Cowboys Nightmares, Eagles Anxieties

The NFC East is the land of cheapskates, basketball billionaires and lame ducks. Also, the Giants.

Some folks lie awake at night worrying about climate change or clowns. I have spent the last few weeks worrying myself to sleep that Jerry Jones would suddenly start spending money.

The theme of the Dallas Cowboys chapter of Aaron Schatz’s FTN Almanac 2024 (on sale soon!) is Jerrah’s sudden unwillingness to spend money on Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, Micah Parsons or anyone else. Jerrah’s mad about NFL salary inflation, which is relatable, and he has reached a conclusion that has become popular among well-heeled-but-grouchy octogenarians: if the price of Soggy Bran Blasters cereal goes up another nickel, imma just munch on sawdust instead, dagnabbit. The supermarket is full of drag queens and woke mobs anyway.

Jerry seems fed up with Prescott, which is also relatable. It must be easier to wax philosophical on Discord about Prescott’s relative value in the quarterback marketplace than to smile and offer the fellow tens of millions of your own dollars after yet another playoff turnover spree. But Jerrah needs to extend Prescott to free up the cap space to pay Lamb, Parsons and possibly the lad who DoorDash’s cask-aged Wild Turkey to him straight from the distillery. Uncle Scrooge is mad at Huey, so Dewey and Louie don’t get birthday presents either. And Donald now plays for the Commanders.

The Cowboys chapter of the Almanac is a meticulously-crafted 2,000-word explanation of the Cowboys’ self-imposed financial crisis, complete with some statistical analysis of NFL spending habits by Schatz and absolutely zero Duck Tales references. A Dak extension would render everything I wrote as obsolete as the Falcons hosannas written at halftime of Super Bowl LII. Even a Lamb extension would send me into midnight revision mode. Hence the sleepless nights of worrying that Jerrah might suddenly stop being self-defeating and foolishly obstinate. Though typing that out in just that way, my worries look rather unfounded. 

Jerrah’s Dak succession plan is Trey Lance, the NFL’s equivalent of the Nigerian Prince email scam. If you can just liberate his potential from its prison in Fargo by forwarding your credit card number and mother’s maiden name, he will reward you by transforming into Josh Allen. 

When searching for a minicamp update on Lance, I discovered that Cody Benjamin of CBSSports suggested that the Ravens trade for Lance in one of those “let’s make some random crap up” articles folks in my industry are forced to write this time of year. Benjamin’s fanfic did not top my Google search, but three reactions to it did, making the idle speculation sound like an insider report.

I griped about the state of Internet sports journalism in the age of SEO-manipulation last week. For now, suffice it to say that the Cowboys will spend training camp trying to build a quarterback-of-the-future out of a player many think of as just a famous name to toss around when there is little else to talk about in late June. And yes, the irony of this paragraph is intentional.

Despite Jerrah’s self-imposed, semi-spiteful austerity measures, the Cowboys should remain contenders in 2024. Lamb, Parsons and (yes) Prescott remain excellent players. The supporting cast features several Pro Bowlers (Tank Lawrence, Trevon Diggs, Daron Bland) and one Hall of Famer (Zack Martin). The bottom of the NFC East contains four grab-’n’-go victories. Everyone will be playing for their next contracts, which may motivate them (Jerrah reasoning), though it may also cause festering locker room resentment which manifests as a 30-point playoff humiliation in San Francisco (everyone who comprehends human nature’s reasoning).

In Jerrah’s defense: if the Cowboys are going to make fools of themselves next January no matter what, why should he pay a premium for it? Still, Jerrah’s refusal to even patch the leaky roof or repair the smoldering fuse box could cause problems this season.

Do you know who the Cowboys’ starting center is? Neither do they. Candidates include third-round pick Cooper Beebe, who played guard and left tackle at Kansas State; 2023 undrafted free agent Brock Hoffman, who started two games (Cardinals, Week 3; Commanders, meaningless finale) last year and fellow 2023 UDFA T.J. Bass, who started the same two games, neither of them at center. 

The Cowboys had capable, experienced, reasonably-affordable Tyler Biadasz at center over the last three years. But they couldn’t afford to pay Biadasz because they were so busy not spending money elsewhere, so he signed with the Commanders. Therefore, a team with legit Super Bowl aspirations will start a multi-position novice at center, not because a Hall of Famer retired with a hand-picked successor in the wings (we’ll get to the Eagles in a moment), but because Jerrah is brooding in his treasure vault. No way such linchpin roster construction bites the Cowboys in the ass in the playoffs, right?

