Ray Lewis made some controversial remarks about Odell Beckham Jr. and his religious practices a year ago, and the star wide receiver clearly took note.
In his wide-ranging interview with GQ that was published earlier this week, Beckham was asked if he is bothered when commentators like Cris Carter say he needs to act more mature and learn to be a leader. While he didn’t say a whole lot about Carter’s opinion of him, Beckham brought up how Lewis criticized him last year for allowing “chaos” into his life:
“It’s hard to sit there when Cris Carter talks about me. Ray Lewis is another one who sits there and talks to me like a little brother and shows love to me in person — we hug and embrace — but then they get on TV and say some stuff like, ‘He doesn’t know who God is,’ Like, how do you judge another man’s relationship with God? I feel like Drake when he said, ‘I’m always the bigger artist, that’s why I have to play it smarter.’ That’s how I feel. But it’s hard, as a man, to just sit there and take and take and take, and not want to say something or do something back or retaliate.”
Beckham has always worn his emotions on his sleeve, and that has resulted in some negative attention. Lewis is someone who has been complimentary of him in the past, so you can understand why the comments about religion bothered OBJ, though Lewis insisted he was talking about “foundation.”
“Where there is no God, there is chaos,” Lewis said on FS1 in April 2018, via Zach Braziller of the New York Post. “I started to see he started to distance himself a little more and a little more and a little more. Listen to me. I don’t care about religion. I’m talking about a foundation.”
If one of the touchdown dances Beckham busted out earlier in his career is any indication, Lewis is someone Beckham thought highly of at one point. Perhaps his opinion has changed a bit over the years.
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