Over its long and storied history, the NFC East has garnered a reputation as one of the toughest divisions in the National Football League. Since the merger in 1970, the NFC East has produced more conference championships (20) and Super Bowl wins (12) than any division in football.
2015 was a vastly different story. The NFC East was a tomato can, "won" by a Washington Redskins team that lost more games than they won.
However, it's time to put away the punchlines. Scrap the "NFC Least" cracks. Give the ribbing a rest. The demise of the NFC East has been greatly exaggerated. After an offseason that saw a great deal of change and upheaval in the division, the NFC East has all the makings of a brawl again in 2016.
A brawl that could produce a serious contender to represent the NFC in Houston at Super Bowl LI.
A Giant(s)-Sized Overhaul
Talk about change in the NFC East in 2016 almost has to start in the Big Apple, because just about the only thing that hasn't changed with the New York Giants is quarterback Eli Manning.
The change began at the top, where after 12 years (and two Super Bowl victories) Tom Coughlin was replaced as head coach by offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo. The 38-year-old McAdoo, who is at the helm of an NFL club for the first time, insisted to WFAN's Mike Francesa (per CBS New York) that the changes underway in New York aren't that drastic:
We’re not going to do things exactly the same, but we’re just not going to change to change, either. We believe in evolution, not revolution. There are a lot of things that we’ve done in the past here that I believe in and I was a part in, and we’re going to carry forward with those.
However, that talk of continuity apparently didn't extend to the roster, because embattled general manager Jerry Reese took a buzzsaw to it, especially on defense.
Not that New York didn't need it, mind you. The Giants ranked dead last in the NFL defensively last year, allowing an eye-popping 420.3 yards per game. They ranked 30th in sacks, with only 23. The G-Men spent most of the 2015 campaign finding new and inventive ways to blow late leads.
As Chris Chase of USA Today reported last December, the Giants held a fourth-quarter lead in 10 of their first 12 games. They choked that lead away in half those contests.
Make no mistake: If the Giants could have closed teams out with any consistency a season ago, then New York (and not Washington) would have won the East.
Reese spent a ton of money in free agency insuring there wouldn't be a repeat this season. The Giants upgraded the pass rush by making Olivier Vernon the richest defensive end in the NFL with a five-year, $85 million contract. They added run-stuffing nose tackle Damon Harrison at over $9 million a season.
New York inked free-agent cornerback Janoris Jenkins to a five-year, $62.5 million whopper of a deal, and then turned around and invested their first-round pick in the 2016 NFL draft at the same position with the addition of Ohio State's Eli Apple.
As Chris Pflum of SB Nation's Big Blue View wrote, Vernon told beat writers that new and old are coming together well in New York, with veteran holdovers J.T. Thomas and Jason Pierre-Paul (who signed a one-year deal to stay with Big Blue) leading the charge.
"A lot of the guys, from what I've seen, J.T. (Thomas)," Vernon said. "JPP speaks up. He's been a leader here, since he's been here. A lot of the guys look up to them. I'm glad to be a part of it."
For the first time in the Giants' long history as a franchise, the team didn't add a single offensive or defensive lineman in the draft. And while New York did give Manning a new weapon in second-round wideout Sterling Shepard of Oklahoma, the mantra in 2016 is clear.
This year will not be a repeat of last year, and the Giants will go as far as their new-look defense takes them.
If they play up to their price tag, that could be all the way to Houston
The Fall of the House of Chip
The Giants were not the only team in the NFC East who made wholesale changes this year. Nor were they the only team to decide a change in leadership was necessary.
After a pair of 10-win seasons and a trip to the playoffs, the Eagles handed control of personnel decisions to head coach Chip Kelly last year. Kelly remade the roster in his image, trading for quarterback Sam Bradford and handing big free-agent deals to the likes of running back DeMarco Murray and cornerback Byron Maxwell.
The results weren't what either Kelly or the Eagles had hoped, and after a 7-9 backslide of a season, just like that Kelly was shown the door.
