Glove me tender

[tsylvester]

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-84318259/

 

 

 

 

Odell Beckham Jr. was a rookie when he leaped, a superstar when he landed.

The New York Giants receiver made one of the signature plays of the 2014 NFL season with his 43-yard touchdown catch against Dallas, jumping and bending his body Matrix-style, then somehow securing the football with just three fingers.

In the aftermath of what some people called the most athletic catch in league history, Beckham acknowledged he had a small assist on the play — the red-and-white XXL Nike Vapor Jet 3.0 gloves he was wearing. But he wasn't the only one to give some love to the gloves.

 

"You have to be careful about the way you analyze that play because you don't want people calling you a hater or whatever," said Tim Brown, a Hall of Fame receiver. "But you can't make that play without those kind of gloves. It's just impossible.

"The guy's a freak of nature, no doubt about it, I'll give you that. He has the big hands and all that. But those gloves are so 'tackified' these days that that's part of the reason you see guys making those kinds of catches."

 

 

 

I won't call him a hater (even though I think there is some envy going on there). I happen to agree with him, these gloves today are incredibly sticky, more so than stickem ever was for that matter. If you think low pressure on a football helped the Pats win a Super Bowl or changed outcomes of games, these gloves easily do....

 

 

Said former NFL receiver Cris Collinsworth, now color analyst on NBC's "Sunday Night Football": "I think if they took the gloves completely away from the guys, including the quarterbacks at this point, it would have a major impact on what the game looked like on the field. And not for the better."

 

 

I concur....

 

 

"No one looks at those gloves," John Madden said. "I saw them when I was at a meeting in Indy. They passed them around and somebody made the comment that, 'Pretty soon, these gloves are going to be able to catch a ball without a hand in them.'"

 

 

 

Now that would blow up the internet more than that family does......