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New York Giants owner John Mara appeared on NFL Network on Tuesday and was asked about the team's ongoing negotiations with wide receiver Victor Cruz. Since there has not been any progress on this deal in months, there's no news to report. But here's what Mara said, per Ohm:

"I'm pretty confident that we'll end up reaching a deal with him," Mara said on NFL Network. "This is not that atypical a situation. Player contracts, particularly with star players like Victor, can tend to drag on from time to time. I think we'll get it done."

...

"This is the right place for him to play," Mara said. "He's a star in this area, he's an important part of our team, and I think we'll eventually get a deal done, but it's just a process that you have to go through. And we're going through it right now. There's communication, and it's slow but steady, and I think at some point we'll reach a deal."

Somebody asked during our chat Tuesday afternoon what the point is of Mara saying anything publicly on this. The answer is that this is a case where "negotiating in the media" is to the team's benefit. Look at the two critical elements of what Mara's saying:

1. The team is confident it will reach a deal with Cruz. This serves to calm elements of the fan base that might be worried about losing Cruz. It portrays the team as the reasonable side, and the one that cares enough to reassure the fans that it will all be OK. Part of the Giants' goal surely is to get or keep public opinion on their side, and saying things like this can help with that. In general (and I stress "in general"), fans have historically sided with teams over players in contract disputes, believing that the money is significant enough that the player should be happy with any offer. So the Giants are operating from that position of strength in terms of the fight for public opinion. Coming out and offering reassurance helps project that.

2. Cruz is a star in New York, and would benefit from staying there. This is a key element of the team's argument. The Giants aren't going to give Cruz every dollar that he wants, but Cruz will more than make up for it with endorsement and other such opportunities that will be more lucrative in New York than they would be in another market. It makes sense, is likely true and will ring so with the public that's hearing Mara's words. It serves as another reminder that the player should be happy with what he has and take what's on the table lest the opportunity of a lifetime vanish suddenly due to injury or a shift in the team's priorities (say, to Hakeem Nicks).

Part of the way the Giants believe they can get Cruz to accept the offer they've made is to increase the public pressure on him to do it. The words they're using when they speak publicly about this situation are designed to help with that. That's why you see Mara talking about this publicly. He wouldn't be doing it if he didn't think it would ultimately help the Giants get what they want.

On Thursday night, the New York Giants added a big piece to their aging offensive line with first-round pick Justin Pugh. On Friday night, in the second round of the NFL draft, they did the same for their defensive line, selecting Ohio State defensive tackle Johnathan Hankins with the 17th pick of the round (49th overall).

Hankins is a run-stuffing defensive tackle who likely projects as a rotational player of the kind the Giants like to use on the interior of their defensive line. They are undergoing a transition of sorts in there, as Chris Canty and Rocky Bernard have left and been replaced by guys like Cullen Jenkins and Mike Patterson. Linval Joseph remains as a reliable performer at defensive tackle, and they brought back Shaun Rogers and still like Markus Kuhn, so Hankins joins a deep stable of interior defensive linemen in New York. As is the case with the first-rounder Pugh, this is a guy who could contribute right away if he shows enough in the offseason and training camp but doesn't have to. If he needs time to develop in their system, they have enough bodies at his position to allow him that.

Giants owner John Mara said earlier in this offseason that the team needed to get tougher and meaner on both lines, and with their first two picks of this year's draft, they appear to be paying attention to their owner's mandate.

PHOENIX -- Rich Campbell of The Washington Times asked New York Giants owner John Mara about his status as Public Enemy No. 1 among Washington Redskins fans since the management council (of which he's the chair) imposed $36 million in salary-cap penalties against the Redskins a year ago. Mara played along:

It was at these meetings last March when he told reporters the Redskins violated “the spirit of the salary cap” during the uncapped 2010 season. “Quite frankly, I think they’re lucky they didn’t lose draft picks,” he said.

Mara believes those words prompted his vilification.

“I think that’s where it comes from, but it’s over and done with,” he said. “It didn’t exactly hurt them. They put together a hell of a team last year.”

Mara also told Rich that he is not the one who orchestrated the penalties, instead shifting the responsibility to "the league office and the players' association," which is a bit disingenuous since the NFLPA was not involved in this situation until Mara and the management council decided on the penalties and the league had to strong-arm the players into signing off on them under threat of a reduced league-wide salary cap. Mara earned his villain status among Redskins fans by leading the charge for the penalties long before that time and by publicly defending them a year ago.

