So who do you think wins the NFC East this season?

[Matts4313]

2 minutes ago, EagleBlueDon said:

I mean Dallas never does anything of substance, so I think it's fair to say every time I make this post, it can be graded as accurate.

Winning the division every other year is something of substance in the era of parity. Its disappointing how we perform in the playoffs though.

2 minutes ago, EagleBlueDon said:

You got worse on paper and the Eagles got better on paper. I don't think there's much to dispute about that.

I would the debate that we got worse. We just lost "names" that were overrated.

2 minutes ago, EagleBlueDon said:

I think it's more of an issue with your reluctance to admit that Dallas isn't the talent-laden juggernaut that it's annually made out to be. It's just not.

It was never as "talent-laden juggernaut" as people made it out to be. Ive been say it for *years* that our talent is overhyped. 

2 minutes ago, EagleBlueDon said:

I think you have a hard time accepting they won't be making any top-5 or top-10 "young talent" lists anymore. 

Very debatable. We just drafted the best rookie LB in 40 years. The year before we drafted a top 15 WR and a corner that had the most INTs in 40 years. I mean, hell, there was a report that came out TODAY that said we draft the 2nd most all pros in the NFL. 

Youre just being a hater.

2 minutes ago, EagleBlueDon said:

I think you have a hard time accepting they won't be making anybody's top skill position duos or trios lists anymore. I think you have a hard time accepting they won't be making any top-5 OL lists anymore. 

We havent had a top 5 OL since 2016. Thats half a decade ago. If we were on those list, its because people are stupid. 

As for the skills thing - - Maybe, maybe not. Probably not this year. But as I keep telling you, we draft much better than you. Dont be surprised when our 3rd round WR turns out to be another stud. He is literally already putting in work with Dak. 

2 minutes ago, EagleBlueDon said:

I've yet to hear one non-Dallas fan say that team got better since the end of your season.

Because we were overrated. 

2 minutes ago, EagleBlueDon said:

I've yet to hear ANY fan say that we didn't get better since the end of our season.

You did get better. But you were a 6 win team last year that over achieved. You are now a 9-10 win team. And thats your ceiling until you get rid of Hurts or he dramatically improves.

2 minutes ago, EagleBlueDon said:

I think you have a hard time accepting that it's not, in your eyes, a one-team race anymore.

Bruh, I have picked against the Cowboys many times in the past. Ive picked all 3 of you guys to win the division in the past ~10 years. Ive picked you guys to win it, or its a coin flip, almost every year for 20. 

2 minutes ago, EagleBlueDon said:

I think you have a hard time accepting that the Eagles now have a better roster, top to bottom, than the Cowboys do.

Yes, I have a hard time accepting a lie. The Eagles probably have the 3rd best roster in the division, but you guys somehow annoyingly get to 9+ wins every season. Before the draft I thought most of your roster sucks, especially your QB. 

[Matts4313]

9 minutes ago, TheRealMcCoy said:

Not even.... Amari was drawing coverages away from Ceedee, Michael and Ced to make live easier on them.

Teams knew who the Cowboys best WR was and treated him as such.

This is patently false.  First of all, double teams are completely overblown. The concept that a WR is "constantly drawing coverage" is also overblown. Most WRs get doubled ~7-10% of the time. 

Lamb and Copper played the boundaries vs slot ball park the same. Cooper *never* had a DB follow him, not corner or safety.

9 minutes ago, TheRealMcCoy said:

He's not only a better route runner than Lamb, but has much better hands as well.

Ceedee needs to clean up his drops. He dropped 8 passes as a rookie and dropped 8 passes last year too.

Cooper has drop issues as well, but you are right one this one. This is the only knock against Lamp. And the weird thing is he normally drops the easy passes and makes the tougher ones. Just needs to hit the jugs machine and get his consistency up. 

9 minutes ago, TheRealMcCoy said:

I wouldn't even rank Ceedee as a top 3 WR in the NFCE. He's behind Terry McLaurin, DeVonta Smith, and AJ Brown.

Okay.

$$$

Neither player is expensive. We could very, very easily had kept them both. Their combined cap hits for this year is like <$10m... But even if we kept Collins on his old contract ($10m/yr) we still could have fit them both for ~$16-17m over the near future.

They are gone because they werent that good. 

9 minutes ago, TheRealMcCoy said:

I follow the draft a lot more closely than you do and have known who he is for a long time. 

He's not a better pass rusher than Randy and he's more of an explosive linear athlete. 

