by Zack Jaffe ’24

In the last five years the NFC East has progressively gotten worse, and living in the D.C. metropolitan area makes it so much worse having to cheer for one of those teams. Right now the NFC East has a combined 14-29-1 record, which is just under a 50-percent win to loss ratio. In any other division, the total number of wins the combined NFC East have right now might not even win the division. There has not been a more terrible  division in my lifetime.

Almost every team in the division has had struggles at the quarterback position this year, but two teams hurt the most.  Starting with the Washington Football Team, Dwayne Haskins Jr., a second year player, was supposed to be very promising but very quickly turned bad. In their first game this season, it was really the defense that got them the win and on 31 attempts, Haskins only threw for 178 yards. In the four weeks he played this season, he had more turnovers than touchdown passes. Although the Cowboys’ QB struggles didn’t arrive until week 5 it was a doozy. Dak Prescott, a star quarterback on track to beat the record for most passing yards in a season, broke his ankle against the Giants. This led the Cowboys to start their backup Andy Dalton who was concussed the next week against the Football Team. They were then forced to start their 7th round pick Ben Dinuci.

There’s not much overall negative in this area, but draft picks have made a major difference in a team’s talents. The Philadelphia Eagles just haven’t been able to make the right picks in the first couple of rounds, although not all of them are the organization’s fault. In 2019 with their first round pick they took an offensive lineman, Andre DIllard, who suffered from a season-ending bicep injury and is now out in the 2020 season as well. In that same draft, the Eagles’ second round pick was a much needed wide receiver but it didn’t seem to be the right decision as JJ Argecia Whiteside has only had 214 total yards and one touchdown that he got off a fumble that he recovered. Shortly after that pick some top  WR were brought  at a price.     The NFC East offense hasn’t performed at all, with three of four teams being ranked in the top 7 worst offensive stats. The Giants are the fourth worst team in the league averaging less than 20 points per game and 313 yards per game which isn’t enough in today’s Football. Without the star running back Saquon Barkley, their offense can’t do anything. D.C. has  been able to average 21 points a game and they’re ranked seventh worst. The majority of Washington’s points are field goals from not being able to score when in the red zone. The Football Team’s defense however has been able to pick up the slack. Then there’s the Eagles, coming in at fifth poorest with 22 points a game. These might not all seem bad but a team ranked 11th worst is averaging near 30 points a game, which is most definitely a big reason why the Steelers are undefeated. The saying “Defense wins championships,” it’s still true but that doesn’t mean the offense can score a minimal amount of points.

The NFC East has had many problems and one article won’t begin to explain them all, but it will show you that it takes a lot of flaws to be that bad, that quick. The NFC East was, however,  somewhat promising winning two of three games last week, with the Giants being on a bye week.  It’s nothing to get too excited over but it’s a start.