Bad divisions pop up from time to time. It’s part of the wonderful parity that is innate to today’s brand of football, but parity can have a dark side. Sometimes it’s relatively harmless and somewhat expected, like with last year’s NFC South and Carolina’s division-winning (and playoff game-winning) 7-8-1 team. Did that outcome really shock anyone? And sometimes it’s like this year’s AFC South, where the Colts and Texans have somehow both battled back to respectable 6-5 records and you might as well flip a quarter at this point if you want to know who comes out on top there. LOL, football!
And then you have cases like this year’s NFC East, which makes you want to bang your head against a brick wall, all the while yelling to no one in particular, “What the hell’s the matter with you guys?!?” The standings, as they are now, feel like backwards logic. So much talent spread throughout these four teams, and we’re now entering Week 13 and no one has a winning record.
But maybe it’s not all bad! Maybe there’s hope lurking somewhere beneath these four lots of football sadness. And such as the current NFL rules dictate, someone must win the division and go to the playoffs. So, let’s take a closer look at where each team stands, ranked by inverse order of their Football Outsiders’ playoff odds:
Dallas (2.2 percent)
Toughest remaining opponent: Week 14 at Green Bay
With Tony Romo now out again — and this time for the season — the Cowboys are toast and should be trying to assess what it is they have for next season. Romo will be back, as will Dez Bryant, of course. Jason Witten has been effective, but is now 33, has accumulated a lot of on-field mileage, and has started to enter that phase of a tight end’s career where he begins to fade away from an offense. (Did you know Antonio Gates, at 35, is still playing in San Diego? Strange but true!) Darren McFadden has kept the running game held together somehow, but he’s not a long-term solution. And honestly, the sooner this season ends and they can discard Greg Hardy into the nearest trash heap, the better it will be for that team. If Jerry Jones was chugging down more Johnnie Walker Blue this season than ever before, who would blame him?
Philadelphia (16.1 percent)
Toughest remaining opponent: Week 13 vs. New England
On the one hand, you could say that DeMarco Murray has underperformed in a historic way for a defending rushing leader and point to that as a leading reason for the Eagles’ season-long travail. However, Sam Bradford was the intended starting quarterback heading into this year. Sam Bradford! Why Chip Kelly never made more of an effort to trade up and draft Marcus Mariota will never not be perplexing, and the Eagles now have question marks at almost every offensive position. (In the aggregate, this offense is actually above league-average, but the lack of marquee skill players is ever glaring.) And the defense has been positively sieve-like, ranking in the bottom third across all yards-allowed categories. There aren’t enough pieces in place to save this season, and it’ll take a lot of smart offseason rebuilding to make a run in 2016.
New York (29.4 percent)
Toughest remaining opponent: Week 15 vs. Carolina
There’s so much to like about this team. Eli Manning is on track for another 4,000-yard season and has a decent 23-to-9 ratio on TD passes to picks. Odell Beckham Jr. continues to be a revelation in the open field, making opposing cornerbacks look like green-eared amateurs with his internet-breaking catches that now seem to occur with regularity. And yet that defense, ranked dead last in the NFL in total yards allowed, continues to sabotage every step the Giants make toward a commanding division lead. And now, by virtue of last week’s 20-14 loss in Washington, they’re officially in second place and on the outside looking in. Can they outscore their way to a division crown? Certainly, it’s possible, but the Giants have morphed into the worst possible version of the team that only wins if they have the ball last in a game. That’s no way to go through life, son, and if only that secondary (which is allowing the most passing yards of any team) can tighten up just a bit, the Giants might be able to get on a late roll.
Washington (54.8 percent)
Toughest remaining opponent: Week 14 at Chicago
Okay, here’s the thing about Washington: They’re better than you think. No, really. They’ve lost at New England (understandable), at Carolina (same), at the Giants (who score a lot), at the Jets (who have a great defense), and at Atlanta (who used to be good) in overtime. That’s five road losses and each one can be rationalized and explained in its own way. The only real head-scratcher was a Week 1 loss at home against a dreadful Miami team. Outside of that, they’ve performed admirably, even en route to this (for the moment) 5-6 losing record. Kirk Cousins has been decent-ish — the completion rate (68.4 percent) is excellent, though the TD passes (16) and yards (2,787) should really be higher — and head coach Jay Gruden has allowed him to succeed at his own pace. The receiving trio of Jordan Reed, Pierre Garcon and Jamison Crowder is an underrated group that spreads the field left to right, and even DeSean Jackson has had scores in the last two games after coming back from injury. As long as Alfred Morris and Matt Jones (both 3.6 yards per carry) can maintain some semblance of a rushing attack — something they’re struggling with in their road losses — then the defense can conceivably hold off opposing passers well enough to win close games.
Now, it could still all fall apart at any moment for this team, but it’s also not very possible (with the creampuff schedule they have) to win out and bring another division crown to D.C., as nutty as that even sounds.
