The NFC East was beautifully trash last season. The division lead changed almost weekly, and it briefly looked like a champion with a losing record would go to the playoffs before Washington got hot late. Its cumulative point differential of -165 points was worse than every division except the AFC South, and AFC South teams weren’t being shown almost weekly on prime-time television like NFC East teams were. The Giants, Eagles, Cowboys, and Washington sucked in aggregate, and we all watched it happen and laughed.
2016 NFL standings and playoff picture: The NFC East is too good to laugh at now
The NFC East was garbage last season, and now it’s not. We must laugh at someone so it’s your turn, AFC North.
Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports
There’s no laughing this year because the NFC East is pretty damn good.
On Sunday, the Cowboys and their rookie offensive backfield blew out the Browns to improve to 7-1 on the season. The Giants beat the Eagles to take the No. 2 spot at 5-3. Washington is, oddly, a half game behind at 4-3-1. The Eagles at 4-4, are at the rear, but would have been tied for first place with the 4-4 Giants this time last year. The Giants and Washington are just in the negative in point differential on the season, both at -3, and cumulatively the division is +134, better than every division.
The NFC East, AFC West, and AFC East are the only three divisions with combined winning records through nine weeks, but the AFC West and East were strong in 2015, too.
The NFC East has made a remarkable resurgence, especially when considering that the Cowboys and Eagles replaced veteran quarterbacks with rookies. And not only has the NFC East been surprisingly good, it’s been fun, too — that thing that everyone is convinced the NFL hates.
The Cowboys are legitimately great.
And not at all in spite of rookie quarterback Dak Prescott. People will soon begin shouting in earnest about whether he or Tony Romo should start in Dallas, but they shouldn’t. As good as Romo is, this is Prescott’s team, something he proved once again by throwing for 247 yards, three touchdowns, and a 141.8 passer rating against the Browns on Sunday.
Prescott was outstanding, but what makes the Cowboys a potential Super Bowl contender is that he doesn’t need to be. The defense is perfectly adequate, and Ezekiel Elliott behind a monstrous offensive line makes up the best running game in the league.
The Cowboys are having the sort of fun that all surprisingly good teams should have. Zeke rushed for nearly 100 yards and two touchdowns Sunday, and celebrated by busting out dance moves to a song you haven’t thought about for a decade.
The wild card battle among the Giants, Eagles, and Washington is going to be a helluva thing.
Based on current standings those three teams will be jockeying with the likes of the Packers, Lions, and Cardinals to grab one of the two last playoff spots in the NFC. Washington has wins over both teams; the Giants have beaten the Cowboys and, now the Eagles; and the Eagles are 0-3 in the division but passed their out-of-division tests well enough to believe they should make a resurgence as long as Carson Wentz remains a respectable passer (he threw two picks against the Giants).
Those teams are going to claw like hell to make the postseason. Each faces each other one more time. Once again, the NFL packed the decisive games in the final weeks of the season. The Eagles play the Giants and Cowboys in Week 16 and 17, respectively. The Giants go to Philadelphia and Washington those weeks. Washington has to go to Philadelphia in Week 14. Expect another apocalyptic finish in the division, except much less sad than last season’s apocalyptic finish.
I know, it’s annoying to like the NFC East.
The current NFC East is the best division in NFL history. Its 20 Super Bowl appearances and 12 championships across four teams are both the most of any division in football. That success along with the big-market television coverage those teams receive make it really, really easy to hate the NFC East. They win. They’re on your TV all the time. It’d be nice if they went away sometimes. Absolutely.
But even in garbage years, the NFC East somehow manages to create a competitive division race, so if you’re going to be forced to watch then at the very least the football should be good. The NFC East could have been bad again. By preseason expectations, the division should have been. Good on it for getting its act together.
NFC East football isn’t agonizing to watch anymore, and that’s good news for everyone.
In its place, you can laugh at the AFC North.
Because to hell with positivity. One of the teams tied for the lead in the AFC North already got smoked by the NFC East’s worst team in Week 3 when the Eagles beat the Steelers, 34-3. And that was with a healthy Ben Roethlisberger playing, mind you, at a time when the Steelers looked like they might be one of the better teams in the AFC.
There are a lot of parallels between the 2015 NFC East and the 2016 AFC North. The Steelers are trying to weather the effect of a gimpy veteran quarterback like the Cowboys did last season. It’s hard to tell if Joe Flacco is more like Eli Manning, or vice versa. And the Bengals are talented disappointments much like the Eagles were.
There is, however, no putridness quite like the 2016 Browns, whose -105 point differential through nine games isn’t unprecedented (three teams matched it or were worse in 2014) but whose winless season has no salvation in sight. They were drubbed by the Cowboys to drive home a metaphorical point.
We’ll see if the top three teams in the AFC North end up in a 5-7 tie for first place in a few weeks, and from there we may be able to tease ourselves with the thought of a proud program sneaking into the playoffs with a losing record.
Enjoy getting the kicks in now, because as the NFC East is proving, narratives change quickly in the NFL.
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