NFC East hopes to recapture its glorious past
The NFC East is back. Well, at least it’s as close to “back” as it can be in midOctober, with two-thirds of the regular season remaining. Call it kinda, sorta back.
The Philadelphia Eagles, at 5-0, are the NFL’s lone unbeaten team. The Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants are 4-1. It is, in some ways, a measure of how far the division has fallen — and how long it has remained there — that it having three of the league’s top teams as Week 6 arrives qualifies as so stunning. The rebirth will be on national display Sunday night when the Eagles host the Cowboys amid what surely will be a raucous atmosphere at Lincoln Financial Field.
“It is surprising relative to our preseason expectations, although I did think the division was a little better than (predicted),” said Joe Banner, a former front office executive for the Eagles and Cleveland Browns. “It was really getting panned pretty badly.”
Games far bigger than this once were the hallmark of the NFC East. The Giants, Cowboys and Washington combined to win eight Super Bowl titles in a span of 14 seasons between 1982 and ’95. The division had five Super Bowl triumphs in six seasons to conclude that glorious stretch.
But such on-field prosperity is a faded memory. The NFC East’s four franchises have totaled one Super Bowl victory over the past decade, the Eagles’ in the 2017 season. The Giants have one playoff appearance — and zero postseason wins — since securing their second Super Bowl championship in a five-year stretch in the 2011 season.
The Cowboys last reached a Super Bowl in the 1995 season. For Washington, it was the 1991 season.
The division reached an NFC Least level of ineptitude in 2020 when Washington finished in first place at 7-9, so this early-season renaissance is notable.
“There seems to be no letup in the way this league is balanced,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said in his weekly radio appearance. “And I think that’s what we’ve got in our NFC East. I’m so impressed with really the way Philadelphia has evolved . ... That is going to be a real challenge for us up there. They’ve got the goods.”
There is a case to be made that the Eagles are building something lasting. When their owner, Jeffrey Lurie, ousted Doug Pederson as the team’s coach in January 2021, a little less than three years after Pederson orchestrated a Super Bowl victory, Lurie said Pederson “didn’t deserve to be let go,” but the two had a “difference in vision.” Lurie called it “a transition point” and said then that the Eagles had to get younger.
“We’ve got to accumulate as much talent as we possibly can that is going to work in the long run,” Lurie said that day, “with a focus on the mid-term and the long term and not on how to maximize 2021.”
They have retooled adeptly. The process began with Pederson benching quarterback Carson Wentz in favor of Jalen Hurts late in the 2020 season. Next, Lurie and General Manager Howie Roseman hired Nick Sirianni, then a relatively little-known offensive coordinator for the Indianapolis Colts, to replace Pederson and traded Wentz to the Colts.
Now the Eagles have a roster filled with talent. Hurts is flourishing as a dual threat at quarterback in his second full season as an NFL starter, building on last season’s playoff appearance. Roseman made a draft-night trade in April for wide receiver A.J. Brown to bolster a supporting cast on offense that already included wideout DeVonta Smith, tight end Dallas Goedert and tailback Miles Sanders.
The Eagles are formidable along the offensive and defensive lines. They have a superb trio of cornerbacks in Darius Slay, James Bradberry and Avonte Maddox. They’re a balanced team, ranked second in the NFL in total offense and fourth in total defense.
“I think the Eagles are a very good team,” Banner, a founder of the website The 33rd Team, said. “They’re legitimately in the Super
Bowl conversation. But I’ll be surprised if it’s all said and done and they’re the ones left standing.”
The Giants are just beginning their latest revamping phase, so their early-season success puts them well ahead of schedule. Before their opening-day win over the Tennessee Titans, they had not been above .500 at any point in a season since 2016.
Co-owners John Mara and Steve Tish performed another organizational overhaul in the offseason. Dave Gettleman announced his retirement as general manager. The Giants fired Joe Judge after a two-season coaching tenure. They tapped into the success of the Buffalo Bills by hiring Joe Schoen, the assistant GM in Buffalo, as their general manager and Brian Daboll, the Bills’ offensive coordinator, as their coach.
Under the previous regime, quarterback Daniel Jones and tailback Saquon Barkley resembled draft busts. Now, they’re looking more like the cornerstone players they were drafted to be, at least when viewed through the lens of a winning start. Barkley is the NFL’s second-leading rusher.
“The Giants, I think, still have a ways to go and will revert to the talent on the roster as the season goes on,” Banner said. “But they’re definitely better, and there’s a lot of evidence to believe they’re on the right track for sustained success.”
The Cowboys’ latest bid to get back to a Super Bowl seemed to veer far off course when they lost their season opener to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and quarterback Dak Prescott suffered a fractured right thumb and underwent surgery the following day. The circumstances appeared dire. Enter Cooper Rush. With Prescott’s unheralded backup filling in, the Cowboys have gone 4-0.