Randy was a freak, but it was all potential. He never put together a full 16 game season of great play. He would have small stretches where he looked like a god, then he would do something stupid like sumoplexing a 49ers OL on 3rd down of playoff game......

9 minutes ago, TheRealMcCoy said:

You probably reached on him by like a round cause he was Quinn's guy. I would've had him more around your 88th overall pick where you took Tolbert, but Quinn didn't wanna risk losing his guy and I can understand that.

I follow multiple Cowboys content creators and they had Williams as a late 3rd to day 3 prospect.

Then you know the site blogging the boys? And you know they wanted him in the 1st round if the OGs were gone. 

9 minutes ago, TheRealMcCoy said:

Yeah, Cowboys will be in contention. Not that hard to do in our division. Eagles have been in contention most years since 2000 too.

Our division really isnt that bad. Its mid tier. And the bottom feeders are both on the upswing. Commies will win 8-9 games. Giants could get there by next year if they get a QB.

9 minutes ago, TheRealMcCoy said:

We are the most competent teams in this division over the past 20+ years, despite the Giants having somehow the most SBs in that timespan lol.

I would argue that we are close to tied if you look at the post-Ried era, with your obvi fluke superbowl giving you the edge. 

[TheRealMcCoy]

2 hours ago, Matts4313 said:

This is patently false.  First of all, double teams are completely overblown. The concept that a WR is "constantly drawing coverage" is also overblown. Most WRs get doubled ~7-10% of the time. 

Lamb and Copper played the boundaries vs slot ball park the same. Cooper *never* had a DB follow him, not corner or safety.

Cooper has drop issues as well, but you are right one this one. This is the only knock against Lamp. And the weird thing is he normally drops the easy passes and makes the tougher ones. Just needs to hit the jugs machine and get his consistency up. 

Neither player is expensive. We could very, very easily had kept them both. Their combined cap hits for this year is like <$10m... But even if we kept Collins on his old contract ($10m/yr) we still could have fit them both for ~$16-17m over the near future.

They are gone because they werent that good. 

Randy was a freak, but it was all potential. He never put together a full 16 game season of great play. He would have small stretches where he looked like a god, then he would do something stupid like sumoplexing a 49ers OL on 3rd down of playoff game......

Then you know the site blogging the boys? And you know they wanted him in the 1st round if the OGs were gone. 

Our division really isnt that bad. Its mid tier. And the bottom feeders are both on the upswing. Commies will win 8-9 games. Giants could get there by next year if they get a QB.

I would argue that we are close to tied if you look at the post-Ried era, with your obvi fluke superbowl giving you the edge. 

All I read was “homer” Matts… sorry. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on most of this.

The Cowboys and Eagles will be in a close battle for the division this year. The gap has closed.

[MKnight82]

I don’t usually trump the homer horn but I think Washington will win the division.  The Giants will be sunk by Daniel Jones, the Eagles will be sunk by Jalen Hurts and Dallas will struggle against a tougher schedule.  Washington won’t dominate but they will take advantage of a weaker schedule and improved QB play. 

[TheRealMcCoy]

20 minutes ago, MKnight82 said:

I don’t usually trump the homer horn but I think Washington will win the division.  The Giants will be sunk by Daniel Jones, the Eagles will be sunk by Jalen Hurts and Dallas will struggle against a tougher schedule.  Washington won’t dominate but they will take advantage of a weaker schedule and improved QB play. 

The whole NFCE is playing a weaker schedule. All four of us rank in the bottom 4 spots for SOS.

[///mcompact]

Doesn’t matter NFCE bros.
 

The NFCbEast is still the best division.  We ran away with the Lombardi trophies so badly that we had to lower the tempo for others to catch up.   
 

 

[Kiltman]

6 hours ago, MKnight82 said:

I don’t usually trump the homer horn but I think Washington will win the division.  The Giants will be sunk by Daniel Jones, the Eagles will be sunk by Jalen Hurts and Dallas will struggle against a tougher schedule.  Washington won’t dominate but they will take advantage of a weaker schedule and improved QB play. 

Washington definitely will have a better shot this year, and yeah Eagles and Giants seasons are very tied to Hurts continuing to develop, and Daboll doing a quick fix on Danny Dimes. But I think we’d be remiss to not point out Wentz has been letting teams down when they need him before either was in the league. He’s fairly maxed out at this point and playing behind his worst offensive line.

I’m not gonna prentend it’ll be a train wreck, Carson is gonna have some real good weeks. And they certainly have an easy schedule, but so does Philly and the Giants.
 

It sounds like a cop out but schedule release will really inform this. Like where the few tough games are for the Giants, Eagles and Commies.