But as he points out, the Redskins won the division last year and the Giants missed the playoffs.

PHOENIX -- If you were hoping, as the Washington Redskins were, that they would come out here to the NFL owners meetings and be able to convince the league to give them back some of the $36 million in salary cap room it took from them last year as a penalty for the way they structured some contracts in the uncapped 2010 season, you can stop hoping. According to Mark Maske of The Washington Post, a recent series of discussions between the Redskins and the league went nowhere, and the league continues to hold firm in its refusal to reduce or eliminate the penalties.

The Redskins had $18 million taken from their salary cap last year and $18 million again this year. The Dallas Cowboys were penalized $5 million last year and $5 million this year for the same murky reason. The cap room was redistributed evenly among 28 of the other teams (everyone but the Saints and Raiders). Partly as a result, the Redskins and Cowboys had to struggle just to get under the cap by the start of the league year last week and have not been able to do much maneuvering since free agency began.

It was always a pipe dream for the Redskins to think they could get this fixed. As soon as Giants owner John Mara, the chairman of the committee that levied the penalties, came out at last year's league meetings and angrily asserted that the Cowboys and Redskins were "lucky they didn't lose draft picks" for their perceived offenses, it was clear the league was dug in on this. There was no harm in trying, of course, but to believe the Redskins would ever get relief would have been to ignore what was actually going on. The owners insist they agreed on certain unwritten rules of behavior regarding contracts in the uncapped year and that the Redskins and Cowboys violated those rules. End of story. At least I think it is, this time.

The surprising free-agent news of the day is that former Patriots wide receiver Wes Welker has left to join the Denver Broncos on a two-year, $12 million contract. This is AFC news, of course, but there is one specific way I think it touches on the NFC East, and that's the extent to which it pertains to the New York Giants' current situation with restricted free-agent wide receiver Victor Cruz.

Welker's deal is not going to help Cruz get what he wants from the Giants. Sure, you can argue that Cruz is five and a half years younger than Welker and insist that they're not comparable cases. And that might end up mattering when it comes to the length of the deal. But in terms of money, I don't see how Cruz has a case to make more money than Welker, who's the preeminent slot receiver of his generation and someone on whom Cruz has said he models his game. Cruz is much younger, but Welker is much more accomplished, and I think those two arguments kind of cancel each other out.

What the sides are left with, then, is a Welker contract that sets the market for slot receivers. And that hits at the source of the current conflict between Cruz and the Giants. Cruz wants to be paid on production -- as a No. 1 wide receiver who's led the team in catches each of the past two seasons and ranked among the league leaders in receptions and receiving yards during that time. The Giants, who tried to use Cruz outside more last year but ended up moving him back inside in favor of rookie Rueben Randle later in the season, seem to view him as a slot receiver, and to be of the opinion that quarterback Eli Manning can help make a slot receiver a star. (Steve Smith's 107-catch 2009 season in the same role works as evidence in their favor.) So the sides have not been able to reach a deal. And if the Giants insist on painting Cruz as a slot receiver in negotiations, Welker is the comparison to which they will justifiably cling. It's not a helpful one to Cruz's case. If their current offer to Cruz is for more than $6 million per season, they can ask him, "Why should you make more than Welker?" if it's less, they can ask him, "Why should you make as much as Welker?"

Cruz and the Giants have been trying for months to get a long-term contract extension worked out. The Giants would like to have it done so they can move ahead with other plans, including a new deal that will need to be done by this time next year for Hakeem Nicks (whom they do consider a true No. 1 wideout). Cruz would like to have it done because he wants to cash in on two straight excellent years and also stay in New York, where he and Manning have had so much success together.

But it is not done. And while the Giants have tendered Cruz at a first-round level and are unlikely to lose him in free agency, there remains clear frustration from both sides. Giants coach Tom Coughlin and owner John Mara have both voiced frustration within the past couple of weeks over the refusal of Cruz to accept what they feel is a generous offer. Cruz has changed agents, which of course indicates dissatisfaction with the way negotiations were going.

The Welker news will force both sides in this dispute to re-evaluate the landscape. And when they do, whether this is fair or not, I think the Giants will be happier with the extent to which it's helped their case.

