© Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports
Marquise Goodwin wants all the best for Odell Beckham Jr. — just not on Monday night.
The 49ers are the only remaining undefeated team in the NFC and they’ll hope to keep it that way when they play their first primetime game of the season at home against the Cleveland Browns next Monday. They were flexed out of two Sunday Night Football games last season against the Los Angeles Rams in Week 7 and the Seattle Seahawks in Week 13; and on Tuesday were snubbed of the chance to be flexed in to Sunday Night Football against the Rams two Sundays from now in Los Angeles.
They have at least another two primetime games on the schedule, with a Halloween Thursday night game against the Arizona Cardinals on the docket for October 31, and a Week 10 date for Sunday night primetime against the Seahawks a week-and-a-half later on November 11. There’s a good chance their penultimate game, a home bout with the Rams on December 12, is flexed to Sunday Night Football.
Whatever the final tally is, Goodwin will be ecstatic for each opportunity. He spoke Monday about his love for primetime games and his belief that there are many players on the 49ers who don’t receive the recognition they deserve. He says he has goosebumps about the upcoming Monday night game, but that there’s nothing overwhelming about the chance.
“It’s not hard, man,” Goodwin said. “This is ball, something that we’ve been doing since we were little boys and now being men in the league living out our dreams. We look forward to moments like these. Monday Night Football. I’m getting goosebumps on my arms just talking about it because it’s a lot of guys sitting at home they wish they had these opportunities and here we are. So I look forward to Monday night. It’s special.”
For a player who’s spent his entire career on the often terrible Buffalo Bills (who he said only had the single primetime game each year against the New York Jets) and the until recently struggling San Francisco 49ers, Goodwin is appreciative of every chance he gets to play on a national stage.
“I wish we had night games, primetime games every week,” Goodwin said. “I think a lot of people on this team don’t get the credit they deserve, so Monday will be a chance to showcase that.”
There’s no one more primetime than Odell Beckham Jr., the flashy, uber-talented wide receiver for the Browns who became a cultural phenomenon with his famous one-handed catch with the New York Giants.
Goodwin knows Beckham well. He said the two got to know each other through track and field, in sprinting and jumping events as well as through other friends (Goodwin said one of his barbers growing up was Beckham’s godfather). Goodwin reminded reporters that Beckham Jr. was (is) an extraordinary athlete in high school, and had the pedigree of his mother, Heather Van Norman, who was an All-American hurdler at LSU.
Asked whether Beckham Jr. could out-jump him, though, Goodwin gave a sly look, asking, “What do you think?” before rolling up his sleeve to reveal his tattoo of the Olympic symbols; an homage to his 2012 Olympic participation.
“That’s a good friend of mine, we chop it up maybe once a week,” Goodwin said. “That’s my guy. I love him like a brother; he’s just a great dude. I wish all the success for him, except on Monday.”
No matter how close he and Beckham Jr. are, expect that last part to hold true. Goodwin’s been a member of just one plus-.500 team (the 2014 Bills), and has never made the playoffs (the Bills made the playoffs for the first time in 18 years in 2017, the year he departed for San Francisco). The fact that the 49ers have a chance, for the first time since 2014, to be something other than poor, is not a realization that’s lost on him.
“I take a lot of pride in that just because I know where this team team has come from,” Goodwin said. “Being down — and I mean down, beneath the bottom the past two years, early on and then coming to 3-0. Games that we should have won the past couple of years that we lost by, you know, one or two points, three points at the time. It feels good to have some success but you can’t really get too caught up in all of that. As soon as you bite the apple, man, everything goes sour.”