Looking at the schedules, all 4 teams have tougher matchups in Packers, Vikings and Colts…so taking those out with all the common games

Eagles: Saints, Cardinals, Pittsburgh 

Commies: Browns, San Fran, Atlanta 

Giants: Ravens, Seattle, Carolina

Cowboys: Bengals, Rams, Bucs

 

Giants have an auto-loss with the Ravens unless Lamar is out, but their schedule looks stupid easy with Russell Wilson leaving Seattle and Carolina 

Eagles probably next easiest; Saints will be tough unless it’s like Week 1 and Winston isn’t back. Cards will really depend on the time of year. DHop being out makes the first 6 weeks easier if it’s then, the. They typically suck in December (which we are used to see in this Division with dem boys). Steelers is a toss up, would say easier with a rookie QB…but it’s the Steelers who haven’t had a losing record in quite awhile

Washington faces an enigma the San Fran, no clue what they are right now. If they are a mess with no Deebo, they could potentially move into the easiest slot. Browns should be good, but don’t know is the NFL is gonna do anything to Watson yet. Atlanta is an Easy one.

Cowboys face the two Super Bowl teams + Tom Brady. So that’s 3 higher probability losses. 
 

 

Ultimately, aside from division games, it probably will come down to who doesn’t trip up on those tough but flawed teams we all play this year. Detroit was a pain last year, improvement. Titans certain weeks will probably still run over people. Matt Ryan will probably win the Colts that bad division, they’ll lose games though. Who gets Kirk in primetime?

 

I think the only team I can take off the table right now is New York. They are off to a solid start fixing what Getts and Reese did to their team, but have way too many holes probably to overcome the shortcomings of Danny Dimes.

I think Washington has a talented team with some potential flaws. Oline being so so, Back 7 being spotty on D. Ultimately will be what version of Wentz shows up, given we haven’t seen much or any of the 2017 Wentz that would need to lead this team to 11+ wins I don’t have the highest of hopes they could get it done.

Cowboys are the only team of the 4 that got decidedly worse this year, and are playing a much harder schedule. Losing multiple OLinemen, a top wideout, pass rusher… they had to spend a lot of their resources plugging those new holes rather than solving the ones that lead them to falter last year.

Eagles obviously improved from last year where they took advantage of a similarly weak schedule to eek into the playoffs. Their biggest issues being Pass Rush (signed Hassan Reddick), weapons outside Smitty & Goedert (traded for AJ Brown), LB play (signed/drafted guys). They also addressed more subtle ones like run defense (with the LBs but also drafting a giant NT to clog things up). It’s nothing new but it’s all on Jalen Hurts. I think he’ll improve purely do to having his best friend AJ Brown be his wideout opposite DeVonta Smith and not Jalen Reagor. Beyond that it’s hard to say. Secondary is a big ?

 

My gut feeling without having a lot of info 

10-7 Eagles

 9-8 Comms

 8-9 Cowboys 

6-11 Giants

 

I think these are all volatile teams and I’m gonna lean on the tried and true “who has the better chance on the LOS” and the Eagles have one of the best Olines and an already solid but now improved Dline (includes Hassan Reddick who will be a rush LB). I’m trying to be realistic here, yeah Maybe Hurts puts it together and they get 12+ wins, but not confident yet.

Washington’s Dline is pretty good and gets Chase Young back, but the rest of their defense is pretty suspect. With a worse oline than Philly and worse weapons on offense I slide them back a couple wins.

Dallas barely touched their bad Dline and made their oline way worse.

End of the day those lines can help plus or hide the rest of the problems these teams have, so I think using that as a guide isn’t too off the mark.

Honestly Had Washington traded for Matt Ryan I would’ve been more on their side. It’s just I know 1st hand who Carson Wentz is. He’s a terrible leader, who can’t take heat, if it was anyone else I think I’d be tempted to give them to division here despite how poorly the org is run. But it’s not a matter of if but when / how he fails them.

 

 

We are all Wentz haters, we are all @Matts4313now

[SteelKing728]

11 hours ago, TheRealMcCoy said:

Him and @SteelKing728 should start an Eagles hate club discord for NFC North fans that have been hurt by the Eagles in recent playoff games.

I don't hate the Eagles. I don't expect your team to be any good, but your division is such a dumpster fire that it should only take 8 games to win it.

What I do hate is Philly fully taking advantage of a stupid Vikings GM who gave up a 1st and 4th for a QB that 1) was never considered a longterm option, 2) had a major injury history with his knees and 3) refused to do anything but checkdown. I hated Minny for making that trade, and I still hate it to this day.

