Tom Rock: Odell Beckham Jr., Giants vs. Cowboys and waiting all day for Sunday night

Odell Beckham Jr.

Against the Cowboys.

At MetLife Stadium.

On Sunday Night Football.

No, you are not the only one who will have flashbacks to Nov. 23, 2014, when ol’ number 13 takes the field for the Giants in Week 1 on Sunday. The guy calling the action will, too.

Cris Collinsworth, who was the announcer for the game over a decade ago when Beckham made that signature one-handed catch against Dallas, will be back in the booth for this one too on NBC. He’ll have a different play-by-play partner this time in Mike Tirico instead of Al Michaels, but Collinsworth said seeing Beckham in eerily similar circumstances more than a decade after he was a rookie will be special.

“The first thing I’ll do when I see him warming up,” Collinsworth said on an NBC conference call last week, “is I’ll look down in that left end zone and enjoy a moment.”

Beckham isn’t the same player now. He hasn’t even taken an NFL snap since his brief stint with the Dolphins ended in December 2024. His role on this team is less about being a star and more about being a supporting actor. But he still carries the same magical aura he always had, the potential for greatness and for something unique to occur on any play in which he is on the field.

And yes, this week he even dyed his hair back to the bleachy blond color it was in 2014. “Gotta power up,” he said of the style choice.

It’s not as long as it was then, and it almost looks fittingly like a gray mane rather than a flashy ‘do, but it’s just another way for him to remind folks of who he was, who he is, and who he may still be able to be.

Collinsworth recalled the play and how “every replay something new got revealed as to the greatness of that catch.” First, it was whether or not he caught it. Then it was if he was fouled [he was] and if he went out of bounds [he did not]. Then the super slow-motion shots showed that Beckham made the catch with just three fingers on the football.

It was a rare where-were-you moment for many in the NFL, a play which people recall seeing live on television and then watching over and over again for the past 12 years.

And if you were lucky enough to have been in the building (we’ll raise our hand for this) you undoubtedly cling to the wave of silent disbelief that swept through the crowd before replays on the big board confirmed what the eyes had just seen but could not fully contemplate.

Current Giants offensive coordinator Matt Nagy was the quarterbacks coach in Kansas City. He was watching at home that night. He also noted that his sons, including Tate who is a sophomore receiver at Kansas, started practicing one-handed catches because of it.

“I coached Odell when we were in the Pro Bowl [after the 2015 season] and I got to see him in his prime then and I had a ton of respect for him,” Nagy said. “To see him now and where he is at in this part of his career, you really start to appreciate where you are at. Now it’s the team part and he has embraced that.”

Beckham’s catch also unwittingly helped create another Giants receiver.

“I wasn't really a football fan when I was growing up,” Malik Nabers said. “He kind of was the first person that literally made me start watching football, just the dances, the one-handers. He was the main person. Him being here right now, in the same room as me, it's surreal. Sometimes I’ve got to take a moment.”

Collinsworth said he has had several conversations with Beckham since that iconic grab. He was also NBC’s game analyst for Super Bowl LVI when Beckham was on the Rams and tore his ACL but won a ring. Now he’ll get to call this one and whatever happens in it.

But they’ll forever be linked by that night in 2014, when Collinsworth’s shock spoke for all of us (“Did he catch that? Oh my goodness, oh my goodness!” he said on the air) and he immediately stamped the play as “sick,” “absolutely impossible,” and “maybe the greatest catch I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s kind of a wonderful little shared common bond that we have,” Collinsworth said last week. “I try hard to not cheer, but I have to admit I was pretty pumped when I heard the news that he made the team and that he was wearing 13 again.”

On Sunday night, when Beckham returns to the scene of his greatest play, perhaps the greatest play in the history of the stadium and the Sunday Night Football franchise, Collinsworth won’t be alone in his appreciation of it.