Giants calm amidst free-agent storm

It's been a week since NFL teams started adding and subtracting players in a post-lockout, fantasy football environment. The Giants' Meadowlands roommates and their biggest rivals, the Jets and the Eagles, have been piling on the big names.

But the Giants have been doing what they usually do: Keeping relatively quiet. The Osi Umenyiora saga entered new territory Thursday, when he was invited to take the night off by general manager Jerry Reese but decided to attend the evening practice. There is still drama around the Giants, but it's not because of any big free agents signing on.

The big moves have all been to the exit. Shaun O'Hara and Rich Seubert, two of the Super Bowl XLII heroes, were cut. Plaxico Burress, another Super Bowl star, came in but ultimately went to the Jets, one of the two NFL homes for wayward boys (Philadelphia being the other, of course).

And now Umenyiora, who has never quite been pleased with the six-year, $41-million extension he signed in 2005, may be on his way out if the Giants can find a trade they like.

The Giants last made a big free-agent splash in the spring of 2005, adding Burress, Antonio Pierce and Kareem McKenzie. They did add Antrel Rolle and Deon Grant to boost their secondary in the spring of 2010, but nothing compared to that haul in '05.

They have never tried to win a Super Bowl during the free-agent frenzy; this week, when the frenzy has been greater than ever before, Reese and the Giants seem especially calm.

"It isn't exactly comforting right now, because you see some teams around here getting better," Justin Tuck said. "But I understand how our organization runs their business. They've never given me a reason to doubt how they do things. And I'm not going to start now."

Tuck and Umenyiora came of age together on the defensive line, especially in that Super Bowl season. Umenyiora had already committed to his big contract by that 2007-08 run; Tuck got his five-year, $30-million deal three weeks before the Super Bowl win and hasn't made a peep about it since.

With the end of the lockout, the Giants have seemed to be deliberate about cutting any loose ends that connect them to that huge win over the Patriots 31/2 years ago. They offered Burress an incentive-laden contract, but he went for more money and surely more freedom with Rex Ryan's Jets, and it looks like the smart move for both the Giants and Burress, who have too many unpleasant memories from 2008 on.

"Fresh start is what they both needed," said Pierce, now an ESPN analyst who watched the Giants' first practice in pads Thursday night. "You don't want to see the book close between them the way it did, but everyone definitely needed to move on."

If Burress succeeds against all odds with the Jets, it will sting for the Giants, being the other team in these parts. But it is more all the moves of the Eagles that could make the Giants feel they haven't done enough, or that they are too occupied with subtracting rather than adding talent.

But this is the Giants' way. Even Pierce, who was part of a few Redskins teams that "always were kings of free agency and nothing else" before he signed with the Giants, thinks the Giants would be better off trading Umenyiora now.

"If he doesn't want to be here, you let him go," Pierce said. "It was the same with [Jeremy] Shockey a couple years ago. Osi would never become a cancer, but you don't want that locker room with him in it unhappy. You can't let it get to that point."

The Jets and Eagles, among others, have spent the first week of life after the lockout handing out contracts and reeling in the big names. The Giants are going about their business, trying to quietly move forward without some of their better-known names.

It's hard to know if that's the right move yet. But it's certainly not that surprising.