Biadasz leads us smoothly into our next segment.

Capital Offenses

When I first laid eyes upon the Commanders’ free agency and draft hauls in March and April, I was impressed by their sheer scope. Legends! Blue-chip prospects! Useful role players! Draftnik darlings! Guys who should have retired in 2021! The Commanders acquired a vast sea of newcomers, and not just on the field: their org chart is now teeming with innovators, steady-handed personnel wonks, no-nonsense coaching hardliners, living basketball legends and whatever the hell Kliff Kingsbury is pretending to be these days.

Then I looked closer and realized that the Commanders forgot to acquire a left tackle. Or a starting-caliber edge rusher. And they got thrifty and weird at cornerback, their weakest position in 2023. Also: KINGSBURY? 

Now that I have written an Almanac chapter about the Commanders, I get the feeling their offseason personnel strategy was assembled by a cursed committee of know-it-alls:

JOSH HARRIS: Hear ye, hear ye! As Commanders’ owner (don’t worry, fellas: we’ll change the name back in 2025), I now sit on the Throne of Skulls and drink from the Goblet of Contempt. Make your petitions unto me, that I might grant them.

DAN QUINN: I want Cowboys. A bunch of them.

HARRIS: Do they have to be really good Cowboys?

QUINN: Nope. Mid-tier guys are fine.

HARRIS: Behold! Tyler Biadasz, Dorance Armstrong and Dante Fowler!

BOB MYERS: Biadasz is a center? Good: we need a strong rebounder!

MAGIC JOHNSON: Let’s get some former champions. Championships are won by champions. That’s the NBA way. 

HARRIS: The NBA way is my way! I grant thee Bobby Wagner.

MAGIC: I will name him Mini Me.

QUINN: No complaints here!

MYERS: Can he shoot threes? Like, from midcourt?

MARTY HURNEY: Hey guys? Dan Snyder kept me chained to the wall up here in the upper dungeon, and I guess no one bothered to look for a key. Anyway, I don’t mind hanging around – it’s better than working for David Tepper – but it might be nice to liberate some Panthers defenders.

HARRIS: Whatever! Here are Jeremy Chinn and Frankie Luvu. Their names amuse me.

KLIFF KINGSBURY: (Drinking Red Bull, swiping Tinder) Dude, can I have some fidget spinners, pinwheels and shiny objects?

HARRIS: Ask and you shall receive, comely princeling: here are Zach Ertz and Austin Ekeler for some reason.

MAGIC: Ooh, Ertz has a ring. And a famous wife. I see investment partners!

ADAM PETERS: Now just a doggone minute here. I’m the general manager. And my goal is to do things the 49ers way! There’s more to that than hiring this Kyle Shanahan cosplayer as offensive coordinator! 

KINGSBURY: Dude, plz. Kyle would kill to rock a quarter-zip Henley this well. 

HARRIS: Silence, you insouciant whelp. Adam, would Christian McCaffrey’s little brother placate you?

PETERS: Throw in Clelin Ferrell and we have a deal.

HARRIS: Perfect. Now, let us recite our solemn pledge. What shall we do when this misbegotten heap of incongruous talent only wins six games in 2024?

ALL: Blame the past regime. Huzzah. Huzzah. 

At least Harros isn’t letting Sam Hinkie make decisions for him anymore. I have some bad memories of the Ross-Hinkie 76ers era:

MY NEIGHBORHOOD FRIENDS CIRCA 2014: What the 76ers are doing is brilliant.

ME: Losing on purpose? Gosh, I think I could make a team lose on purpose.

FRIENDS: No, see, if they suck hard enough they eventually draft a bunch of awesome players.

ME: You know I work in the sports analytics community, right? I understand Moneyball. It’s a bad tradeoff. There is no guarantee of future success, only of present failure. 

FRIENDS: It’s genius. We’ll have lots of lottery picks. And once they hit, yowza! Why aren’t you excited about this?

ME: Because right now the Sixers are 7-43 and we are watching out-of-town hockey instead. 

