FOXBOROUGH -- Sunday's Patriots-Browns game featured one of the best matchups the league has to offer in the secondary.
Stephon Gilmore vs. Odell Beckham Jr.
There was a thought the Patriots could keep Gilmore off Beckham Jr. and instead double him with Gilmore on Jarvis Landry, but it was almost exclusively Gilmore matched up against him 1-on-1.
He came out on top, as Beckham Jr. finished with five catches on seven targets for 52 yards, but one went for 31 yards on a spectacular catch where Gilmore was in perfect position. The Patriots also won the game, 27-13.
"I think he's great. I think he's All-Pro. I think he's everything," Beckham Jr. told reporters afterwards about Gilmore. "But I just felt like we didn't challenge as much as we could have. I think we kind of shied away from it. I was expecting and looking forward to it, but that wasn't the case today. We had a couple plays but, for whatever reason we didn't do as much challenging as the matchups that we all talked about. Other than that, whatever came my way, I pretty much caught. Whatever other opportunities I had, I made the most of them. But you can only control what you can control."
Gilmore enjoyed going up against a player as good as Beckham Jr.
"It was fun to compete," he said. "Good players competing against each other is fun."
Gilmore added: "Just trying to stay as close as I can, get my hands on him and look at the formation and make plays for my team, trusting my teammates around me, and I was able to make some plays."
Back in April of 2016, the two took some jabs at each other on social media, but following Sunday's postgame handshake on the field, the two met in the hallway outside the Browns locker room and continued their conversation.
