NFC East: What We've Learned So Far About Each Team

One quarter of the NFL season is complete, and that means we can start drawing some conclusions about where teams are headed. There are those who say four games is too small a sample size from which to discern the riff from the raff, but consider this: After Week 4 of the 2010 NFL season, nine of the 12 eventual playoff teams held winning records and the other three stood at .500.

That bodes poorly for the Philadelphia Eagles, a squad that, at 1-3, has failed to live up to its “Dream Team” moniker and whose difficult upcoming schedule could prove to be an early coup de grâce on the team’s playoff hopes. It bodes well for the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants, teams that respectively have exceeded and played up to expectations. And it gives the perennially underachieving Dallas Cowboys a fighting chance to get back in the playoffs and make good on all the individual talent Jerry Jones has assembled down in Irving.

That’s not to say any of these squads are guaranteed to make or miss the playoffs. The Houston Texans were 3-1 after Week 4 in 2010, and they ended up fading down the stretch and missing the postseason. In the long, volatile journey that is the NFL season, anything is possible, but the first four games always provide meaningful insight.

Prior to the season, I predicted the Redskins would win the NFC East with an 11-5 record and that the Eagles would miss the playoffs. Those predictions look good at this moment, but now it is time to take an in-depth look into each squad and see what we’ve learned.

Washington Redskins

By going 3-1 in their first four games, the Redskins have exceeded expectations, and they are not afraid to let people know about it. What’s even more surprising than the team’s on-field play is their penchant for mouthing off to anyone who will listen.

Rex Grossman has predicted the team will win the NFC East, and Tim Hightower has hinted that the Redskins will end up playing in the Super Bowl. DeAngelo Hall boasted that he would target Tony Romo’s ribs prior to the Redskins game against the Cowboys, and just this week, Chris Cooley told a local radio station that we would relish the opportunity to fight Romo in a cage match.

It’s well-known around Washington that second-year coach Mike Shanahan has brought a much needed sense of harmony to the locker-room, but it’s only now becoming apparent that he may have also inspired a false sense of bravado in some of his players.

The Redskins' confidence may, however, be due to the fact that the franchise has had little to cheer about in recent years, so players could be interpreting a good start under a relatively new coach as a sign that things are finally changing for one the NFL’s most storied franchises.

The strength of this Redskins team is the defense, which ranks third in the NFL in points-per-game (the most important defensive stat in my opinion). The squad features three potential pro bowlers in LaRon Landry, Brian Orakpo and rookie Ryan Kerrigan, who so far has played like anything but a first-year pro, and solid veterans in London Fletcher and Barry Cofield. DeAngelo Hall remains a mercurial talent who could do everyone a favor by keeping quiet for a change.

Ultimately, the success of the squad depends on Landry’s ability to stay healthy. The strong safety’s hard-charging style of play is similar to that of former Colts’ safety Bob Sanders, and like Sanders, Landry has a penchant for getting hurt. When he’s healthy, the Redskins defense is as good as any in the league, so as long as he can remain on the field, opposing teams will struggle to score.

That brings us to the Redskins offense, which, under Grossman, remains a question mark. The team ranks sixth in the league in rushing yards, but offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, despite what he says, still shows a preference for passing the ball—he’s called 143 passing plays and 123 rushing plays season. That balance puts too much pressure on Grossman, whose play seems to be on the decline. It’s foolish to believe that starting back-up quarterback John Beck is the solution—Beck looked just as bad in the preseason as he did when he started a few games for the Miami Dolphins back in 2007—so the effectiveness of the Redskins offense rests on the shoulders of Grossman.

If I could offer one piece of advice to the Redskins quarterbacks coach, it would be to get Grossman in the weight room. A lack of arm strength has been his most glaring weakness so far, as he has consistently underthrown receivers who are open down the field and floated balls over the middle without any zip behind them.

I’ve written before that even though the NFL has turned into a pass-friendly league with video game like offenses, the Redskins blueprint for success should be classic NFC East football: pound teams with the run and take measured shots down the field. That formula would keep the ball out of Grossman’s hands, thus minimizing his chances to turn the ball over. There is no shame in settling for field goals or giving the ball to punter Sav Rocca, who leads the league in punts that end up the opposing team starting in their own red zone.

I still think the Redskins can go 11-5 and win the division—only four teams on their remaining schedule currently boast winning records—but I now believe that the key to their success may be field goal kicker Graham Gano. Given the strength of the team’s defense and the ineptness of the offense, it’s safe to say that the Redskins will play a lot of close games this year. Field goal kicking often decides close games, so if Gano can display more sure-footedness than he already has, he might just kick Washington into its first post-season since 2007.

New York Giants

I underestimated the New York Giants. The franchise seemed to be on a steady decline that commenced after they upset the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, but the team has looked sharp, though somewhat inconsistent, thus far and will contend for the division.

Like all great sports franchises, the key to the Giants success is superb management. Year-after-year, general manager Jerry Reese stocks the team with blooming young talent. This year, second year players Jason Pierre-Paul and Victor Cruz are the latest Reese picks to yield incredible productivity.