The Eagles settled on Kansas City offensive coordinator Doug Pederson as their next head coach, who is stylistically about as far from Kelly as you can get. Where Kelly is all bombast and gimmicks, Pederson is a reserved coach who favors a much more "classical" offense.
That wasn't the only departure for the Eagles. Far from it. In fact, executive vice president and general manager Howie Roseman (back in the saddle again) wasted no time erasing Kelly's fingerprints from the roster.
Maxwell and Murray? Traded to the Miami Dolphins and Tennessee Titans, respectively. Maxwell was joined in Miami by linebacker Kiko Alonso, who Kelly acquired from the Buffalo Bills last spring in exchange for tailback LeSean McCoy.
The lone remaining holdover from Kelly's machinations was Bradford, who threw for a career-high 3,725 yards in 14 starts for the Eagles in 2015. When the Eagles signed the 28-year-old to a two-year, $36 million extension, the belief was that the Eagles were set, at least at quarterback.
Not so fast, my friend!
In the division's most stunning move of the offseason, the Eagles dealt a package of picks (including two first-rounders) for the rights to the No. 2 overall pick—a pick the Eagles used to select North Dakota State signal-caller Carson Wentz.
It's a trade that set off a firestorm of controversy in Philly and spurred a demand to be traded from Bradford, who skipped a round of voluntary workouts in protest.
Pederson has indicated all along that Bradford remains his starting quarterback, but he allowed to Dave Zangaro of Philly.com that the more time Bradford misses, the more the odds increase he may have to revisit that notion:
I think it depends on when he does come back and how fast we can catch him up and put him in that situation and see where he’s at, at that time. Again, nobody makes the team in April. We’re not making any roster adjustments and letting people go. It’s all about evaluation and he’s in that evaluation process. But as I’ve said in the past, he was one, Chase (Daniel) is two and we’re moving on from there.
The turmoil under center has dominated the headlines in Philly of late, and it isn't hard to see why. With limited resources in both the draft and free agency, there weren't a lot of splashes made. Safety Rodney McLeod was the only free agent brought in who could in any way be considered "big money."
In fact, it's the additions on the sidelines who will probably have the bigger impact on the Eagles' fortunes in 2016. Pederson's offense isn't flashy, but he did an excellent job of maximizing his personnel with the Chiefs. And Pederson's hiring of highly regraded defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz can only help a Philadelphia defense that ranked a moribund 30th in the league in 2015.
At worst, the Eagles will be competitive. At best? Well, raise your hand if you thought Washington was going to win the division last year.
Unless you're dressed as a Hogette, put you hand down you fibber.
(Running) Back to the Future
Two years ago, the Dallas Cowboys rode running back DeMarco Murray and a dominant ground game to 12 wins and an NFC East title.
Then Murray left for the division champion Eagles, and the bottom fell out.
Of course, Murray's departure wasn't the main cause of last season's four-win fiasco, a free fall that netted the Cowboys the No. 4 pick in the 2016 NFL draft.
No, the death knell for the 2015 Cowboys was the injuries that ravaged the quarterback position. Tony Romo managed only four starts for the team in 2015 thanks to a twice-broken collarbone. To call the three other passers the team started under center last year the Three Stooges would be offensive...
To Larry, Curly and Moe. Maybe even Shemp.
However, while it may have been the injury to Romo that doomed the Cowboys last season, the team is hoping it's a return to their 2014 ways that will put them back on top of the NFC East.
As is usually the case in Dallas, the team's never-ending shell game to stay under the salary cap left the Cowboys unable to make any impact signings in free agency. If the team was going to make a splash, it was going to be in the draft.
And make a splash they did.
With that fourth overall pick, the Cowboys selected Ohio State running back Ezekiel Elliott, the highest any team has taken a player at the position since the Cleveland Browns made Trent Richardson the No. 3 pick back in 2012.