The news of the day, not surprisingly, was the New York Giants tendering restricted wide receiver Victor Cruz at a first-round level, which means that any team who wants to sign Cruz would have to give the Giants a first-round pick. Assuming that doesn't happen (and it really hardly ever does), Cruz's salary for this year is scheduled to be $2.879 million. But the interesting part of today's story was the extent to which Giants owner John Mara was willing to address the contract negotiations the team has had with Cruz about a long-term deal. Per Jenny Vrentas at The Star-Ledger:

Those talks have so far been fruitless, and while Mara declined to say how close the sides got, he believes the Giants' "very substantial" offer is a good one for Cruz.

"I'm not going to get into dollars," Mara said. "I don't want to characterize (the gap). Let's just say if he took our offer, he'd be a very wealthy young man." ...

Mara said he believes in the long-term Cruz will be a Giant, but he added, "time will tell."

"I think Victor is smart enough to realize that he belongs in this area," Mara added to a response, unprompted. "I think he’s done very well for himself off the field. He’s a very popular player here. He’s had a lot of off the field opportunities. So hopefully all those other things will enter into his consideration."

It's interesting because it offers a window into the Giants' side of these negotiations. They are trying to get Cruz on the cheap. They love what he's done and the success he's had the last two years with Eli Manning, but they're remembering a season not too far in the past in which Steve Smith had 100 catches as Manning's slot receiver, and they don't want to pay real No. 1 wideout money for a guy who's best used in the slot and, they believe, could be replaced due to the ability of their quarterback to maximize receivers' production. Especially since their No. 1 wideout, Hakeem Nicks, has a deal that expires after the coming season and will need a new contract as well.

The last thing Mara said, about off-field reasons Cruz would likely want to stay in the New York market, is true. And it'll likely result in Cruz taking less money to stay. The question is how much less, and the fact that the deal has not yet been done indicates that it's far less than Cruz and his agent believe his production justifies.

Basically, I wouldn't put too much stock into anything the team owner says in a situation like this. What Mara said about Cruz today was obviously designed to try to get public sentiment on the side of the team as it negotiates with (and probably lowballs) a very popular player. I also wouldn't worry too much about another team swooping in and giving the Giants a first-round pick for Cruz -- even the Vikings, who have an extra one after today's Percy Harvin trade. Mike Wallace was a restricted free-agent wide receiver a year ago and generated no interest at all, and this year he'll be one of the highest-paid free agents on the market. The RFA market just isn't a real thing. Teams prize those first-round picks too much.

So in the end, I still think this Cruz deal with the Giants get done. The fact that Mara's saying so much out loud about it -- a week after coach Tom Coughlin was spouting pretty much the same company line -- indicates that it's been tougher than the team expected it to be. That could be because of unreasonably high demands from Cruz, but it could just as easily be because of an unreasonably low offer from the Giants.

The NFL story of the morning is that the Jets have teams interested in trading for star cornerback Darrelle Revis, who wants more than the Jets are willing to pay him. So obviously, being an NFC East blogger, I immediately start thinking about whether an NFC East team is or should be among those interested. I think there's one. Let's go down the list.

The Dallas Cowboys are set at cornerback after investing heavily last year in Brandon Carr and Morris Claiborne.

The Washington Redskins can't afford to make a deal like this. They need their second-round and third-round picks, because they don't have a first-round pick or any salary cap room.

The New York Giants could obviously use Revis and likely would love to have him, but there's no way Woody Johnson's going to let Revis play eight games a year in his stadium for John Mara's team if he can help it. I don't think the Giants can get him.

Which leaves the Philadelphia Eagles, who have the need for Revis as well as the ability to both get him and pay him. I think they need to make the effort.

The Eagles' biggest area of need is the secondary, where none of last year's four starters look like appealing options for 2013. They have to rebuild that whole thing, and what better way to start than by making a big-splash acquisition of the best defensive back in the league? They could release Nnamdi Asomugha, who was billed two years ago as something close to Revis but turned out to be very much not, and replace him with the real thing.

With eight picks in the upcoming draft and about $33 million in salary cap room right now ($44 million if they cut Asomugha), the Eagles have the wherewithal to make any move they want. Assuming the Jets are as motivated as they seem to be to trade Revis, the Eagles might be able to get him with a package led by their high third-round pick. That's a better pick than the Jets are likely to get as compensation if Revis leaves via free agency next year, and if the Jets wait for that to happen, Revis could end up signing with the Patriots and terrorizing the Jets twice a season for the rest of his career.

