BY ADAM GREENE<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last season all it took was getting a game above .500 to win the NFC East, as the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys were in a pitched battle of mediocrity for most of the season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, the Eagles got the job done, claiming their second NFC East title in the last three years while ensuring that the Cowboys would part ways with head coach Jason Garrett in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Will this year be any different<\/a>? Only in the records of the participants, as the Eagles and Cowboys remain the class of one of one of the weakest divisions in the NFL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PHILADELPHIA<\/strong> EAGLES (11-5, Division Champion)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What hurt the Eagles in their playoff run last year was bad losses. Every team is good for at least one, but Philadelphia racked up two, losing 27-24 to the Detroit Lions and 37-31 to the Miami Dolphins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along the way, though, they did pick up some solid victories over the 13-3 Green Bay Packers and the playoff-bound Buffalo Bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The good thing for Philly is they got a healthy season out of Carson Wentz for the first time since his rookie year. He completed 63.9 percent of his passes for 4,039 yards, 27 touchdowns and seven picks. If he hadn\u2019t gone down in their playoff game against the Seattle Seahawks, a close 17-9 loss, who knows what could have happened? The Eagles have certainly turned it on in the postseason before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doug Pederson and general manager Howie Roseman picked up some insurance this offseason, drafting quarterback Jalen Hurts in the second round. That might not be enough to secure the division again if not for the greatest offseason gift of all\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DALLAS<\/strong> COWBOYS (10-6, Wild Card)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026when the Cowboys hired Mike McCarthy as their head coach. The Cowboys have the best roster in the NFC East and one of the best in the league. In a capable coach\u2019s hands, they\u2019d go 13-3, win home field advantage in the playoffs and be a real danger to face off against the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. McCarthy\u2019s grease-covererd mitts are anything but capable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I predicted, two seasons ago, that if a team hired McCarthy as its head coach he\u2019d never lead a team to more than nine wins again. I wrote that, thinking that no good team would hand its roster to a man who Aaron Rodgers said had the lowest football IQ<\/a> of anyone he\u2019d ever met. But Jerry Jones, who should probably be forced to take that Shoney\u2019s Kids Menu activity page cognitive test Donald Trump keeps bragging about acing<\/a>, decided to thwart my prediction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, yes, with the talent the Cowboys have they should win at least 10 games, even with McCarthy lumbering around on the sidelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n WASHINGTON FOOTBALL TEAM (6-10)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For a league that hates distractions, Washington has pretty much all of them. From finally making the choice under corporate pressure to change their racist nickname<\/a>, to allegations from 15 former female employees of systemic sexual harassment<\/a>, it\u2019s been a bad scene as if trying to play football amid the global COVID-19 pandemic wasn\u2019t difficult enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But here\u2019s the good thing. Washington aced this whole hiring a coach thing when they signed on Ron Rivera, who the Carolina Panthers stupidly fired. They landed Chase Young in the draft and if Dwayne Haskins isn\u2019t the answer at QB, Rivera brought in his favorite back up in Kyle Allen to take over. Washington will be better. They\u2019re just too far away as a roster to do much better than third place in the division.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NEW<\/strong> YORK<\/strong> GIANTS (3-13)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Giants are, on paper, the worst team in football. Unless Daniel Jones makes some Peyton Manning-style leap, they will be the underdog in every game they play<\/a>. They made the most uninspiring coaching hire they could in the offseason, bringing in Joe Judge, the former special teams coach of the New England Patriots, a position he held since 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if there\u2019s one thing you thought of when you think of the Pats from that era is how great their special teams were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Judge might turn out to be fine, but general manager Dave Gettleman has destroyed this team and this should be his swan song. Three wins might be generous. They could go 0-16 and it not surprise me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Follow our BetOnline Twitter account<\/a> for the latest sports news and betting odds, and stay tuned on the Instagram feed<\/a> for more good information too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BY ADAM GREENE Last season all it took was getting a game above .500 to win the NFC East, as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":12472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12468"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12488,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468\/revisions\/12488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}