The NFL lull is here — to the limited extent it actually exists

This is supposed to be the downtime; the period where nothing happens in pro football. It’s vacation season for players, coaches and administrators — and a time when franchise operations purportedly move into a lessened state for a while.

It is done by design, the summer slowdown following the annual round of mandatory league-wide minicamps. It has the effect of creating a line in the sand, ensuring most of the procedure-heavy stuff like the draft and the schedule and the majority of contract issues are finalized already.

That way, when things begin escalating again in mid-to-late July, the buildup to the new campaign is right there, in your face, and the anticipation can begin.

It is a fine theory and it works well for those who make their living in the league. Believe it or not, players don’t sit on their butts from February through July. After a brief postseason pause, most will have been putting in hard work for months, so here is a welcome chance to scale things back a little and be rested for the rigors that lie ahead,

For everyone on the outside, who merely follow the sport with varying forms of obsession, it doesn’t really flow the same.

Football fans will fill their days with whatever they can get and for many, the significance of this period isn’t that their teams are on vacation but that Week 1 is on the clock. Truth be told, it begins to feel that way once certain points in the rest of the sports-verse are reached.

If you’re waiting for the crunch of tackles and the complexities of fantasy and the smell of the tailgate, you’ll take your cues from the fact that the NBA season ended when the Denver Nuggets triumphed a week ago, and that hockey was done when the Vegas Golden Knights secured the Stanley Cup the following night.

Major League Baseball is already closing in on its midway point and the pennant races are gearing up, even if they’re not yet in the deepest throes of their arm-wrestling stage.

Summer football is reaching its peak as well, with the USFL Playoffs taking place in Canton, Ohio, this weekend, capped off by the New Orleans Breakers facing the Birmingham Stallions Sunday at 7:00 p.m. ET on FOX.

Sure, those things don’t mean we’re on the very doorstep of the NFL season, but it is much, much closer than it felt when March crawled into April. We’re at 80 days, and you bet we’re counting.

You can see why the league is happy to go into the hottest part of the year implementing what is effectively a compulsory chill-out period for its teams. Yet, as ever, because in football no issue is deemed too significant to be worthy of chatter and debate, there are still some lingering issues on the radar, precisely the sort of things that will keep fans talking while their heroes are cruising on yachts, trekking to Europe or relaxing on a breach somewhere.

The availability of RB Dalvin Cook and WR DeAndre Hopkins has added some spice to the marketplace, mainly because of the unavoidable sense that if added to the right team, either player could make a real difference to their new employer’s chances of big-time success.