All of this is predicated on the Eagles' comfort level with Revis' return from his ACL injury, and for that reason the whole thing might not go down on the Jets' apparently preferred accelerated timetable. We might have to wait until closer to the draft, by which point the market for Revis will have thinned out as the result of free agency. But if you believe he'll come back healthy, this is a guy who hasn't yet turned 28 and is the absolute No. 1 difference-maker at his position in the league. He enables the rest of your defense to operate more freely, knowing the offense's top receiver is covered. He fits any scheme, and would instantly improve any defense.

If there are indeed teams ready to make a move for Revis, the Eagles need to make sure they're one of them. It would be a stellar way for their new coaching staff to kick off this portion of the offseason.

The Associated Press used to have a rule (not sure whether they still do) that they would not report a threatened or prospective lawsuit -- only one that had actually been filed. I always thought this was a good rule. Of course, now there are no rules. Anybody can report anything they want. It's the wild west out here. Somebody threatens to take someone else to court, it becomes a story. Makes no difference whether they can or will follow through on it. These are the times in which we live.

I bring this up because of this Washington Post story, which we've already discussed here, about the Washington Redskins threatening to seek an injunction ("considering going to court," it says) that would hold up the start of free agency while they continue to try and undo last year's salary-cap penalties. I believe the chances of the Redskins securing an injunction that would delay free agency league-wide are roughly equal to their chances of playing next year's home games on Saturn. In fact, I doubt they'll ever formally file such a request. But whatever. They're mad and they want to try and scare people. This is their right.

Anyway, according to Ed Werder, even if the Redskins go through with this insanely far-fetched plan, the Dallas Cowboys will not be joining them. The Cowboys were only stripped of $10 million in cap space -- $5 million last year and $5 million this year. While that obviously stings, it's nothing compared to the $36 million the league took from the Redskins. Jerry Jones and the Cowboys have moved on. Dan Snyder and the Redskins are still kicking and screaming. I think Jones is the one making the smarter play. Because while, as you know, I believe these teams were done wrong by a cabal of fellow billionaires who make up their own rules as they go along, there are no angels in this mess.

Jones and Snyder weren't doing what they did in that uncapped season for the benefit of the players the league had collectively decided to squeeze. They were doing it because they wanted to help position themselves to win in future seasons. They did something other teams did, but they did it to an extent that upset their fellow owners and led the league's management council to push for cap fines. That committee's chairman, Giants owner John Mara, has said he believes the Cowboys and Redskins were lucky they didn't lose draft picks as a result of this behavior.

The Cowboys are wise to move on. Maybe that's easy for them to say, because they're not as hamstrung as the Redskins are. Heck, maybe I'm wrong and the Redskins' kicking and screaming and lawsuit-threatening actually gets them some relief. But I doubt this comes to anything, and the Cowboys are smartly making their offseason plans based on the reality of the situation and not a long-shot fantasy based on lawsuits that likely will never happen.

I never know how to write this, because I don't want people to get their hopes up, because ultimately I don't think anything is going to happen. But the Washington Redskins apparently have not given up fighting the salary-cap penalty imposed on them by the league a year ago.

Remember that the NFL stripped the Redskins of $36 million in cap space ($18 million last year and $18 million this year) and redistributed among 28 other teams as punishment for the way the Redskins structured some contracts during the uncapped 2010 season. They also took $10 million away from the Dallas Cowboys and redistributed it among the same 28 teams. The Saints and Raiders didn't get any cap space taken away, but didn't get to share in the benefit.

Anyway, the Redskins have major cap problems this year as a result of this and, according to Mark Maske and Mike Jones of the Washington Post, are telling people they could file an injunction to delay the start of free agency in an effort to get some of this cap space back:

The Redskins have put contract negotiations with some of their players on hold, telling agents and players they remain hopeful they can recoup some of the salary cap space that was cut by the NFL last year, according to several people familiar with the situation.

Redskins officials have told those agents and players that they cannot negotiate in earnest until the salary cap matter is resolved. The players include some eligible for free agency in March and others who face the possibility of release unless their contracts are reworked, those people said.

I mean, I guess anything's possible. But since an arbitrator already rejected an effort by the Redskins and the Cowboys to get this thing reviewed, and since the owners and the players' union agreed on the punishments (after the owners threatened to reduce last year's salary cap if the union didn't agree), and since Giants owner John Mara, who chairs the committee that instituted the punishments, said a year ago that the Redskins and Cowboys were lucky they only lost cap space and not draft picks over this ... it seems pretty unlikely that the Redskins can get any satisfaction here.

