Serby

Steve Serby

NFL

The Giants’ potential savior still sits on the sidelines

Paging Odell Beckham Jr.

Paging Odell Beckham Jr.

Please exit the trainer’s room and report immediately to the practice field at your earliest possible convenience, sooner rather than later, even if it has gotten late early.

Your team needs you. Your offense needs you. Tom Coughlin needs you. Ben McAdoo needs you. Eli Manning needs you. Victor Cruz needs you.

Your new team’s new hybrid West Coast offense has looked more like Rex Ryan’s Ground and Pound to date. That could work in this quarterback-driven NFL only if Lawrence Taylor, Harry Carson and Michael Strahan were in their primes at the same time on defense.

You were the 12th pick of the draft because the Giants needed a dynamic playmaker to replace Hakeem Nicks, to give Manning a third amigo to join Cruz and Rueben Randle. You’re a Lethal Weapon once the ball is in your hands: catch a short pass and catch-me-if-you can.

And have you been listening to all the defensive backs and coaches moaning about the new Legion of Boom illegal contact rules? Just what Dr. Beckham ordered!

“We are talking about the quarterback needing some help,” your new GM Jerry Reese said at the time, “and this guy is a weapon.”

A hamstrung weapon, from the very first day on the field in training camp. Whose absence has helped hamstring the passing arm of the new offense.

And now, with three preseason games and exactly four weeks left before the regular-season opener Sept. 8 in Detroit, it’s Go Time. It’s time for Manning — 0-for-2 Saturday night — to play into the third quarter and time for everyone to get on the same page.
“You are getting a guy that can score touchdowns in three different ways for you,” Reese said at the time.

You can’t return a punt for a touchdown, you can’t return a punt for a touchdown, you can’t take a quick slant to the house for a touchdown from the sidelines.

No one is more frustrated than you, although your two-time Super Bowl-winning head coach is a close second. You only get one chance to make a first impression. Five minutes early to your new head coach’s meetings won’t cut it if you are five minutes late to the season.

By no means is this a suggestion that you are the savior. If you were a savior, the Bills would have traded up for you, and not Sammy Watkins. Or we’d be calling you Odell Football Jr.

Racehorses like yourself are so often prisoners of the almighty hamstring. It would be treacherous folly to rush back and risk further, longer-term injury, and the Giants’ trusted medical men won’t do that.

But you need to play. Your need to get a feel for the speed of the NFL game and adapt to it. You need live action to start developing a chemistry with your new quarterback.

“We felt like this is someone who could help us a great deal to put the ball in the end zone,” your new head coach said back in May, “be a guy that we can count on to help us score some points.”
Nicks was supposed to be that guy. He’s a Colt now, because he stopped being that guy.

Your new quarterback is learning the new offense on the fly. He doesn’t have a left tackle he can depend on. He doesn’t have a tight end he can depend on. He can’t expect Rashad Jennings and Andre Williams to run past the Eagles to the division title. He can’t throw 10 times a game to Jennings out of the backfield. He needs help. Cruz needs help.

“He’s got a lot of talent, and I’m excited about how we can grow together and have a great year,” your new quarterback said after working with you at the Manning Passing Academy.

Immediately after you were drafted, you did a Q&A with The Post over the phone, and here’s what you said: “I don’t want to be great. I want to be legendary.”

You can’t be legendary until you are great first. You can’t be great until you get on the field and play.

Paging Odell Beckham Jr.

Paging Odell Beckham Jr.