Pat Leonard: Commanders’ ownership change stacks NFC East leadership landscape against Giants

NEW YORK — In March 2023 in Phoenix, Ariz., Giants co-owner John Mara was asked if a sale of Washington’s NFL franchise would be good for the NFC East.

“I’m not gonna comment on that,” Mara said, before cracking: “The NFC East doesn’t need any help. The NFC East is strong enough.”

How prescient a comment that was. Dan Snyder’s absence has immediately and dramatically reset the balance of power in the division.

Philly owner Jeffrey Lurie oversees one of the smartest operations in professional sports. He has the Eagles in their second Super Bowl in three years and third Super Bowl in eight years.

Dallas owner Jerry Jones doesn’t strike confidence in his fan base, especially with this week’s uninspiring hire of Brian Schottenheimer. But Jones’ VP of personnel Will McClay knows talent, and Dallas has a 43-25 regular-season record the past four years.

The Giants organization has an unthinkable 4-30 record in their last 34 games combined against those Cowboys (1-15 in last 16) and Eagles (3-15 in last 18).

Joe Judge recorded three of those four wins, by the way — two over Philly and one over Dallas.

But in recent years, the Giants always had dysfunctional Washington sitting there, happy to get beaten once or twice a year while toiling in controversy and/or irrelevance.

The Giants built a 10-5-1 record during a 16-game span against Washington from late in 2018 through the end of the 2023 season.

It wasn’t just that the Giants could count on beating Washington, either. It was also that Washington seemingly found every way it could not to make progress both on and off the field.

They were reliably unstable.

The Giants have finished in last place in the NFC East four times in the past eight seasons. They have one second-place finish at 6-10 under Judge in 2020. And they’ve finished in third place three times.

Guess who finished in dead-last fourth in 2019, 2022 and 2023 behind the third-place Giants?

That’s right. Washington.

Now, though, with billionaire Josh Harris rescuing the Commanders, the Giants’ Mara and Tisch families face more pressure than ever to get their house in order in East Rutherford, N.J.

The question is whether they have the capacity to do it. They once won two Super Bowls in a five-year span in 2007 and 2011. That now feels like a lifetime ago.

Being an effective owner in the NFL generally comes down to three primary tasks: being financially competitive, making the right hires at the most important positions and staying out of the way in football matters.

The Giants’ owners have failed at the hiring and staying out of the way parts. And when Mara has made a concerted effort to stay out of the way recently, he has only given more power to bad hires like current GM Joe Schoen.

As for the financial part, a lot of ears perked up late this season when ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that “Mara … has railed against the NFL for making sure that the league doesn’t have this dead money in coaches’ salaries,” potentially connecting it to the team’s decision on head coach Brian Daboll.

Mara vehemently denied money was a factor in retaining Schoen and Daboll for the fourth season of their five-year contracts.

“Absolutely not. Absolutely not,” Mara said on Jan. 6. “That’s never been a factor in any coaching decision that we’ve ever made here.”

But giving play-calling back to offensive coordinator Mike Kafka would raise a similar question: what sense does that make, other than using the guy who is already under contract rather than firing him, hiring somebody else and paying double?

No one from the Tisch family has made any comment about the state of the organization recently, by the way. That half of Giants ownership has remained silent.

In early January, Giants legend Eli Manning interestingly floated during a CNBC interview that ownership is something he has thought about.

“I think it’s definitely something of interest and to look into,” Manning said. “You see more owners and teams interested in selling a minority stake. ... I know the power of the NFL & football. ... So I think it’d be an interesting opportunity to pursue.

“I think there’s probably only one team I’d be interested in pursuing, and it’s the one I played for 16 years, and it’s local, and makes the most sense,” Manning said. “But we just got to figure out if they would ever sell a little bit, or how that might happen for the Giants.”

But that’s all just talk for now. At the moment, the Maras and Tisches still run the show.

And with Harris now running the Commanders into an NFC championship appearance — and Lurie’s Eagles back in the big game — the skies are cloudier than ever with a chance of planes until further notice in northern New Jersey.