Which is ridiculous, as I have written many times. The league's owners agreed on a collusive plan to restrict spending in a season that had no salary cap, knowing they were going to lock out the players the following offseason in an effort to break their union and grab a larger share of league revenues for themselves, and then in retrospect they decided they didn't like the way two teams deviated from the backroom deal. It's big-money corporate scheming at its worst, and the Redskins are right to be angry about the way they were treated. Common sense would dictate that they could get some of the cap money back.

I just think, if common sense were going to come into play here, it would have done so by now. So while I think it's noble that the Redskins are still trying, if I were a Redskins fan, I wouldn't get my hopes up.

An open letter to the fans of the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins:

Get excited.

You may not need my permission, or my urging. You may already be there -- as excited as you've been about a professional football game in a very long time. And if that's the case, good. You should be. Sunday night's game at FedEx Field for the NFC East title has everything any of you could possibly want. And while some of you will end your night deeply disappointed in the result while others celebrate a playoff appearance you couldn't possibly have imagined two months ago, these next 53 hours are your time to feel like kids on Christmas Eve. Get excited.

Regardless of which team you root for, think about how far you've come to get to this point. It started on the day before free agency, when the NFL took a huge chunk of salary-cap money away from each of these two teams and redistributed it among the others for what to this day continues to look like no good reason. The owner who most vocally championed and reveled in that punishment for your teams' spending during a season that featured no official spending rules was John Mara, the owner of the division-rival and Super Bowl champion New York Giants. His team can't win the NFC East. Yours can. His team needs a minor miracle Sunday just to get into the playoffs. Your team has control of its own destiny. If you want to cackle in glee about that particular irony, that's your right. Get satisfaction.

If the Cowboys are your team, you were 3-5 on Election Day, losers of two straight heartbreakers to the Giants and Falcons and wondering when anything was ever going to change. Defensive starters were dropping like flies, DeMarco Murray was out with a foot injury that refused to heal and Tony Romo was throwing interceptions around as though they were "I Voted" stickers. You were two and a half games out of first place behind the team that took the division from you last December, and you wanted everybody gone. If you want to look back over the last seven games and wonder what made Romo stop throwing picks or marvel at the way Jason Garrett has managed the second half or tell everyone it's about time Dez Bryant turned into one of the best receivers in the league, go ahead. Get amazed.

If you are a Redskins fan, you were 3-6 heading into the bye week. Your coach, Mike Shanahan, was defending comments he made after a miserable loss to Carolina about using the rest of this season for evaluations. You were pleased, obviously, with the brilliance of rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III, and of the belief that the future looked bright. But you were still staring at a second half of the season that was going to feel too sadly familiar -- watching from the sidelines while the teams you hate fought it out for the division title. If you want to slap your friends on the back and shout, "Did you ever think we'd win six in a row after the bye and be in first place in Week 17?", be my guest. Get proud.

Whichever of these teams is your favorite, you have to be happy about the fact that this rivalry means something again. Cowboys-Redskins is one of the most historically intense rivalries the NFL has. Popular wisdom holds that the reason the Cowboys were kept in the NFC East when the divisions realigned, in spite of good geographic reasons to move them elsewhere, was to preserve the Cowboys-Redskins rivalry by allowing them to continue playing each other twice a year. So if this week gives you reason to think about Tom Landry and Joe Gibbs and Jimmy Johnson and John Riggins and Michael Irvin and Darrell Green and Troy Aikman and Joe Theismann... good. It's time to hate again -- time to remember why that star bugs you so much, time to get outwardly indignant about a politically incorrect team nickname that wouldn't bother you otherwise. Get trash-talking.

Get jacked. Get geeked. Get fired up. This is a big, big game, folks -- the kind of game that justifies every kind of the silly, overblown enthusiasm sports fans can muster. If you're a Redskins fan or a Cowboys fan, Sunday is your night. And the days leading up to it are for getting excited.

