Giants already taunting Josh Norman, and it isn't coming from Odell Beckham

For the New York Giants and the handful of other NFL players who have embraced sounding off on Washington Redskins cornerback Josh Norman, every thought starts with a financial precursor: $75 million.

Something like, “If you’re really worth $75 million dollars, prove it.”

This is how NFL players, coaching staffs and personnel departments have grown to define Norman. By a dollar figure and a question. If he’s worth the five-year, $75 million deal he got from the Redskins, he should have the flexibility to consistently demonstrate it. If he’s going to be paid like the best cornerback in the game, he should always be available to cover the best receiver on the other side of the line. And if he’s going to self-anoint himself as an eraser at his position, he should meet the taunts and challenges of opponents with an appetite to prove them wrong.

So when a player like Pittsburgh Steelers wideout Antonio Brown runs roughshod over one half of the field, there is an immediate accounting for the whereabouts of the $75 million man. The natural assessment being that Norman should be forcing the Redskins to use him when and where he’s needed most. That’s why cover corners have historically been the guys who get the big money. They are supposed to be flexible and smothering, and rarely relegated to being a $15 million per year traffic cone placed on one side of the field.

This is why Norman is getting openly questioned in some NFL corners and anonymously assassinated in others, largely because the Redskins’ defense isn’t good enough (yet) for teams to have a hard time avoiding the $75 million traffic cone. That means when Washington faces players like Brown, the New York Giants’ Odell Beckham Jr. (twice), the Dallas Cowboys’ Dez Bryant (twice) and the Cincinnati Bengals’ A.J. Green, they can expect the offense to simply direct those players to a place where Norman can’t go. And when he doesn’t follow them, opponents will make a point of taunting him with it.

This is how the NFL works. It’s a world of alphas – and nobody tells the alphas where they can’t go.

As Giants wideout Victor Cruz said of Norman this week, “If he calls himself – I don’t call him this, [but] he calls himself the best corner in the league – then you have to go cover the best receivers on the other team. Going in [to the Steelers game], I thought he was going to follow [Antonio Brown] all over the place, but he didn’t. So it is what it is. He made his choice.”

“He made his choice” is alpha speak for, “If you’re the best cornerback in the NFL, you don’t let your team take you away from the opponent’s best wide receiver.” And that’s regardless of what kind of defense is used, zone, man-to-man, whatever.

The Giants should know. They paid cornerback back Janoris Jenkins his own boatload of money this offseason (five years and $62.5 million), to do exactly that – follow around the opponent’s best receiver. So it should be no surprise that Jenkins piped up on Norman, too, effectively saying, “For that money, he should be able to do what I do.”

“I think when you’re paying somebody $70 million, there shouldn’t be a game plan,” Jenkins said of Washington’s zone scheme keeping Norman on one side of the field. “The game plan should be, ‘You’re on this guy,’ and that’s what it is.”

All of this is some Grade A dirt kicked in Norman’s direction. And that’s the new world. Norman’s bar is higher than ever and never coming down. He acknowledged some of that to reporters on Thursday, responding to the Giants by saying, “When you’re at the top of your profession, someone is always trying to grab at you just because they’re not at the top of your profession.You just have to extend down your arm and hand them an olive branch.”

The criticism is going to continue. When he was getting beaten by DeSean Jackson’s speed and quickness in veteran minicamp in June, it raised some eyebrows. When it continued in training camp practices, it became an Internet meme featuring Norman pictured as a slice of burnt toast. The assessments may not all be fair, but hefty sums of free-agent money rarely buy a player a patient audience.

As one personnel evaluator framed Norman’s “new normal” on Thursday: “Great fifth-round pick. Terrible franchise money corner.”

He went on after watching the Steelers game, that despite Norman not following Brown, “Sammie Coates was smoking [Norman] off the line.”

That’s a rough assessment. But it’s getting around. And it started when the Carolina Panthers removed the franchise tag from Norman this offseason, effectively setting him free. After Norman hit the market, a number of executives who spoke with Yahoo Sports shared a collective shrug, almost universally agreeing that Norman’s defensive fit and 4.6 second, 40-yard dash speed capped his suitors on the open market. Those assessments all shared a similar vein: that Norman was a zone corner who would need elite safety help and a strong defensive cast around him. The insinuation was that if a team was going to pay him big, it better insert him into a defense that was awash with other playmakers, much like the cast that surrounds Richard Sherman with the Seattle Seahawks.

Instead, Norman got more money than expected – to be a foundational piece rather than a river card completing a full house. That’s what the Redskins were buying. A guy who could help change the culture and be there when the rest of the defense catches up. Did Washington overpay? Yes. Does general manager Scot McCloughan know it? Yes. Is there possibly a small element of hiding that investment right now, rather than risking Norman getting torched right out of the gate? Possibly.

Norman is still selling himself as the best cornerback in the league. But the early returns have raised questions and the buyers of Norman’s skills are shrinking. This is the new normal. And more than ever, Norman’s critics are ready to let him know it.

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