Cleveland Browns: 5 ways OBJ won mini-camp press conference

Odell Beckham conducted his first press availability as a member of the Cleveland Browns at mini camp, and there’s no doubt he came out a winner.

The media got what they wanted: Odell Beckham Jr. at practice in Berea and he went in front of the microphone ready to face the firing squad.

The result: OBJ, no stranger to tough media gathering having played in New York for all of his professional career, won the press conference by unanimous decision.

In his twenty minutes talking to the press, OBJ flipped the narrative on all the teeth gnashing created over attending just one of the Browns’ eight organized team activity session.

Here’s how Beckham won the press conference.

1. Different tone

Mostly, athlete press conferences are snooze fests controlled by the team’s public relations department.

But when Odell Beckham Jr. talks, everyone listens, which is why Cleveland fans were fretting over his introductory press conference a few months back.

In that performance, Beckham came across as tired and not really engaged in the opportunity he was about to embark on with the up-and-coming Browns. Clevelanders, who have a tendency to think the worst of their sports’ teams and players, feared he was upset about being traded away from the New York Giants.

In his first press availability of the season, Beckham was engaging and came off as genuine. He was real, and that’s something fans and media alike will eat up. It’s worked for Freddie Kitchens, who’s been brutally honest since getting his new gig, and it worked for OBJ.