LANDOVER, Md. -- As the "Monday Night Football" game between the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants gets set to begin here, our man Adam Schefter as an interesting story about a motivational tactic the Redskins' coaches are trying to use. Apparently, they have been playing up quotes from Giants owner John Mara from back in March about the salary-cap penalties that took a total of $36 million in cap space from the Redskins and $10 million from the Dallas Cowboys over two years for the way they spent money during the uncapped 2010 season:

Mara, the chairman of the NFL's management committee, was among those who led the charge to take away $36 million worth of salary-cap space from the Redskins this past offseason.

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AP Photo/Paul SpinelliRedskins coaches are using the role of Giants owner John Mara in salary-cap penalties as motivational tactic.

In an article that was posted on ESPN.com on March 25, Mara was quoted as saying, "I think (the Redskins) are lucky they didn't lose draft picks" and "I thought the penalties imposed were proper."

In the days leading up to the Giants-Redskins game on "Monday Night Football," Washington coaches and officials had Mara's quotes hanging on sheets of paper on their office doors, according to team sources.

Based on the quotes, the Redskins are convinced that Mara tried to have enough draft picks taken away so that Washington couldn't complete its deal with St. Louis for the rights to select quarterback Robert Griffin III.

I know Mike Shanahan and Redskins management feel as though they were done wrong by Mara and the league on this issue. They didn't like that it was Mara, who owns a team that plays in the same division as the Redskins and Cowboys, who pushed for the penalties. They didn't like that he was so vocal in his defense of them. And they didn't like that the penalties were imposed without warning less than 24 hours before free agency started. They're bitter and angry, still, even though their appeals were denied and they've had to make plans for next year with $18 million less in salary cap room than they expected to have.

But I question this as a motivational tactic for the actual players. This is a dispute between the front offices, and it has little if anything to with the players who are on the Redskins' roster. If anything, additional salary-cap space this past offseason would have enabled the Redskins to bring in players that would have blocked one or more of their current players from the jobs they currently have. If I were a player, I'm not sure I'd be all that upset that my team was prevented by outside forces from bringing in better players. I might even take such an idea as an insult.

So we'll see, but even if the Redskins win this game tonight I don't expect to go into the locker room afterward and hear a lot of talk about how the salary cap penalties motivated them to beat the Giants. Got to believe the chance to move within a game of first place with four games to go is motivation enough.

ESPN's Adam Schefter is reporting that the New York Giants are one of three teams currently over the 2012 NFL salary cap by about $700,000 and must do some juggling in order to get under by the time the regular season starts Wednesday. This is the e-mail from Adam:

Houston, Detroit and N.Y. Giants are all roughly 700,000 over the NFL's salary cap, according to a league source. Houston can take their cap exception from the Redskins and Cowboys and get under the cap but the Giants and Lions will have to make a move or restructure contracts to get under cap. They have until Wednesday to get under the cap.

This is, obviously, quite ironic, since it was Giants owner John Mara who chairs the committee that imposed the salary cap punishments on the Redskins and the Cowboys for the way they spent their money in the uncapped 2010 season. Mara was the driving force behind those punishments and spoke out strenuously in defense of them at the owners' meetings in March, when he said the Redskins and Cowboys were "lucky they didn't lose draft picks" as punishment.

The Redskins were docked a total of $36 million in cap space over the next two seasons and the Cowboys $10 million, and that cap space was divvied up among 28 other teams ($1.6 million apiece) to use as they see fit. Since Houston's apparently remains unused, they're OK. But the Giants already took their $1.6 million, so they will need to restructure a contract or make a move.

I checked with Ohm Youngmisuk, who covers the Giants for ESPNNewYork.com, and he suggests Chris Canty, Michael Boley, Corey Webster and Antrel Rolle as restructure candidates (though Rolle restructured last year). Ohm also wondered whether the team could get under by working out an injury settlement with either Terrell Thomas or Shaun Rogers, who are on injured reserve and out for the season. So there are ways they can do it without impacting their roster too much. It's just a pain for them to have to do it, and you really do have to admit it's more than a little bit ironic that it's happening to Mara.

I don't know. Maybe this is for the best.

The effort by the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins to recover a combined $46 million in salary-cap penalties won't even get off the ground. Stephen Burbank, the NFL's independent arbitrator, granted the league's request to dismiss the complaint. And the teams released a joint statement saying they would respect the decision, so that's that. The Redskins lost a total of $36 million and the Cowboys $10 million in cap room over the next two seasons, and they're just going to have to deal with it because it's what the other NFL owners think is fair and the arbitrator found their argument that the complaint not be heard to be a persuasive one.

