What are you basing your assessment on? Who here is counting EA down and out? Have you even been paying attention to gaming news the past few years?
There is no wishful thinking going on here, just reality. EA ain't exactly the darling of Wall Street, they just happened to fork over enough dough for one of the biggest licenses available and did so without any other real alternatives available to them. It was a move they more or less had to make, but at the same time it hasn't bore any real fruit either.
Again, TTWO doesn't have to develop a full game; they don't have to commit themselves to a full fledged NFL game. They could relatively easily have the framework down for one though. Considering all that has transpired the past few years, wouldn't surprise me one bit if that was indeed the case. Companies do stuff like that all the time, have things in the works, prototypes, etc. It's not like one day they just decide to commit to something 100%, then spend the next 2-3 years plowing away only to find out it was a bad idea. That's not the way things work. Things are almost always going on, always in action, with a certain degree of flexibility too so that backsides are covered when the landscape changes.
Again, EA ain't going anywhere anytime soon, and NFL 2K14 ain't coming out next year; but it ain't all set it stone either. Two to three years from now it starts to get a little hazier, especially when you factor in where we are right now with EA stumbling just about every other step, and a new GTA getting ready to release at the end of a console cycle.
Giants mightier than EA have fallen, and underdogs smaller than TTWO have prevailed. Time will tell.