Dallas Cowboys
Love: A Revitalized Offense
In 2014, everything was clicking for the Cowboys offense - Tony Romo having the season of a lifetime, Dez Bryant being unguardable in the end zone, DeMarco Murray averaging over 100 yards on the ground per game behind the best offensive line in the league. And then the karma pendulum swung entirely the other way in 2015 with Romo and Bryant suffering disastrous injuries early in the season and Dallas failing to recapture that rushing production with Joseph Randle and Darren McFadden. A year later, Romo and Bryant are ready to return at full strength, and they'll have a versatile workhorse in newly drafted Ezekiel Elliott to help carry the load. After putting up two 2,000-yard seasons at Ohio State where he averaged over six yards per carry, Elliott has all the makings of a Rookie of the Year, especially behind Dallas' offensive line. With a little more luck in the injury department, it's easy to envision the Cowboys bouncing back to that 12-win division title form they achieved just two years ago.
And no, I don't mean this in a Pete Rose kind of way. I mean that the Dallas Cowboys of recent years don't seem to have "off-the-field concerns" in their front office vocabulary, and it keeps coming back to bite them big time. In 2015, the Cowboys [understandably] let RB DeMarco Murray walk to a much bigger contract in Philly and took a chance on Joseph Randle, who was already building quite a rap sheet for shoplifting, drug possession and domestic altercations. He lasted just six games before an injury and a league-issued suspension led Dallas to waive him - the story hasn't ended well at all for Randle. Then of course there was the Cowboys' much more controversial move to bring in Greg Hardy last season despite the defensive end's recent conviction for domestic assault and ouster from the Panthers roster. When photos of the assault emerged in the media last November, the Cowboys spent their energies finding Hardy a post-game getaway car and issuing this ridiculous non-statement about supposedly not condoning domestic violence rather than acknowledging it in any substantive way. As with Randle, Hardy is no longer with the team, but who can help but think this has more to do with his dropoff in performance than with any sudden concern about his character? These days, Dallas will take their chances with Randy Gregory and DeMarcus Lawrence, both of whom have already been suspended for four games in 2016 for failing multiple drug tests. The Cowboys sure know how to pick 'em.
New York Giants
Love: Beefing Up that DefenseOh to be a green-eyed Saints fan and watch another team do something truly substantive to improve a terrible defense. The Giants allowed a league-worst 300 passing yards per game last season and were third-worst only to New Orleans and Jacksonville in points allowed. But given the chance to rebuild this offseason, they landed quite the big free agency kahuna in Olivier Vernon - he was third in the league for quarterback knockdowns last year and fills a very clear need for the Giants in generating more pocket pressure. New York also took significant strides to upgrade its secondary in the draft and in free agency, most notably in nabbing former Ram CB Janoris Jenkins to play alongside Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. With Vernon bringing the heat upfront and these two defensive backs making it hard for opposing quarterbacks to find an open hot read, Big Blue could take a big leap forward this year in the area where they've struggled most. That's a scary proposition considering how high this team's potential on the other side of the ball has been since Eli Manning found Odell Beckham.
Confession: I'm having a hard time finding something substantive to say here - not because I'm a Giants fan or anything, but because I don't really have a lot of new things to say about Eli Manning's goofiness or Tom Coughlin-replacement (finally!) Ben McAdoo or old news like Jason Pierre-Paul's Yoda hand. Don't Google it. So I will turn to the guy who seems imminently likeable and incredibly fun to watch and speculate that he has nowhere to go but down in the "court" of public opinion. Odell Beckham, Jr. is simply spectacular - arguably the most talented receiver of this generation with his speed, his hands and his deliberate conditioning to making circus catch after circus catch. He might just be my favorite player in the league. And because he's a hip, young, fashion-forward star, there's going to be some point where he wears something so ridiculous or saturates the airwaves with so many endorsements or engages in Twitter warfare so petty that we might just grow to hate him. Speaking of, with Josh Norman joining the rival Redskinks this offseason, we could get an unhealthy dose of ODB going AWOL in these games like he did back in December. It was amusing the first time, but Beckham clearly let the shutdown corner get to him - one more ill-advised personal foul against Norman and he could face ejection. Don't do it, ODB!
