Odell Beckham Jr.’s maniacal obsession to be The Greatest — which will manifest itself in his mano-a-mano Star Wars competition with Antonio Brown on Sunday in Pittsburgh — is tattooed on his wrist, The Post has learned.
Beckham got the tattoo prior to training camp, so he can look at it every day and remind himself he will never stop shooting for the moon.
“20 Touchdowns,” it reads.
“I can’t remember the other two, it’s got receptions, yards, touchdowns, and I know it’s 20 touchdowns,” punter and former LSU roommate Brad Wing told The Post.
Wing knew the tattoo was coming before needle ever marked skin.
“Before he even got it,” Wing said, “he told me he was getting it. You see it every day, you kinda want to make it reality, so … I joked with him, ‘What are you gonna do when you beat it? You gotta get another tattoo upping the ante.’ ”
Beckham preferred not to share the tattoo with a photo.
Beckham failed to catch a touchdown pass in the first four weeks and now has eight in his last seven games. Brown is tied with Mike Evans for the NFL lead with 10.
“You can go a game without a touchdown, or you can have a game with three touchdowns, so it’s hard to say, but I definitely believe it’s an attainable goal for him,” Wing said. “I think anything’s possible with him.”
On an educated guess, I asked Beckham before the season whether 20 touchdowns might be his goal. He smiled and said, “Something like that.”
Randy Moss set the league record with 23 TDs in 2007. The previous mark was Jerry Rice’s 22 TDs in 1987.
Asked if he wants to have better numbers than Brown at the end of the day, Beckham said: “You want to have a better story than anybody else at the end of the day, you know what I mean? Like yeah, you want to go out and be the best every single time, that’s what you want to do, that’s what you work for. Yeah, ultimately I would like to do better than him, but if he does better and we win, I may have lost one, but I won the other, so, either way it goes.”
Beckham caught 12 TDs in 12 games as a rookie and 13 last season in 15 games. Brown had 10 TDs last season, 13 the year before.
Star Wars.
“This is definitely a game where I’m gonna be standing up watching this guy,” Beckham said. “You love him like a brother, we train in the offseason, he’s good people. He’s pretty much worked for everything he has, and he does that every single day, work ethic is unreal. This is the first time I’ll get to watch him live, not on tape or anything like that, see him lined up, so I’m excited about it.
“Hopefully he doesn’t have too many celebrations,” he said with a smile. “It’s gonna be a tough matchup for him.”
Beckham smiled again when asked if there were similarities between his game and Brown’s.
“Yeah,” he said, “I think we both like to score. And, we like to have fun. I definitely think there’s similarities in our game though. I’ve watched a lot of film on him, I’ve probably stolen a lot of stuff from him and just made it my own.”
Steelers coach Mike Tomlin has no trepidation employing Brown on punt returns, and Beckham displayed his game-breaking skills vs. the Browns on a 59-yard TD that was called back on a Mark Herzlich holding penalty. Giants fans are more worried about Beckham getting hurt on punt returns than Beckham is.
“You could do that playing football or crossing the street,” he said. “It’s part of life. I don’t really worry about being hurt at all. It’s in God’s hands. I put the best preparation in my body that I can and take care of it the best that I can in order to go out there and not get hurt. Me being back there on punt return, getting hurt or anything like that is not something that I really worry about. It can happen any play.”
Beckham smiled and gave a thumbs-up when asked about the thumb injury that caused him to miss 12 snaps on Sunday.
“You have to just play with it,” Beckham said. “It happened to me in college and high school. I think in a sense it doesn’t really hurt me because now I have to focus more on catching the ball. I have to really lock in and focus on where I’m placing my hands. I’ve kind of noticed it. Actually, almost may be able to catch it better than what it is. It allows me to lock into another focus.”
And focus on not focusing on how much it hurts every time the ball hits it.
“I was going down to the ground and I had my hand over the ball,” Beckham said. “They tried to rip the ball and just ripped straight thumb. It doesn’t feel good. I don’t think you really notice how much your thumb bumps into stuff or gives out of its movement until you have one that’s hurt and you bump it into a table. It’ll be all right. Hopefully it doesn’t affect me too much.”
It is no coincidence that Beckham is drawn to superstars such as LeBron James, Von Miller and Brown.
“If you hang around people who have the same mindset, the same goals, the same focus as you, it makes it a lot easier for you to stay track on what you want to do and what you want to accomplish,” Beckham said.
Twenty touchdowns.