There's no way that any sensible, thinking person who's not an NFL owner can honestly feel that the league acted justly in penalizing the Cowboys and the Redskins for spending their money and structuring their contracts the way they did during the uncapped 2010 season. But it doesn't matter, because the NFL plays by its own rules and no one else's, and that's the lesson for today.

But in the end, maybe it's for the best. Maybe Burbank is doing everyone a favor. There's no one on any side of this dispute who can feel good about the way they've conducted themselves. It's a badge of shame for the league and the union, and it's not even really a badge of honor for the two aggrieved parties. So maybe, even though it's not fair, Burbank is being nice by telling everyone to just stop.

This all started because NFL owners agreed, in secret, to limit spending in 2010 even though there was no cap -- to continue to structure contracts as though there were a cap, because the lockout they were about to impose was basically a thinly veiled attempt at union-busting. They knew all along they'd ultimately have a new agreement with a new cap and they didn't want anyone to have gamed the system to their advantage in the meantime. In the real world, we call this collusion -- all of the business owners in a given industry agreeing among themselves to impose restrictions on wages. But in the NFL, it's OK, because the collective bargaining agreement the owners have with the players spells out which types of collusion are allowed and which aren't.

The Redskins and Cowboys got in trouble because they didn't go along with this game, instead using the lack of a salary cap in 2010 to structure contracts in such a way as to spare themselves from salary-cap trouble in future years. The sense is that many, if not all, teams did this, and that the Redskins and Cowboys just did it to such an egregious extent that some of the other owners insisted they be punished. They'd been warned, after all, that anyone who failed to honor the secret agreement discussed in the last paragraph would be punished. Giants owner John Mara, the chairman of the management council, said at the owners meetings in March that the Cowboys and Redskins got off easy -- that they were lucky they didn't lose draft picks.

Which is baloney, of course, because you can't break rules when there aren't any. But let's not go too far in letting our hearts break for Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder, who weren't exactly acting on charitable impulses here. They didn't break with the rest of the owners because they felt the policy was unfair to players. They did it because they thought it would give them an advantage, and that they could get away with it.

And then there's the NFLPA, for which this is anything but a shining moment. The players' union, which should be fighting such collusive behavior, instead capitulated and agreed to the sanctions against the Redskins and Cowboys because the owners threatened to reduce this year's salary cap if they did not. The union believes that was the right decision for its membership, and in the end it may well have been. But it is not a decision of which the union can be proud, and the fact the NFLPA allowed itself to be outmaneuvered by the league on this matter likely contributed to Burbank's decision to dismiss the complaint. The league's argument was based, largely, on the fact the sanctions were agreed upon by the league and the union. And jeez, if those two agree on something, how can it not be OK? Right?

It's all just plain ridiculous, the whole thing, and it's probably for the best that it all goes away. Everybody associated with it should be ashamed of themselves (though, sadly, no one seems to be). And while it's unfair that only the Cowboys and Redskins suffer for the arrogance of a group of people who continue to play its paying customers for willing patsies, the truly sad part is that anyone in this situation gets to walk away feeling as though he was in the right.

Good and interesting insight in this story from Albert Breer on NFL.com about what, exactly, upset the other teams in the NFL about the way the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins spent their money in the uncapped 2010 season. The NFL stripped the Redskins of $36 million and the Cowboys of $10 million in salary cap space over the next two years, and those two teams have filed a grievance against the league and the NFLPA to dispute the punishment. But to this point, it has remained unclear what, exactly, the other teams felt they did wrong.

Albert writes that, by structuring the contracts of Miles Austin, Albert Haynesworth and DeAngelo Hall in such a way as to inflate 2010 base salaries and save money in future years, the Cowboys and Redskins inflated the franchise-player numbers for wide receivers, defensive tackles and cornerbacks. As a result, the Chargers had a hard time keeping Vincent Jackson, the Ravens were handcuffed by the contract they wanted to give Haloti Ngata and the Bengals were unable to keep Johnathan Joseph. For example:

Austin's contract was instrumental in pushing the receiver number from $9.5 million in 2010 to $11.3 million in 2011. San Diego franchised Vincent Jackson at the latter number in 2011. The leverage Jackson gained from having an $11.4 million tender made him difficult to sign to a long-term deal, and the resulting 2012 franchise figure -- by rule, 120 percent of the previous number, which came out to $13.7 million -- made it even harder to tag him again for the club.

