So much for the football "offseason."
NFL news has dominated sports pages across the country in the past week-plus, proving once again that while baseball is America's pastime, football remains its favorite sport.
Amid the flurry of head-turning activity were notable trades involving quarterbacks Russell Wilson and Carson Wentz, three-time All-Pro linebacker Khalil Mack, and four-time Pro Bowl wideout Amari Cooper. Those deals came shortly after reigning MVP Aaron Rodgers confirmed he would be returning to the Green Bay Packers for an 18th season.
To cap it all off, legendary QB Tom Brady announced his return on Sunday, just 40 days after declaring he was hanging up his helmet and pads.
And some of the most compelling narratives had little to do with roster shuffling.
The slew of transactions helped to push a rather damning story out of the news cycle, regarding Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Calvin Ridley. The four-year veteran, who tallied nearly 1,400 receiving yards in 2020, was suspended for the entirety of the 2022 campaign after it was revealed he had gambled on games.
Meanwhile, the league's broadcast partners continued their offseason of upheaval, with longtime FOX play-by-play announcer Joe Buck reportedly reuniting with his former partner, analyst Troy Aikman, to call games for ESPN's "Monday Night Football."
On the more salacious side of things, a congressional staffer to U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, the former physician to President Trump, filed an explosive lawsuit against Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, seeking to establish that Jones is her biological father and has been paying her and her mother hush money since her birth out of wedlock in 1996.
Finally, there appeared to be a degree of resolution in the uncertainty regarding Texans QB Deshaun Watson, when a grand jury declined to indict him in relation to allegations of sexual misconduct. While Watson still faces multiple civil lawsuits and potential punishment from the league, the resolution of the criminal cases appeared to signal that a trade out of Houston could soon be in the offing.
Try as they might, the other sports leagues would be hard-pressed to keep up with such a series of notable stories.
While MLB Spring Training would normally be in full swing by mid-March, the league instead only managed to lift its 99-day lockout after finally reaching a new deal on a collective bargaining agreement.
The news was surely welcomed by all, but the mudslinging that preceded it surely was not the kind of headlines either the league or its players would have liked to be making.
The end of the lockout was supposed to mark the onset of a frenzied period of transactions, since the usual Hot Stove activity was prematurely shut down at the outset of the league stoppage. Such moves were initially slow to come, but the weekend saw things finally heating up a bit.
Perhaps most eclipsed by the NFL were the NCAA's men's and women's basketball leagues, with the annual reveal of their respective March Madness brackets wholly overshadowed by Brady's announcement. The NBA stretch run, too, felt like an afterthought.
Whether it's good news or bad, the NFL is America's undisputed sporting powerhouse.
And, oh yeah, the league's offseason begins on Wednesday, marking the official start of free agency -- though the "legal tampering" period was set to begin on Monday, when many notable free agents were expected to agree to terms.
The late spring and early summer months will surely bring a relative lull in the NFL calendar, but for now there's little doubting the league's preeminence.
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