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The NFL suspended Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. for one game on Monday, a day after he was flagged repeatedly for confrontations with Panthers cornerback Josh Norman. In a statement, NFL Vice President of Football Operations Merton Hanks noted that Beckham's actions "placed his opponents at unnecessary risk of injury and should have been avoided."

Beckham appealed the suspension, and on Wednesday, the league upheld that suspension. Which means that Beckham won't be on the field when the Giants face the Vikings on Sunday night in a must-win game.

Neither Josh Norman nor Odell Beckham Jr. were without blame on Sunday. (USATSI)
Neither Josh Norman nor Odell Beckham Jr. were without blame on Sunday. (USATSI)

Shortly after the ruling, Beckham apologized to "teammates, the Giants organization and to all the fans of the NFL."

Now New York (6-8) needs to win its two remaining games and hope that Washington (7-7) and Philadelphia (6-8) lose if it's to have any chance at the postseason. Put another way: Beckham's suspension couldn't have come at a worse time.

Here are other takeaways from the Beckham-Norman drama:

VP of Officials Dean Blandino admitted that Beckham should have been kicked out of the game. "I think when you look at of the actions in their entirety it does warrant an ejection," Blandino said. "Anytime a player is suspended for his actions, (it) would warrant an ejection. We don't take disqualification lightly. It is a short season and the action really has to raise above and beyond the normal course and this certainly did.

"It's certainly an accumulation of instances and not just on Beckham. There was some things on the other side, too, and I think both parties were involved. The officials, if you asked them, they would agree after looking at the tape that ejections were warranted."

Giants coach Tom Coughlin said it was unfair to only blame Beckham for what transpired. "The only thing I'll say about the incident that occurred the other day in the game, that everyone is preoccupied with right now, is the fact that to depict this as Odell Beckham being wrong and the only one wrong is not right. It's not fair, it's not justice, it's not the way it was," Coughlin said. "If you're naive enough to think that way then you better do some soul-searching yourself. Beckham certainly was wrong — and we said he was wrong from Day 1 — but there were factors involved starting in pre game. Which are well documented, which indicate there was an attempt to provoke him.

"He was provoked. He was out of control. He was wrong. There was no doubt about it. You'd like that didn't happen. But the fact of the matter is if you know the situation pregame, with the baseball bat and if you know what occurred at the very beginning of the game, you can understand there were two sides to this and not just one."

Then there are things that were allegedly said to Beckham ... Hall of Famer and former Cowboys wide receiver Michael Irvin, who serves as a mentor for Beckham, said the Giants wideout has had to deal with gay slurs all season.

“He deals with it a lot. For some reason, everybody goes after him with gay slurs. He's a different kind of dude," Irvin told the New York Daily News. "He has the hairdo out, he's not the big muscular kind of dude. The ladies all love him. He's a star. I wonder why people are going in that direction. It blows my mind. I told him he can't let stuff that people say get to you."

Josh Norman was not suspended. Norman, who certainly played a role in all the after-the-whistle nonsense that went on, was  reportedly fined $25,000.

But what about that pregame baseball bat?  CBS Sports NFL Insider Jason La Canfora has reported that the Giants believe that Beckham was physically threatened by the Panthers prior to kickoff. Specifically, Panthers practice squad player Marcus Bell pointed a baseball bat in Beckham's direction and that's when a group of Panthers players used homophobic slurs against Beckham, per the Giants.

The Panthers denied both. 

"Absolutely nothing happened on the sideline. I was there. No one was threatened," Panthers spokesman Steven Drummond said in a statement, adding that Norman was stretching most of the time and was not involved with any incidents regarding the bat and that only a practice squad player exchanged words with Beckham and it was not derogatory. "No one was threatened with a bat. It didn't happen. It's a diversionary tactic and a good one at that."

But Giants punter Brad Wing, who was near Beckham during pregame warmups when things started getting heated, said the bat-wielding Bell seemed like a "legitimate threat."

And this:

Panthers safety Roman Harper makes his case for the possibility of a pregame bat-wielding maniac.