(And before any Sixers fan comes at me about The Process because the team has been good for the last seven years: yes, they make the playoffs with a big-name roster every year and lose before they reach the Finals. Just like the Cowboys. The Sixers were historically bad on purpose for three years so they could become the NBA’s Cowboys.)

The Commanders are absolutely set at the Old Guy Who No Longer Produces YAC position on the depth chart with Ertz and Ekeler. Their choices at left tackle, however, are 33-year old (in July) journeyman swing tackle Cornelius Lucas and third-round pick Brandon Coleman of TCU, whom many experts projected as a guard. The Commanders’ major acquisition at outside cornerback was Michael Davis, who allowed nine touchdowns for the Chargers last year. Armstrong looked great for the Cowboys when getting blocked on third-and-long by whoever wasn’t coping with Parsons and Tank Lawrence, Fowler looked OK when getting blocked on third-and-longer by whoever was left after that. 

Quality edges, left tackles and cornerbacks are expensive and hard to find. The football faction of Harris’ multi-sport council of geniuses surely knows that it will take a year or two to find playoff-caliber starters at those positions. That’s fine, but it’s not an excuse to double down on the failed-prospect edge rushers and older-than-dust tight ends.

As for the Commanders coaching staff, Kingsbury isn’t the only oddball. Offensive line coach Bobby Johnson punched a Giants linebacker during a training-camp dustup back in 2022; he probably should steer clear of Wagner on hot days. Johnson was also the mastermind behind the Giants’ decision to cross-train all of their linemen at multiple positions in case of injuries last year. When the injuries arrived, it turned out that no one was any good at any position. 

Meanwhile, running game coordinator Anthony Lynn, a head coach and well-regarded offensive mind until he failed to make Justin Herbert an insta-Hall of Famer (funny how that keeps happening), revealed the coaching staff’s secret plan for overcoming deficiencies on the offensive line: let Jayden Daniels run more.

"You have a quarterback that can create and move a little bit,” Lynn said during OTAs. “You don't have to have Trent Williams when you have a quarterback that can do that a little bit so that we can move the pocket, change the launch point."

Sam Howell, the Commanders’ starter in 2023, was very mobile. He was sacked a league-high 85 times. Justin Fields, who is as mobile as Barry Allen, led the NFL with 55 sacks in 2022 and has a 12.4% career sack rate. Lynn may just have been riffing optimistically in response to a direct question about Daniels’ scrambling, but it’s still discouraging to hear a coach equate mobility with sack prevention, especially when talking about a rookie, when young quarterbacks have been running themselves into trouble for several generations. And Lynn is the Commanders offensive coach I trust the most. 

The Commanders deserve credit for being very busy in the offseason. Once the Ertz/Ekeler scaffolding falls away and Wagner and Magic launch their exclusive line of speedboats or pocket squares or whatever, the Commanders should be left with several useful players. The draft class looks promising. Better to aggressively churn the roster right away than to spend a year performatively “evaluating” everyone, which Harris got out of the way last year. Everything could turn out fine if Daniels doesn’t pick up bad habits and/or injuries as a rookie. It’s just a shame that the Commanders appear to have baked that scenario directly into their plans.

Meanwhile, in East Rutherford

The Giants, their media and their fans no longer have Saquon Barkley to obsess about. Instead, they are trying to transform Devin Singletary, Kim-Novak-in-Vertigo style, into the object of their undying fetishization.

"I've been in the league just like him," Singletary said when asked about stepping into Barkley’s shoes. "He's only been in the league a year before me. … I feel like I'm a playmaker like him, so … I'm just gonna be me. It's been going well for me since I've been in the league, so that's what I'm gonna keep doing."

You can almost hear Singletary’s eyes glazing over in the quote above, like an eHarmony coffee date hearing about an ex-partner for the fifth time in forty-five minutes. It’s one thing for Jordan Love to be asked dozens of questions about replacing a Hall of Famer like Aaron Rodgers. It’s another thing for a running back who rushed for 898 yards last year to keep hearing about filling the enormous shoes of the guy who rushed for 962 yards. 

Singletary’s “playmaker” assertions aside, he’s a clear downgrade: Barkley flashed usefulness behind an awful offensive line last year, while Singletary is the running back AFC playoff teams discard as a rite of passage when the Super Bowl comes into range. It takes effort for a team as bad as the Giants to get worse in the offseason, but Joe Schoen, Brian Daboll and man-behind-the-curtain John Mara are nothing if not dedicated.