It was a pick that had NFL Network's Mike Mayock reminiscing:
A couple years ago DeMarco Murray carried the football 449 times, had 2,200 yards, and I think Elliott is a better football player. You plug him in there behind an offensive line that's in their prime, and you take a ton of pressure off a 36-year-old Tony Romo.
Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith was feeling the love too. So much so that Smith told 105.3 The Fan's G-Bag Nation (via Jon Machota of the Dallas Morning News) that Elliott may actually be better than he was as a rookie:
Well, he is better in the context of his speed, he's faster. In the context of his ability to block, he can block. I just think that he's a smart football player. At the end of the day, I'd like to think that he is better than me because obviously some of those things that we just talked about actually give him the ability to make a house call when he needs to.
That's heady praise from the NFL's all-time leading rusher.
It's wishful thinking to believe one player can fix all that ails the Cowboys. Romo isn't getting any younger. The team's pass rush is in dire straits, especially with top ends Demarcus Lawrence and Randy Gregory both facing four-game suspensions to open 2016.
The Cowboys took a significant risk by selecting a running back that high, especially when you consider that a season ago the team ranked ninth in the NFL in rushing with Darren McFadden as the lead back. Dallas doubled down on that risk by again eschewing defensive help now for hope in the future in injured (but supremely talented) linebacker Jaylon Smith in Round 2.
However, defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli made a point to 105.3 The Fan (via Machota)—that Elliott's arrival can also help the team on the other side of the ball:
I'm elated because I think you always look at the big picture. ... We don't play fantasy football. It's not that. A one-yard, two-yard run there's fight and physicalness. That's good for your team. It develops toughness. We have to go against that offense every day. We play our offense more than anybody. It develops a hardness to your defense. You've got to play against a great line, a great back, now you've got to match up on an All-Pro receiver, great quarterback. ... It's the physical nature of the game, which at times is being lost in today's football. The physical nature of the game, I believe in that. This young man and the other backs are going to bring that.
Is it Kool-Aid consumption to think that one young player can change the Cowboys from cellar-dwellers to contenders?
Maybe. But this team isn't much different at all from the 2014 version—including arguably the NFL's best offensive line.
Besides, who doesn't like Kool-Aid?
If It Isn't Broke
Washington D.C. may be absolute mayhem right now (something about an election of some sort), but the calmest spot in the whole D.C. metro area might be the headquarters of the city's professional football team.
And that's because the Washington Redskins got a head start on the NFC East revival.
Over the second half of the 2015 season, en route to capturing the NFC East, the Redskins went 6-2. There was no real offseason turmoil. No coaching change. No search for a quarterback.
What little drama there was at the position was eliminated when the Redskins assigned the franchise tag to Kirk Cousins. It was an expensive move (in the neighborhood of $20 million), but the right one for a young signal-caller with essentially half a good season under his belt.
What a half-season, though. Over the second half of 2015, on his way to setting a franchise record for passing yards in a season, Cousins threw 19 touchdown passes against only two interceptions. The 27-year-old posted a triple-digit passer rating in seven of eight games—including six in a row to close the regular season.
As Scott Allen of the Washington Post reported, team president Bruce Allen was clear during an interview with SiriusXM's Jim Miller and Pat Kirwan—if Cousins can back up that magical second half, he'll get his megadeal:
We’ve told him we want him to be our long-term quarterback and he said he wants to be. These things sometimes take a little time to work out, but they do work out. We just want to support him in any way possible and I think adding some of the players we added this year will give our offense some strength and improving the defense is always the quarterback’s best friend, so I believe it will work out and hope it does.
Given the Redskins' cap situation and the large amount of capital tied up in Cousins, the Redskins weren't expected to be players in free agency. Early on that was the case—until an elite option at a premium position no one expected to hit the open market suddenly became available.
When the Carolina Panthers shockingly reversed course on All-Pro cornerback Josh Norman and rescinded the franchise tag, any number of NFL teams scrambled to make a bid for the 28-year-old.