So San Diego, which likely would've tagged Jackson again if the number had been more affordable, let Jackson walk. He signed a five-year, $55.6 million contract with the Buccaneers this offseason.

Many thanks to Albert for shining some light on what, exactly, the other owners found wrong with the way the Cowboys and the Redskins behaved in a year that was supposed to have no spending restrictions. The Cowboys and Redskins are arguing that there was no rule against what they did, and while that may be true, Giants owner and NFL management committee chairman John Mara said last month that all teams were warned that they could be punished if they did what these two teams did.

But for a couple of reasons, I continue to believe the teams that are complaining about this are full of it. First of all, commissioner Roger Goodell said at the owners' meetings last month that the reason for the penalties was that the teams in question had attempted to gain a competitive advantage in future years through their 2010 actions. But what Albert writes (on the league's own web site) is something quite different. Albert's reporting indicates that the reason the other teams got upset at the Cowboys and the Redskins was because their actions required them to spend more money than they wanted to spend to pay their own players. And if that's the case, then the artificial, unwritten guidelines the owners tried to put in place to control spending during the uncapped year were not an effort to maintain future competitive balance (as they have claimed publicly), but rather clearly an attempt to control player salaries.

Furthermore, it's important to remember that there never would have been an uncapped 2010 season -- or any reason to cut backroom deals to regulate spending therein -- if the owners hadn't decided to lock out the players in 2011 in an effort to restructure the CBA in a manner more favorable to themselves. Had they negotiated in good faith prior to 2010, they could have put a new CBA in place that would have imposed a salary cap and clear spending rules for that season. But because they had decided long before to impose a lockout strategy and not negotiate until they had the players backed up against the wall, the 2010 season arrived without a salary cap, as the prior CBA said it must if it were to be the final league year.

The entire concept of the uncapped 2010 season was an avoidable mess of the owners' own making. The lockout was an unnecessary act of pure greed, as evidenced by a new CBA that solved almost none of the competitive-balance issues raised by small-market owners. And the idea that the teams could whisper together behind closed doors about acting as though there was a cap when there wasn't and expect every owner to go along with the plan is (and always was) utterly foolish. The salary cap penalties against the Cowboys and Redskins are part of the fallout from the clumsy way in which the NFL's owners executed their negotiating strategy, and I continue to see no common-sense reason why those teams shouldn't expect to get some sort of restitution from the arbitrator.

As you might have heard, New York Giants owner John Mara recently floated an idea that has been discussed in league circles for months: Eliminating kickoffs as a matter of player safety. Mara told the Giants' website that "there’s no consensus on it right now, but I could see the day in the future where that play could be taken out of the game."

Such a dramatic change would have far-reaching impact, from eliminating the jobs of kickoff returns to lowering the value of place-kickers. Chicago Bears place-kicker Robbie Gould, speaking this week on ESPN 1000, brought up another point: How would you replace the stadium anticipation of an opening kickoff?

"Eliminating kickoffs completely from the game, and having pee wee football where you place it at the 25- and the 30-yard line, for one, it would make [the opening] very anticlimactic for fans," Gould said.

Gould wondered if Mara was simply tossing out a line to see if any fish would bite.

"I don't think they'll ever do it. In my opinion, the league tries to find ways to make the game safer for everybody. Sometimes the ideas that they talk about never really hit full circle. … It wouldn't surprise me if they put that out there to find out whether or not, or how, the fans would react and make a decision based upon their reaction."

I hope Gould is right. Eliminating kickoffs would end a high-contact play, but isn't the entire game about high contact? And wouldn't the league be on a slippery slope here? It's one thing to toughen rules for hitting quarterbacks and defenseless receivers. It's another to eliminate entire segments of the game.

Even if you're viewing it from a legal perspective, wouldn't the NFL open itself to new liability by eliminating kickoffs? What if a punter, who routinely puts himself in a defenseless position, suffers a severe concussion on a hit and sues the NFL. Couldn't the punter argue that he wasn't given the same protection as, say, special-teams cover men were granted when the NFL eliminated kickoffs?

We could go on. What about pulling guards? Is it safe for a 190-pound cornerback to take on a 320-pound offensive lineman with a head start?

You get the drift. Agree? Disagree? Go right ahead.

Related: Grantland's Bill Barnwell offers some ideas for replacing kickoffs and onside kicks.