[Kiltman]

Just now, SteelKing728 said:

I don't hate the Eagles. I don't expect your team to be any good, but your division is such a dumpster fire that it should only take 8 games to win it.

What I do hate is Philly fully taking advantage of a stupid Vikings GM who gave up a 1st and 4th for a QB that 1) was never considered a longterm option, 2) had a major injury history with his knees and 3) refused to do anything but checkdown. I hated Minny for making that trade, and I still hate it to this day.

I get it

I feel like that robbery + freight-training you guys right after the Minnesota Miracle game to go win a SB in your own building is plenty of reason to hate The Eagles, especially when you look back at other key games.

It’s kinda how we view the Saints, and to a lesser extent the Seahawks.

[Matts4313]

44 minutes ago, Kiltman said:

Cowboys are the only team of the 4 that got decidedly worse this year, and are playing a much harder schedule. Losing multiple OLinemen, a top wideout, pass rusher…

Getting rid of, not losing*. Why cant people understand this?

Excluding RG. *We lost RG. The rest of them we kicked off the team for poor play.

44 minutes ago, Kiltman said:

they had to spend a lot of their resources plugging those new holes rather than solving the ones that lead them to falter last year.

Literally OL play was the #1 thing that caused us to falter. So we cut the fat, rebuilt, added depth. Every Cowboys fan in the world, every Cowboys fansite and the actual actions of the Cowboys all are in unison about this issue. 

Thinking were all wrong and you know our team better is looking at it through green colored glasses.

44 minutes ago, Kiltman said:

Dallas barely touched their bad Dline and made their oline way worse.

We have added like 5 players to a mediocre DL and hopefully rebuilt our OL.

 

 

My god do you guys overrate a RT who earned $10m/yr and LG who makes like $6m. Both are cheap players in the NFL because they are not good. Both got benched for poor play. 

[Matts4313]

7 hours ago, TheRealMcCoy said:

The whole NFCE is playing a weaker schedule. All four of us rank in the bottom 4 spots for SOS.

If thats true then here is my counterpoint. Dak owns all of you. Lets say he goes 4-2 instead of 6-0 this year. That means that Dallas is starting out with +5 in the win column against 2 of you and plus 6 against the 3rd.

Now, add on to the fact that we lost 3 games against playoff teams last year due to missed field goals, which is insanely high, and it puts even more pressure on the rest of you to catch up.

54 minutes ago, SteelKing728 said:

 but your division is such a dumpster fire that it should only take 8 games to win it.

This is factually wrong. Its not 2019-2020 anymore. The only time frame in the last, I dunno, 60 years that we were a dumpster fire. We were a middle of the pack division last year, and I think we will be a slightly more competitive middle of the pack division this year.

[Kiltman]

12 minutes ago, Matts4313 said:

Getting rid of, not losing*. Why cant people understand this?

Excluding RG. *We lost RG. The rest of them we kicked off the team for poor play.

Literally OL play was the #1 thing that caused us to falter. So we cut the fat, rebuilt, added depth. Every Cowboys fan in the world, every Cowboys fansite and the actual actions of the Cowboys all are in unison about this issue. 

Thinking were all wrong and you know our team better is looking at it through green colored glasses.

We have added like 5 players to a mediocre DL and hopefully rebuilt our OL.

 

 

My god do you guys overrate a RT who earned $10m/yr and LG who makes like $6m. Both are cheap players in the NFL because they are not good. Both got benched for poor play. 

But even if they played not all that well, they weren’t awful and it’s not like they have been upgraded. That’s the point, you can use whatever terminology you wish. I’m not pretending they had an all-pro line like a lot of people still weirdly think they have.

Would you say the Cowboys have gotten better? 

HC - Still MM, no positives there that he bring to the offense

OC - Kellen Moore got exposed a bit last year and faltered to the point where a shoe-in for a HC spot got lost. I think he can bounce back, but will have slightly less at his disposal.

QB - Push, slightly heather Dak maybe points a little up. But Bigger picture a worse oline and lose of Cooper negates that / Push

RB - Pollard should be RB1 at this point as Zeke gets slower and fatter. Especially with the smaller openings that will be available. Push / lean down

WR - Cooper gone plus Gallup coming off an injury 📉

TE - Didn’t get worse, but Dalton is still a very average to slightly above average at times TE / push

OL - Has continued to circle the drain and is worse even if the players that left weren’t playing great. Additions could change that, but for now 📉

Like how is this offense in any way better?!? It’d be one thing with a great D to lean on but that’s not the case.