It was general manager Scot McCloughan and the Redskins who won the Norman lottery, a massive and unexpected boost for a Washington secondary that was badly exposed in a playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers.
The cost of that deal (five years, $75 million) coupled with Cousins' tag really left the Redskins unable to sign outside free agents, although McCloughan managed to find the scratch to re-up promising young tight end Jordan Reed. Any further improvement to the team was going to have to be the draft.
In the opinion of Bucky Brooks of NFL.com, the Redskins did that in a big way—earning an "A" grade for the assemblage of young talent McCloughan drafted:
The savvy evaluator has assembled another strong class that should help Washington make a push to repeat as division champ. Josh Doctson is a dynamic WR1 with the ball skills and bounce to dominate in the red zone. He gives quarterback Kirk Cousins another big body to target in critical situations. Su'a Cravens is the kind of enforcer the Redskins have lacked since Sean Taylor roamed between the hashes. Although he isn't an explosive athlete, Cravens possesses the high football aptitude, grit and toughness that should lead to plenty of splash plays in the middle of the field. Kendall Fuller was a nice get on Day 2 as a corner with outstanding potential. If he is healthy and on his game, there is no reason he can't develop into a premier cover corner on the perimeter. Keith Marshall is a speedster with home-run potential out of the backfield.
It was, in many respects, the ideal offseason. Not only did the team not lose any key contributors from last year's playoff club, but they shored up a weak spot with quite possibly the biggest free-agent acquisition in the entire NFL in Norman. And then followed that up with a great draft to boot!
It's also a testament to how fast fortunes can change in the NFL. A team that last year opened the season as the favorites to finish last in the NFC East kicks off 2016 as the favorites to repeat as the division's champion—as well as a real contender to win the entire NFC.
What Does It All Mean?
Add it all together, and it sets up a return to the bruising days of old in the division.
Yes, the Redskins have to be viewed as the favorites. In addition to being the reigning champions, Washington entered the offseason as the NFC East club with the fewest glaring deficiencies. And one of those deficiencies (the secondary) benefited from the biggest free-agent signing in the division.
This isn't to say the Redskins are flawless, though. The run game is a question mark after Alfred Morris bolted for Dallas. So is stopping the run, which was a division-wide deficiency last year. And there is the not so insignificant question of Cousins' ability to recapture his 2015 magic.
On paper, at least, the Giants might be the division's best team talent-wise. From the front of the defense with Harrison and Vernon to the back end with Jenkins, Jerry Reese attacked making the New York defense better with the ferocity of a man who knows his job is riding on success in 2016.
And last I checked, the Giants have a two-time Super Bowl champion under center in Manning and arguably the NFL's best wide receiver in Odell Beckham.
But games aren't played on paper. We've yet to see McAdoo coach one in the NFL. We also haven't seen how all the new pieces on defense will fit together.
At first glance, the Cowboys appear a flawed team, especially on defense. The team did little to improve a shaky front seven that was 22nd in the NFL against the run in 2015—a front seven that will be hard-pressed to generate pressure on the quarterback early in the season.
That's almost word-for-word what was said about the Cowboys in 2014, when they proceeded to ground-and-pound the rest of the division into submission.
Then there's the Eagles, the wildest of wild cards in the NFC East. They are a team surrounded by questions and uncertainty—with a new head coach, new schemes on both offense and defense and quarterback brouhaha brewing.
However, while Pederson's ball-control offense may not be big on style points, it's the type of scheme that seeks to dictate tempo and keep things close. And Schwartz has had success molding formidable defenses in Tennessee, Detroit and Buffalo. The Eagles aren't going to be an easy out for anyone.
The fun gets started early, with the Giants visiting Big D in Week 1 to take on the Cowboys. It's going to be a nigh-impossible race to predict. A maddening and stressful four-month slog for players, coaches and fans alike. And a race that could easily produce a pair of playoff teams.
In other words, it will be the NFC East.
Welcome back. We missed you last year.
Gary Davenport is an NFL analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and the Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter @IDPSharks.