The NFL offseason is long, and it’s just getting started. Good for one particular NFC East team, because one of its rivals — the one it lost to in the regular season finale to kill its playoff hopes — is lapping it already.
“Lapping it” might be putting it mildly. Right now, on the day before free agency officially begins, the Giants seem as if they’re running one way on the track, and Washington the other way.
That’s if you boil it down to nothing more than where they are at one offensive position. No, not that one; that discussion comes a little later. On Wednesday, the Giants added Brandon Marshall to the wide receiver group that already has Odell Beckham Jr., among others.
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The same day, reports surfaced that Pierre Garcon was about to leave Washington to sign with the 49ers while the other major free-agent wideout there, DeSean Jackson, continued his recruiting trip that already includes the Buccaneers and, likely, the Cowboys and his former team, the Eagles.
The rich — the team that won 11 games, beat the Cowboys twice and made the playoffs — get richer. The poor just keep getting poorer in every area.
Remember, a year earlier, Washington won the NFC East, and the Giants lost 10 games, forced out Tom Coughlin, put Jerry Reese on the extra-hot seat, and underwent upheaval the likes of which they hadn’t experienced in a decade.
Now, upheaval has returned to its natural habitat. Washington not only continued the offseason with its supposed general manager, Scot McCloughan, still invisible, but according to CBSSports.com, in the process of being replaced.
Oh, and the team's quarterback with the exclusive franchise tag, Kirk Cousins, is still surrounded by trade rumors, not contract-extension rumors. How much that has to do with the information vacuum around his team’s front office remains to be seen.
But none of that paints a picture of a franchise that is building on a division title from just a year earlier. Yes, it was a nine-win division crown, and the team more or less ran in place last season while two teams bolted past, which was disturbing in itself.
Now both the Cowboys and Giants are disappearing from view. Washington wasn’t likely to reel the Cowboys back in that fast, so there’s no shame in not setting the bar that high yet.
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But the Giants rebuilt on the fly, or re-tooled, or re-arranged, or some combination of those. So far in the earliest stages of the offseason, they’re padding their lead. If nothing else, there’s one fewer affordable wide receiver on the market today than there was yesterday.
Also, if nothing else, Washington should be able to ensure everybody that it's not letting its most prized asset get away. Instead, nobody seems to know what the team can do, or will do.
Washington's not asleep at the switch. What’s going on there right now seems much more damaging.
What its rival is doing isn’t helping. The Giants weren’t supposed to be disappearing from view. Does Washington now need to look over its shoulder to see how fast the last-place Eagles are gaining on them?
And before we ask that, who’s even in charge of looking?