Can anybody beat Philly?
NFC teams ranked by threat they pose to Eagles’ return to Super Bowl
Their biggest challenge might be boredom. A return trip to the NFC championship game isn’t a matter of “if ” but “against whom.” That’s how far behind everyone else is. If they squint, they might catch a glimpse of Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown and the Philadelphia Eagles as they melt into the horizon.
Might.
Here’s a thought experiment for anybody who is nervous about penciling in the Eagles for another long postseason:
How many AFC teams are better than the second-best team in the NFC? Who in the conference poses as big of a threat to the Eagles as the Chiefs, Bills or Bengals would? How about the Chargers? The Jets? The Jaguars?
The Eagles will have plenty of legitimate questions to answer
when they open training camp this week. Is Nakobe Dean ready for life as a starting middle linebacker?
Is Sean Desai really an
upgrade over Jonathan Gannon? How about those safeties?
None of them sound particularly daunting when you consider the margin for error.
Outside of the Eagles, the NFC is a wasteland. The last few years have seen a remarkable brain drain at the quarterback position. Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Matt Ryan, Russell Wilson — all have left over the last two seasons.
As recently as 2019, the landscape included five of those all-time greats, plus
Cam Newton in Carolina, plus Matthew Stafford in Detroit, plus a couple of former top draft picks who’d both been to Super Bowls in their first three years (Jared Goff, Carson Wentz), as well as the incoming No. 1 overall pick (Kyler Murray).
Four years later, nine of those players are no longer with their respective teams, while Murray soon will join Goff and Wentz as the latest in a long line of one-time future stars whose era has passed.
A big part of the problem has been the failure to launch of players like Murray and Wentz (Goff ’s upside never came close to theirs). Of the 10 quarterbacks drafted in the top five between 2016-22, only two still have starting jobs with their original teams (Joe Burrow and Tua Tagovailoa). Those misses have hit the NFC disproportionately hard.
The AFC has seen the emergence of current/future stars like Patrick Mahomes, Burrow, Justin Herbert, Josh Allen and Trevor Lawrence. By contrast, Hurts and Daniel Jones were the only two NFC quarterbacks younger than 28 to throw for more than 2,500 yards last season.
The splits are remarkable. Nearly 60% of the AFC’s passing yards in 2022 came from quarterbacks who were 26 or younger. That’s more than double their share in the NFC, where quarterbacks aged
34-plus threw for 2,000 more yards than quarterbacks aged 26 or younger.
The schedule will spice things up a little for the Eagles. Unlike last season, you can actually identify some potential losses. Back-to-back road games against the Rams and Jets in Weeks 6 and 7. A five-week gauntlet in Weeks 11-15 takes them from Kansas City to home games against the Bills and 49ers and then through Seattle and Dallas.
Escaping those two stretches with three losses would be an achievement. At the very least, there is a realistic path to 12-5.
But that still would be a prelude to a postseason where the Eagles would take the field with the only elite quarterback in the conference. As long as Hurts stays healthy, is there any opponent who would inspire even an ounce of fear?
Let’s run through them in reverse order of intimidation.
Stop me when you read something that scares you.
Group 1: The Tankers
Teams: Falcons, Packers, Commanders
All three of these teams are more likely to finish winless than they are to finish with a winning record. The only question for the Falcons is how long they will be able to pretend that Desmond Ridder belongs on an NFL roster, let alone as a starting quarterback. At some point, Taylor Heinicke, a former star for Old Dominion, will get a chance to be the seat-warmer for Caleb Williams or Drake Maye. Give Atlanta credit: the Falcons aren’t leaving next year’s top overall pick to chance.
Except, maybe they are. The Packers have been able to sell Jordan Love as the heir apparent for the last three years, but the charade will end soon. Don’t be surprised if Sean Clifford finishes the season as the starter under center.
A Week 2 showdown with the Falcons could have serious draft implications.
The Commanders are the one team that could make me eat my words to the tune of five or six wins, only because Sam Howell can run the ball a little bit. But the guy was a fifth-round pick for a reason.
Group 2: Hoping for .500
Teams: Panthers, Bucs, Saints
There’s a chance that one of these teams ends up in the postseason due to a lack of options. Each of them combines good coaching with some potentially competent quarterback play. There’s plenty of skill-position talent in Tampa Bay and New Orleans. There are also Baker Mayfield and Derek Carr under center. How can you take a team seriously with those two guys at quarterback?
The Panthers aren’t a bad bet as a dark-horse wild card, but quarterback Bryce Young’s lack of size will be exposed in the NFL. Game management might get you to 9-8, but it isn’t going to win you any games in the postseason.
Group 3: No upside
Teams: Lions, Giants, Seahawks
Again, it comes down to the quarterback. We saw all we needed to know about the Giants in last year’s divisional round. Daniel Jones is a more capable quarterback than a lot of people give him credit for, but the lack of big-play arm strength and quicktwitch instincts leave him overly reliant on excellent protection.
It’s a similar story with Seattle’s Geno Smith and Detroit’s Jared Goff. Each of these teams has a legitimate chance at 11-6 or 12-5. But none of them figure to be any different from what they were in 2022.
That’s nine teams so far. Six of them are dead on arrival. Three of them have a relatively high floor but an impossibly low ceiling. Which leaves us with six teams.
Again, in reverse order ...
6. Vikings: Frankly, they are much closer to the Giants-Lions-Seahawks category than they are to the Eagles. That said, they went 13-4 last season and have a quarterback in Kirk Cousins who might be second-best in the conference.
OK, I just talked myself out of it. No chance.
5. Cardinals: It pains me to mention the Cardinals. But that’s kind of the point of the whole exercise. There is some unknown here. That counts for a lot in today’s NFC. Maybe Gannon is secretly a genius. Maybe Kyler Murray suddenly becomes the player he was supposed to be but has never been. Maybe? 4. Bears: No team in the conference has a wider range of outcome than the Bears. It’s tough to win games with a quarterback who can’t pass at a passable level, which is why I tend to think they’ll end up undershooting expectations. But there is at least a scenario in which they are a scary team: The rebuilt offensive line coalesces into a strength, Matt Eberflus does his thing with the defense, and Justin Fields and the running game “Ravens” their way to a bunch of wins.
3. Rams: I might feel worse about the Rams than I do about any of the last three teams. They are here because of Sean McVay and Matt Stafford. Do either of them deserve to be here without a competent offensive line? Probably not. But who else is there?
2. Cowboys: If we were still doing tiers, we’d start a new one here. Yes, the Cowboys are the Cowboys. Mike McCarthy is Mike McCarthy. But the defense is for real, and the quarterback is good enough to win a game on his own every now and then. So, call them No. 2.
1. 49ers: It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if San Francisco got to play last year’s NFC championship with an actual quarterback. At the same time, let’s remember who that quarterback was. Even if Brock Purdy is healthy to start the season, it speaks volumes that the Eagles’ top competition is a second-year second-round draft pick who is coming off a season in which he averaged 152.7 passing yards per game. The defense and coach can pose problems.
Which puts the Niners well ahead of the rest of the pack.
These are strange times in the NFC, and the Eagles could reap the benefit of them for years.