They still have the best QB of the division and the conference sucks too. They’ll be in the mix. But the larger point of them getting worse with a harder schedule than their rivals seems like they will do their every other year slide back.

Its not like I’m saying they’ll be a bottom 5 team.

For a 5 year plan this might be what’s best if you want Dak and CeeDee holding a Lombardi trophy. This would be enough of a disappointment to move on from McCarthy and they can get a better coach in. Yeah knowing them it’ll probably just be Dan Quinn unless Diggs regression to the mean and the Defense sink him more than it should.

 

We are all homers in our own way. Trying to cut through that…

I think with the Giants they just clearly don’t have the talent to compete even if this staff does a good job. But can they set a good foundation. Is Danny Dimes showing improvement?

I think Washington’s back 7 doesn’t seem all that good and we know Carson is a hot & cold player who runs mostly cold. Can they make it work though on O and help that D?

The Eagles have question marks in their secondary rn, really the big question is what is yr 3 Jalen Hurts? Yeah he’ll get some more movement being healed, but how has he improved as a passer? If at all. 2nd year as the Starter, first year in the same exact offense in awhile. It’s a pass/fail thing at this point with the improvement la around him.

Cowboys, can the patchwork fixes on Defense and Oline take. Can they do better than the guys who were in the re last year? Get Kellen Moore right the ship? And do the wideouts step up without Cooper?

Like those are the big questions I see in every team.

If we look at all of them getting positive results, I’d say it’s the Eagles’ to lose with really only one big lynchpin at the most important spot.

If this is gonna be another crappy NFC Least sorta year I think it favors Dallas with the better QB to Hager it done. But that opens it up for the other teams to be competitive too. Obviously it’ll probably be half and half, but rn none of us can know which way that split goes.

Dallas has the most scenarios probably where they are in on the division hunt still heading into December. They’d have to really take a dip for that not to happen.

[Pugger]

17 hours ago, incognito_man said:

I like this team more than the previous two years. We're getting 2 All-Pros back on our OL and improving at 4/5 positions because of that. We added pieces into our front 7 on defense and are getting a healthy Jaire back as well. Obviously lost Davante but are getting Tonyan back and adding Watson, Watkins, Doubs and Toure to that room. 

This feels like a MUCH deeper team though, should be an elite defense this year.

I suspect our defense will determine the outcomes of more games in 2022 than our offense will even with our 4x MVP.

[Matts4313]

5 minutes ago, Kiltman said:

Would you say the Cowboys have gotten better? 

 

I would personally because I wanted the following to happen:

Trade Cooper and Zeke

Fix the OL

Retain a starting DE. And technically we did that with 2 as Dorrance Armstrong actually had more snaps than Greggory (38% vs 44%).

Fix the cap

I feel like we accomplished all of those minus Zeke.

5 minutes ago, Kiltman said:

OC - Kellen Moore got exposed a bit last year and faltered to the point where a shoe-in for a HC spot got lost. I think he can bounce back, but will have slightly less at his disposal.

Moore didnt get exposed imo. Moore was hampered by a terrible OL that killed our passing game. Again, I will point out:

At the halfway point the Cowboys had the 3rd best OL by pass blocking OL by PBWR (which is objective, not subjective like PFF)

Ad the end of the season the Cowboys had the 23 best OL by pass blocking OL by PBWR. They then  followed it up by the highest pressure rate in the playoffs.

 

When we were 3, we were killing teams and Dak was in the MVP race.

How do you drop from 3 to 23 over 8 games? Your OL plays like the worst in the NFL.

When our OL was the worst in the NFL, Moore (and Dak) got "exposed".

So with that in mind, is the issue the OC or is the issue the worst OL in the NFL in the second half of the season? And if the OL is the worst in the NFL - - how can it get any worse by adding a 1st and 5th rounder too it? 

[Kiltman]

2 minutes ago, Matts4313 said:

I would personally because I wanted the following to happen:

Trade Cooper and Zeke

Fix the OL

Retain a starting DE. And technically we did that with 2 as Dorrance Armstrong actually had more snaps than Greggory (38% vs 44%).

Fix the cap

I feel like we accomplished all of those minus Zeke.

Quote

The DE one I think you’d agree is a stretch, but fair enough.

It think it helps that you had that realistic outlook on the team. From the outside looking looking I can’t say the read that the majority of the fanbase viewed things that way…but maybe I’m wrong there. Obviously the national side of things is way down on what they did. But can only take that so far.

Would you say doing what they should do (in your opinion) = being better for 2022 tho?