Odell Beckham Jr's Catch — Odell Beckham Jr. in Giants uniform diving horizontally to catch a football one-handed

Odell Beckham Jr's Catch

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Published September 19, 2026

Odell Beckham Jr's Catch is a Photoshop meme built around an iconic 2014 NFL image of the New York Giants receiver making an impossible one-handed touchdown grab against the Dallas Cowboys. Within hours of the play, Twitter users had cut Beckham out of the frame and dropped him into Renaissance frescoes, magazine covers, and celebrity scenes, spawning one of the defining sports Photoshop templates of the 2010s.

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Overview

The format is straightforward but endlessly remixable. People take the exact cutout of Beckham fully extended in mid-air, right hand cradling the football, and paste him into a scene where he can be shown catching something absurd2. The pose is so distinctive that even against unrelated backgrounds, viewers instantly recognize it as the November 23rd, 2014 touchdown against Dallas1.

Common variations drop Beckham into art history (grabbing the finger of God in Michelangelo's 'The Creation of Adam'), into other sports moments (catching stray pitches or golf balls), and into pop culture stills (superimposed on magazine covers or replacing characters in movie scenes)2. The joke works because the real catch already looks physically impossible, so any exaggerated context just doubles down on the absurdity of what Beckham actually did on the field.

Origin & Background

Platform
Live NFL broadcast (catalyst) / Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
@felixpotvin
Date
2014

During a Sunday night NFL game between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys on November 23rd, 2014, Beckham reached backwards behind his own head with one hand to pull in a touchdown pass from quarterback Eli Manning1. The play went viral in real time as broadcasters replayed it throughout the game and highlight clips began circulating on social media within minutes2.

The earliest known Photoshop edit came from Twitter user @felixpotvin, who inserted Beckham's cutout into Michelangelo's fresco 'The Creation of Adam' so he appeared to be catching the finger of God rather than reaching for it2. The image spread across Twitter overnight, and by the following morning several other accounts had joined in with their own edits using the same cutout.

How It Spread

Twitter user @World_Wide_Wob followed with a Photoshop of Kim Kardashian's Paper Magazine 'Break the Internet' cover with Beckham superimposed on the front, riffing on another image dominating that same week2. Later that evening, @nick_pants posted an edit showing Beckham catching a stray ceremonial first pitch that rapper 50 Cent had famously botched at a New York Mets game earlier in the year2.

Sports and pop-culture outlets picked up the trend within days. Bleacher Report, Time, Fox Sports, The Independent, The Daily Dot, and UpRoxx all ran roundups of the best Photoshops that week2. The template outlived the initial news cycle because the cutout was reusable, letting anyone with basic image-editing skills drop Beckham into whatever image was trending later that day.

The catch itself became shorthand for absurdly good grabs in general, and the pose is still referenced whenever a receiver makes a similarly acrobatic one-handed play1.

Timeline

2014-11-23

Beckham makes the one-handed touchdown catch against the Dallas Cowboys during a nationally televised Sunday night game.

2014-11-23

Twitter user @felixpotvin posts the first known Photoshop edit, dropping the Beckham cutout into Michelangelo's 'The Creation of Adam' fresco.

2014-11-24

@World_Wide_Wob posts the Kim Kardashian Paper Magazine cover edit; @nick_pants posts the 50 Cent ceremonial pitch edit.

2014-11-25

Bleacher Report, Time, Fox Sports, The Independent, The Daily Dot, and UpRoxx begin publishing roundups of the best Beckham Photoshops.

How to Use This Meme

The standard convention is to isolate the cutout of Beckham fully extended, right arm behind his head, then paste him into another image at a scale and angle where his hand appears to be catching something in the background scene2. The 'catch' can be literal (a ball, a person's finger, a falling object) or symbolic (an award, a trending news item, a bouquet at a wedding). Keeping the original body pose intact is what makes the reference land.

Frequently Asked Questions