Odell Beckham Injury Update: Rookie hopes to play Sunday

Could first-round pick Odell Beckham Jr. finally make his New York Giants debut -- regular season or preseason -- on Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons. Beckham, out all season with a hamstring injury, practiced with the Giants on Monday.

Beckham said "definitely want to" when asked if he would play Sunday, but added "hat's not really my decision. I'm just trying to stay right by coach, get as many reps as I can and go from there."

Is Beckham 100 percent?

"I mean, in this game, I feel like you're never really 100 percent anymore, but I feel pretty good and maybe as close as I'm going to get," Beckham said. "You just have to go out there and prepare and go with it."

Head coach Tom Coughlin was, as you might expect, non-committal on whether or not Beckham would play Sunday.

"He has to practice, he has to practice consecutive days, he has to be able to show us that he's not only strong enough but can endure day after day, so there's some room here to make some progress and impress everybody," Coughlin said.

Beckham anticipates practicing "pretty much full" on Wednesday and Thursday.

Quarterback Eli Manning knows as well as anyone that there is a lot of work to be done to get the first-round pick game-ready.

"It's good to get Odell out there and even just throwing routes with him," Manning said. "Just small steps, just trying to get on the same page. I have not thrown many routes with him, get him out there where he's seeing signals, where he's getting checks, just talking through them, things in the locker room, just going over situations. We're going to have to work hard with him to get him up to speed so when he's in there he's confident, he can play fast. I don't know what the game plan is for him right now, but we'll just take it day-by-day."

Valentine's View

Let's hope Beckham does suit up Sunday against Atlanta. Let's not expect miracles, however, in terms of his production.

Beckham is a rookie who is basically starting from scratch while everyone else has been working for months. He went through a couple of practices during OTAs, and maybe three practices in training camp. He was shut down on Aug. 18 and practiced last Tuesday for the Giants in what was basically a jog-through.

If he plays Sunday the Giants will perhaps have a handful of specific routes or plays he will be in for. It's hard to imagine him being ready for a full workload for several weeks -- perhaps even as long as after the Giants' bye in Week 8.