Philadelphia Eagles
Love: Moving on from Chip Kelly the GMDuring this blog series last year, I pondered whether Chip Kelly would turn out to be a mad scientist or just mad after he upended the better parts of the Eagles roster for the likes of Sam Bradford, Byron Maxwell and DeMarco Murray. By all accounts, Kelly's free agency shell game was a disaster that made this team worse off in a lot of skill positions, and it cost him his head-coaching gig with the Eagles despite two previous 10 - 6 seasons. Philly has already started to undo some of Kelly's worst moves by trading away Maxwell and Murray and restocking for depth during the draft. Although there are still plenty of questions about how first-time head coach Doug Pederson will do and what to make of the Eagles' many, many quarterbacks, they're clearly doing a 180 from Chip Kelly's incoherent front office strategy, and that alone should keep them out of the NFC cellar this season.
Here’s one stinkbomb the Eagles front office can’t blame on Chip Kelly: resigning Sam “Baby Arm” Bradford to a two-year, $36 million deal after a perfectly mediocre 19 touchdown/14 interception season. That deal alone was perplexing given how bad Bradford's arm strength looked all season and how injury-prone he's been for the entirety of his pro career. The Eagles also lured backup Chase Daniel away from Kansas City on his own $20 million deal, which seemed like a reasonable way to hedge their bet with Bradford. But then Philadelphia continued to chip away at its capital to rebuild by trading five draft picks to get North Dakota State QB Carson Wentz and signing him to his own $20 million deal. Although Wentz had his way with the rest of the Missouri Valley Conference in college, it's far from guaranteed that he'll translate in the exponentially more competitive world of the NFL. If Philly ends up trading away one of these passers to fill out another part of the roster or reload on lost draft picks, all of these moves might not look so bad, but this sure looks like a lot of overleveraging without a clear long-term strategy. It wouldn't surprise me if the Eagles are still trying to sell their old Beanie Babies on eBay for $50 a pop.
Washington Redskinks
Love: Josh Norman's New DigsSix months ago, it seemed like a no-brainer that All Pro cornerback Josh Norman would sign a new long-term deal with the Carolina Panthers and remain a key piece of that relentlessly great defense. Carolina was quick to put the franchise tag on him in March to keep him on the roster while working toward a better long-term deal. But in one of the more surprising turns of the offseason, the Panthers rescinded their tag on Norman and let him walk away altogether in free agency. $75 million later, Washington is the big winner of the Josh Norman sweepstakes, and this should be a vast improvement from the middling to bad secondary of 2015. Although he comes at a big price after a fairly short run of excellence, he's almost certainly an upgrade from what the Redskinks have been working with to this point and gives them a great reason to believe they can repeat as division winners in the always-confounding NFC East. For a team that plays Odell Beckham and Dez Bryant four times a year, having a guy who can do this is worth the premium.
I'm going to depart from my usual reminders in this section that Dan Snyder is the Snidely Whiplash of NFL owners and burst a different bubble for the Redskinks fans who somehow continue to support this petty tyrant. (Sorry, not sorry) A large reason for Washington's success this past year was the ascension of Kirk "You Like That" Cousins. With Robert Griffin's star falling in Washington and coach Jay Gruden's growing confidence in this fourth-year backup, Cousins got the nod to become a full-time starter in 2015, and he did not disappoint with a 29-TD, 4,100-yard stat line and the team's first division title in three years. Key to the QB's success was his improvement in protecting the football. In Cousins' previous 14 games as a backup, he committed a woeful 19 interceptions and managed a 2 - 7 win-loss record; in 2015, he improved to just 11 interceptions over 16 games and won nine of them. But with a swing like that in a very small sample size, who knows at this point who the real Kirk Cousins is? For once, the Redskinks did a smart thing and put this enigmatic passer under the franchise tag to see if he can sustain his recent success. However, I've got a feeling he'll come back down to Earth this year - with the Cowboys and Giants looking much better and a tough schedule that includes the AFC North, NFC North, Panthers and Cardinals, there are no cakewalks in sight and a lot of ball-hungry hawks who would love to get Cousins' interception rate back to form. Buyer beware.
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