Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora, who hasn’t been happy with his current contract since the ink dried on it, is entering the final year of his deal. And he remains unhappy with the situation. So he’s doing what he’s fully authorized to do and not showing up for voluntary Organized Team Activities.
Umenyiora’s unhappiness with his deal created a training-camp standoff in 2011, and injuries limited him to nine regular-season games with seven starts. He appeared in all four postseason games, starting none of them.
The good news for the Giants is that a contract rift with a high-profile defensive end has launched each of the team’s last two championship seasons, with Michael Strahan holding out for most of training camp in 2007 and Umenyiora creating a contract-driven distraction last year.
Still, the smart move for the Giants would be to trade him. The problem is that his next team would want to work out an extension to his current contract, and there’s a chance he wants more than a trade partner would pay him.
Until then, the question is whether he’ll report for a mandatory minicamp and whether he’ll report for training camp.
Maybe he’ll eventually offer to show up if he gets 500,000 Twitter followers.