The major loss in East Rutherford is not Barkley but safety Xavier McKinney, signed away by the Packers in free agency. The Giants’ inability to re-sign McKinney was inexcusable. Yes, Dave Gettleman left the team in an awful cap predicament, but he left them three offseasons ago. McKinney could not be re-signed because Daniel Jones is eating $36 million in cap space this year and a big chunk of change was earmarked for Darren Waller.

Waller retired before minicamp, adding to the pervasive sense of hopelessness hovering over East Rutherford like a swampy miasma. (Not to be confused with the swampy miasma that always hangs over East Rutherford this time of year.) The Giants suspected Waller’s retirement was coming for months. They probably should have anticipated it when the Raiders traded Waller to them. Rumor has it Josh McDaniels thought Waller took too long to return from injuries, and while it’s easier to sympathize with Waller (who dealt with substance issues in the past and is dealing with a publicly-rocky marriage at present) than a bloviating martinet like McDaniels, the Giants should have anticipated that the injury-prone 31-year old was already in steep decline. They still invested $22 million guaranteed and traded a third-round pick for him, with a net return of 552 yards, one touchdown and not enough cap liquidity to retain a young Pro Bowl safety.

Candidates to replace McKinney include second-round pick Tyler Nubin from Minnesota and … this can’t be right … Jalen Mills? The Eagles gave up on Mills as a safety two crises in the secondary ago! Mills’ three seasons as a Patriots cornerback were emblematic of the malaise of the late Belichick era: he’s the sort of defender the Patriots used to allow to sign elsewhere after a misleadingly-productive season in their system, but he instead became weirdly irreplaceable. 

Nubin is fine, but the Giants would have been much better off with McKinney and a second-round offensive lineman. Daniel Bellinger and fourth-round pick Theo Johnson will replace Waller. If you are keeping score, the Giants are weaker at running back, safety and tight end than last year.

The Giants are much stronger at wide receiver than in years past, thanks to first-round pick Malik Nabers, about whom nothing snarky can be said. But Nabers’ arrival did not prevent a sad little drama on the receiver depth chart. 

Darius Slayton held out of OTAs in a contract dispute. The Giants decided to send Slayton a message by bringing back Sterling Shepard. Shepard, a holdover from the Eli Manning/Odell Beckham boots-on-the-boat era, hasn’t had a full healthy season since 2018. He has caught 36, 13 and 10 passes over the last three years. But time stands still in East Rutherford, so Shepard’s return was trumpeted as if the Giants had brought back a potential difference maker. In fairness, Slayton’s absence was trumpeted as if the Giants were missing a potential difference maker. The Giants have forgotten what difference makers look like.

Eventually, Slayton returned, much to the relief of Daniel Jones, who might not play up to his usual lofty standards without his favorite target. Shepard was released and signed with the Buccaneers as part of the NFC South’s transition from a division into a retirement community. The Giants have one of the NFL’s worst rosters, but they make up for it by acting like a championship team succumbing to the trappings of success.

My Almanac Giants chapter discusses how similar the Schoen/Daboll team is to the Gettleman teams. Indeed, future Giants historians will probably lump everything from 2016 to about three years from now into one Post-Coughlin Collapse era. 

The common denominator of the last decade has been Mara, an owner who makes you really appreciate Jerry Jones. Jerrah meddles loudly and proudly. Mara wears his Traditional Steward of the Game mask in public, then leaves grubby fingerprints all over the Giants’ dumbest decisions. Jones is Mara’s pet project. So was gibbering madman Joe Judge. There’s a good chance the Schoen-Daboll regime collapses this year, especially because Daboll sounds more and more like Judge on weaker tranquilizers every time an assistant coach leaves in a huff. If the Giants indeed spiral into even more hilarious dysfunction, Mara will purse his lips, express disappointment, and ardently search for the person responsible. Hot-dog costume not included.  

Fear and Loathing in South Philly

Iggles fan manic depression currently manifests itself as giddiness at the state of the rebuilt roster spiked with crippling anxiety that everyone in the Eagles organization not-so-secretly hates Nick Sirianni, each other and themselves.

