Odell Beckham Jr. has yet to sign with an NFL team this season.

But that didn’t stop the former star wide receiver from making headlines this week, thanks to his appearance on The Pivot.

Discussing the financial burdens that some players face, the 3-time Pro Bowl wide receiver seemingly downplayed the value of $100 million. Noting that signing a $100 million contract doesn’t necessarily mean that the player will actually make $100 million, Beckham pointed out all of the costs associated with such a contract.

“… You give somebody a five-year, $100 million contract, right? What is it really? It’s five years for $60 [million]. You’re getting taxed. Do the math. That’s $12 [million] a year that you have to spend, use, save, invest, flaunt, like, whatever,” Beckham said. “I’m going to buy a car. I’m gonna give my mom a house. Everything cost money. If you’re spending $4 million a year, that’s really $40 million over five years. Eight a year, you know, and now you start breaking down the numbers.”

Odell Beckham Jr. talks about the struggles of a $100 million contract and how the money doesn’t last forever. 👀
pic.twitter.com/bLI6xTFbkL

— My Mixtapez (@mymixtapez) December 1, 2025

Unsurprisingly, Beckham’s comments didn’t sit well with many, who were eager to point out that even after taxes and generous spending, that’s still a lot of money. Sure, plenty of well-compensated professional athletes still go broke. But that’s not because $100 million — or even a fraction of that — wasn’t enough to start with.

As the backlash against Beckham mounted, Ryan Clark took to social media to defend his recent guest. According to The Pivot host, the former LSU star’s comments have been taken out of context, as he was trying to make a larger point about financial responsibility.

“With this age of social media and podcasting, it’s good to incite people, it’s good to enrage people, to get them to interact with you and to feel like you’re right, but we gotta think about rationale and logic and context,” he said. “Odell Beckham Jr. wasn’t saying that you should get a $100 million contract, and that means it’s OK to blow it. It’s OK to be irresponsible with it. What he was saying was, when you sign a $100 million deal, you don’t actually get $100 million in your palm to spend on you.”

What @obj said about a $100 million contracts on @thepivot has been taken out of context. In today’s microwave media society it pays to overreact & incite negativity. So, now he’s being villainized for giving his perspective on how that sort of money could be broken down.

He… pic.twitter.com/4I1T0XxTUJ

— Ryan Clark (@Realrclark25) December 3, 2025

Clark did seem to understand why many perceived the comments as “tone deaf,” as by any measure, $100 million is irrefutably a lot of money. The ESPN analyst, however, insisted that Beckham was merely speaking from an athlete’s perspective of receiving a lot of money at a young age and not always knowing how to make it last.

“And so the context wasn’t that Odell was saying he was broke, saying he blew through a $100 million contract, or saying that it wasn’t a lot of money,” Clark insisted. “He was just saying that, ‘this is how it felt to me.’ And I think we gotta let people be OK with that, cause how are we ever gonna learn if every time somebody shares something that we don’t necessarily understand or disagree with, we tear them down?

Clark isn’t necessarily wrong; Beckham was merely sharing his perspective as somebody who made more than $101 million over the course of his NFL career. Some people clearly took the comments out of context, making it sound as if the former New York Giants star blew through his own money, which he’s insisted he didn’t do.

Still, it’s hardly surprising that many took issue with Beckham’s comments, even if they fully understood the context that Clark applied. The reality is, there’s a sizable gap between the career earnings of most professional athletes and the average fan, and the latter has little sympathy for the financial hardships the former could potentially face.