New York Giants news, 10/23: Odell Beckham, George Young, more

Good morning, New York Giants fans! Here are your Thursday morning headlines.

Giants: Expectations keep soaring for Odell Beckham Jr. - Football - NorthJersey.com

If the Giants end up playing relevant football in November and December, despite being saddled with a 3-4 record as they look to regroup during their bye week, what they’ve seen from Beckham provides one of the biggest reasons to believe in that quest.

The man who rescued the Giants should be in Hall of Fame | New York Post

The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced its nominees Wednesday, and among the spate of quarterbacks and cornerbacks and coaches was a new category for "contributors." Bill Polian — who built the Bills, Panthers and Colts out of ash, was one of those nominees. Ron Wolf, who brought the Packers back to dominance after decades of dormancy, was the other.

All due respect to Polian and Wolf, who certainly had worthy careers, if the first name produced for this category wasn’t George Bernard Young, then they shouldn’t have even bothered. Because all Young did in his career was turn the New York Football Giants from a dysfunctional mess to a perennial model. The fact that he isn’t already a decade into his stay in Canton is ridiculous enough.

Valentine's View: I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment from Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post. Not only did Young haul the Giants out of the wilderness years, his imprint in how things should be done is still all over the franchise decades later.

New York Giants tight end Larry Donnell still learning the specifics - ESPN New York

Larry Donnell's sudden explosion onto the NFL scene was really not sudden at all.

"Where did Larry Donnell come from?" is one of the big early questions of this New York Giants season, and the answer defies simple explanation.Donnell was on the team last year in a reserve role -- a special-teams player who was working to develop as an offensive asset at tight end. He was a basketball player early in life and a quarterback when he arrived at Grambling for college, so tight end was new to him and he had to learn it. He's still learning it.

"One of the big things is his confidence level," Giants tight ends coach Kevin M. Gilbride said Tuesday. "He didn't play with a level of confidence last year that he's now playing with in the passing game, certainly, and that he's starting to develop in the run game, as well."

That's a word -- "develop" -- that gets tossed around and often ignored in today's hyper-impatient NFL. We hear so much about how precious those 53-man roster spots are that we forget that some of them are occupied by players who aren't ready yet to make major contributions.