Who's the Beast of the NFC East?

The "NFC Beast" dominated football in the late 80's and early 90's.  Arguably the league's toughest division is expected to live up to its reputation in 2009.  The defending division champions had a quiet off-season,  except for that whole Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the leg saga. 

Other than that, it’s been a quiet off-season for big blue.  In 2009 their offense and Eli Manning will have to move on to life without Plaxico, and rookie receiver Hakeem Nicks should help that. 

Defensively it will be interesting to see how they will respond to the loss of defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.  Even with that in mind, the return of Osi Umenyiora should help in filling that void. 

Moving on from the Giants and moving down the turnpike to Philadelphia, the Eagles are preparing for the season after coming up one game short of the Super Bowl last year.  The Eagles caused uproar among their fans after they let safety Brian Dawkins, their leader for over 13 years, fly the coop and sign with Denver. 

Donovan Mcnabb went to management and demanded that he get weapons or that he may want to be traded.  There were talks of prominent players coming to Philly, such as Tony Gonzalez, Jay Cutler, and Anquan Boldin.  Gonzalez went to Atlanta, Cutler is in Chicago, and Boldin is the only unhappy person in America to be in Arizona. 

So after that failed, it was time to look towards the draft where the Eagles selected highly touted receiver Jeremy Maclin and running back LeSean McCoy.  Mcnabb has his weapons and hopefully Eagles fans have a winner. 

Moving on to the biggest soap opera in the division, the Dallas Cowboys certainly made headlines in the off-season.  After coming off a disappointing 9-7 season last year, Dallas cut loose outspoken wide receiver Terrell Owens. 

Along with a couple minor tweaks here and there, the Cowboys are preparing for the heat of the 2009 season.  The person who is probably feeling most of that heat is head coach Wade Phillips who knows that even a playoff birth might not even mean job security. 

With T.O. now in Buffalo, the Cowboys offense finally truly belongs to Tony Romo, and it will be interesting to see how he responds to the pressure.  Rounding out the division is the Washington Redskins who made the biggest free agent splash during the off-season, signing all-world defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth. 

The off-season, though, has been a strange one for Washington.  Head Coach Jim Zorn dealt with rumors he would be fired after only one season, and quarterback Jason Campbell dealt with rumors he would be traded. 

These two are the most intriguing situations when looking at Washington.  Zorn was brought in to turn Campbell into a top-five quarterback.  If there is no significant success in 2009, don’t count out owner Daniel Snyder getting rid of both in 2010. 

Prediction: 1. Eagles  2. Cowboys  3.Giants  4. Redskins