Unfortunately, the DVOA projections in the Almanac will only fuel those anxieties. I can’t give too much away, but the Eagles’ projected win total is less-than-spectacular.

The analytics, as you might expect, aren’t gaga over Saquon Barkley. They also don’t shrug off Jason Kelce’s departure the way Eagles fans seem to have done, perhaps because it feels like he has not left at all. (You can’t turn on a Phillies broadcast without seeing Kelce shotgun a beer to promote a charity golf tournament.) 

The biggest issues from an analytical standpoint, however, are the arrivals of coordinators Kellen Moore and Vic Fangio. Teams that swap out both coordinators in one offseason tend to regress, no matter how well-regarded those coordinators may be. Think about it: there are generally two reasons why a team would replace both coordinators:

• That team just reached/won the Super Bowl, which means it is likely to regress no matter what, since it’s all-but-impossible to improve; or

• That team is in turmoil, which means that higher brass is in job-preservation mode, which often means that the head coach and general manager are the real problems.

The Eagles dealt with the first issue last year and may be dealing with the second one this year. Howie Roseman is enjoying a rare reprieve from Iggles fan castigation – drafting Jeremiah Trotter Jr. was like dad springing for a no-questions-asked Wildwood hotel after the prom – so Sirianni has been identified as the cause of everything from last year’s collapse to this week’s heat wave. Sirianni had a career winning percentage of .750 as of December 1st, but he suddenly has zero benefit of the doubt outside the organization, and his leash appears mighty short within it.

Per Jalen Hurts, the Eagles offense is 95% new this year, which means it is Moore’s offense. All I know about Moore’s offense is that it uses a lot of motion. That’s all anyone actually knows about Moore’s offense. Moore worked for offense-oriented, fun-to-roast head coaches Mike McCarthy and Jason Garrett in Dallas, so anything the Cowboys did right was attributed to Moore, while the blunders were blamed on his bosses. Moore then joined the Chargers to rescue Justin Herbert from Joe Lombardi, but by midseason everyone was injured. So Moore has never really been his own man while having healthy starters to work with. He’s still technically working for the offense-oriented Sirianni, who will serve as a McCarthy/Garrett-like blame magnet if things go sideways, which probably suits Moore just fine. 

Moore’s motion-heavy scheme is the opposite of Sirianni’s static-by-design system, which means Jalen Hurts will be playing quarterback very differently this year: instead of calling plays at the line based on the defensive front and coverage, he’ll be reading the defense’s adjustments to motion to determine what will happen after the snap. You can imagine how such a radical change of offensive procedures could lead to a slow start, if not an outright slump, for Hurts and the offense. 

Fangio’s defense is similarly complex, and rookies Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean, perennial malcontent C.J. Gardner-Johnson and fading Darius Slay will be tasked with mastering it quickly and communicating on the field effectively. (James Bradberry is only being kept around so Roseman can try to snooker the Commanders.) Any message communicated through the mercurial Gardner-Johnson is likely to get lost in translation. At any rate, the Eagles needed to change just about everything after last year’s meltdown. They now risk becoming victims of too much change.

I leave you with last week’s news-flavored report that A.J. Brown wants NFL wide receivers to hold an offseason summit or retreat the way tight ends and edge rushers often do: group workouts, skull sessions, bonding exercises, and so on. 

What a lovely idea: let’s assemble all of society’s highest-maintenance, most egocentric personalities in one place, with no clear goals or oversight. What could possibly go wrong?

The tight ends mix on-field clinics with charity events and concerts. The wide receivers would create a cross between the last rehearsal before the middle school musical, the gas-leak episode of a Real Housewives reality show and a 17th century bread riot. They would start by carving a pentagram into the grass at midfield and joining hands to summon Antonio Brown in a puff of brimstone. Just combining Stefon Diggs, Deebo Samuel and Tyreek Hill into one zip code could cause a superspreader event of petty grievances. CeeDee Lamb and Brandon Aiyuk would give Justin Jefferson the silent treatment all week. And don’t rope Ja’Marr Chase into this: he’s in Paris playing Cyd Charisse to Joe Burrow’s Gene Kelly. That’s bonding. 

In summary: if Brown thinks that hanging out with a bunch of fellow wide re-divas sounds like both a productive use of his time AND a fun getaway, the Eagles locker room must be extremely fucked up.