This NFL off-season has been a roller coaster ride, and the league year technically hasn’t even started yet.
Big quarterback negotiations. Even greater commercial demands. Wage cap concerns and contract restructuring unlike anything we’ve seen after a fanless pandemic season.
If there was ever a time for a big blow, it is now. Bold is where the league is trending. Go ahead, destroy or do something out of character to change the status quo of a franchise.
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However, it appears that none of those elements are at stake in East Rutherford, where the Giants are just crawling under Dave Gettleman, one losing season at a time. Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. Owner John Mara could intervene. Coach Joe Judge could stick his head in the office. Someone could put that idea into a team-building meeting before it’s too late: go get Russell Wilson.
Don’t worry about Wilson’s list of prohibitions, which ended up losing the Cowboys as a possible option. Don’t worry about the ceiling (did you see what the Saints did to move money with the Taysom Hill business?) Or what we think a team can afford. None of that matters. What matters is being bold, and a commercial offer from the Giants to Wilson is the kind of boldness that would be fascinating to watch.
See how the Giants could beat the Bears (probably the favorite, if Wilson is traded) and bring a future Hall of Fame to NFC East: Offer 11th overall choice in 2021, Daniel Jones and at least two future first rounds choose for Seattle to Wilson right away. Don’t wait another second for the Bears to offer five choices and Khalil Mack. Don’t wait for the Raiders to find out and offer Derek Carr and a series of picks. Don’t expect the Dolphins or Jets to try to convince Wilson’s agent to consider them.
At the moment, the Giants have two things Chicago doesn’t have: a young, cheap quarterback to offer and a choice from the top 11. Both are valuable and can be used to start the conversation. If Gettleman is afraid to offer the farm for a player as good as Wilson, perhaps Mara will realize that he is the wrong man for the job.
And make no mistake: Wilson is special. The fight in Seattle should obscure how good he was during much of 2020, how good he was during his career and what kind of franchise-changing force he could be for his next team.
NFC East looks like (at least on paper) Dallas for the 2021 season. Washington is a quarterback for being a force. The Eagles never stay on the ground for long and can have more than $ 50 million in limit space, plus a young Jalen Hurts on the rise to build this season next year. Windows open and close in the NFL quickly, and the Giants risk seeing their next competitive window open and close in the blink of an eye, unless something drastic is done.
Jones is fine. He’s not terrible. He’s somewhere around the NFL’s 20-25th best defender now. Maybe you can squint and watch a Alex Smith guy step up his game as he gets older. Or he can establish himself as mediocre. It’s not bad, but it’s not easy to win consistently with this type of guy. It will be even more difficult after the Giants decide to pay it in a year or more.
Wilson, who has already been rumored to want to be in New York, seems desperate to leave Seattle. The Bears feel like the only team willing to obey despair with desperation. This seems crazy, considering that we’re talking about a guy who has never won less than nine games in any NFL season, made it to the playoffs in eight of the nine years and has the fourth highest (101.7) career pass rating in the history of the games.
As long as Wilson is available, any team with a brain would have to ask how to move everything to land it. That includes the giants, if they have the stomach to listen to their brains and make an offer that the Seahawks could not refuse.
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Joe Giglio can be reached at [email protected].