Pierre-Paul continues the team’s recent tradition of strong play at defensive end; he is currently fourth in the NFL in sacks. Cruz was placed on injured reserve* after the 2010 season but has seen a spike in playing time since Domenik Hixon tore his ACL for the second-straight season. Cruz is now second on the team in receiving yards. He is one of the reasons Manning is on pace to post the highest quarterback rating of career.

Cruz gained league-wide exposure through his involvement in a supposedly controversial play against Arizona, when he fell to the ground and then got up, minus the ball, before he was touched by a Cardinals defender. The Cardinals insisted that Cruz was not down, and therefore fumbled the ball, but the officials clearly made the correct call. The NFL rulebook states that a play ends “when a runner is out of bounds or declares himself down by falling to the ground or kneeling, and making no effort to advance.”

Any unbiased viewer who watches that play can clearly see that Cruz’s intention was to give himself up and end the play; his first move upon getting up was to take a step backwards. The officials made the correct call, and the Cardinals have no gripe. The situation is somewhat akin to the famous tuck-rule fumble involving Tom Brady in the 2001 AFC Championship game, another instance when the officials made a technically correct call that somehow seems counterintuitive to the average NFL fan.

Allow me to go slightly off topic for a moment because I believe it’s time to put an end to journalists taking unnecessary cheap shots at athletes. This week’s egregious offender is Daniel Engber of Slate. For those of you unfamiliar with the Slate's football roundtable,the writers often do a good job of exposing the dangers inherent to playing in the NFL and making interesting arguments about how the public consumes the game, but occasionally, they can be unnecessarily condescending (and consequently stupid) for the sake of being unnecessarily condescending.

This week, Engber traversed this territory when he used the word “stupidity” to refer to Cruz’s play and then pointed out that Cruz was kicked out Umass for having a 1.7 grade-point-average without providing a reason for including this aside. 

I’m not familiar with Engber’s academic history, but I can’t imagine he received an A in argumentation. It’s illogical to call Cruz stupid for making a play that fell within the confines of the NFL rulebook and that the referees enforced correctly.

And while I support comprehensive investigations into the academic shortcomings of NCAA student-athletes, mentioning Cruz’s academic record with little context is shoddy journalism. Engber deserves props for graduating from college, but he also never had two-a-day practices to distract him from his studies.   

But back to the Giants. If Manning, who has never finished with a quarterback rating over 100, continues to excel, the team will finish with a very good record. The current top five rated quarterbacks in the NFL play for teams with a combined record of 16-4.

*This article initially made the mistake of saying Cruz was cut by the Giants at the beginning of the 2011 season. 

Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys are who we thought they were: a supremely talented squad that beats itself on a regular basis with turnovers and mental mistakes.

It’s hard to a fathom that a team with DeMarcus Ware, Miles Austin, Jason Whitten, Keith Brooking, Felix Jones, Bradie James Dez Bryant, Anthony Spencer and Terrance Newman is struggling to stay above .500. But in Dallas, squandering talent has become par for the course.

It’s easy to place most of the blame for the Cowboys' troubles on Tony Romo, who single-handedly blew last Sunday’s game against the Lions by throwing two pick sixes and a third interception that set up the Lions' game-winning drive. Romo is somewhat of an enigma: he plays intelligently one week (against the Redskins), then looks like a Brett Favre at his worst the next.

Still, I can’t count the Cowboys out. Call me foolish, but the team has too much talent to not be a contender. Felix Jones’s speed out the backfield makes him a constant threat to break off a long run, and Dez Bryant looks like a young Calvin Johnson—too big for most defensive back to handle, virtually unstoppable in the red zone.

Romo will benefit from the eventual return of Miles Austin, who caught four touchdown passes in the first two games before getting sidelined with a hamstring injury. Austin, Bryant, Jones and tight-end Jason Whitten comprise the most talented set of skill players outside of Green Bay.

It sounds somewhat cliché, but the Cowboys will go as far as Romo takes them. If Princeton educated Coach Jason Garrett can get his high-schoolesque quarterback to make smarter decisions, the Cowboys will be capable of competing with any team in the league. I’m betting that happens and that the Cowboys contend for a playoff spot.

Philadelphia Eagles

Michael Vick is the most exciting athlete since Michael Jordan, but he has never led a team to consecutive playoff appearances. That fact may have been lost among the numerous analysts who touted the Eagles as preseason Super Bowl favorite, but it remains quite significant.

Still, it seems unfair to place the blame for the Eagles woes squarely on Vick, whose play has at times been spectacular despite the fact that his offensive line cannot seem to keep defenders from hitting him every other play. He put up 491 yards of total offense against the 49ers, and the Eagles still lost.

The Eagles problems start with their subpar defense, which ranks 30th in rush defense and just 16th overall. And the team’s 10 turnovers tie them with the Cowboys for most in the NFC. 

Last season, Vick’s play deteriorated as the season went on, and he continued to take one pounding hit after another. Don’t be surprised if the same things happen this year, given that Vick is taking quite the beating.

The Eagles still have a lot of talent on both sides of the football, and the fact that they are currently ranked fourth in the league in terms of total offense gives fans some hope that they can turn it around. But NFL teams that spend a lot on high-profile free agents never seem to live up to expectations, and as great as Vick can be, I don’t think he is capable of carrying this patched together team into the postseason.

I remain convinced that the Eagles will miss the playoffs, and coach Andy Reid’s job could be in jeopardy by the time the season ends.