Every team in the NFC East has some relatively lofty expectations this season. The Philadelphia Eagles are trying to defend a Super Bowl, the Washington Commanders are trying to make it to the playoffs in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 1992 and 1993, the Dallas Cowboys are trying to get back to the playoffs, and the New York Giants are trying to field an offense.
Those are all relatively reasonable goals, but this is the start of a new season. Everyone is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and dreaming about a good season. That’s great, but we don’t have time for reasonable dreams. We want the fever dreams so sweet that only fumes from paint thinner could cause them.
Drink a gallon of Kratom, soak your pillow in turpentine, turn the air conditioning off, and fall asleep under the biggest blanket you have. These are the fever dreams for every team in the NFC East.
Dreams are only weird if you tell people about them
We’re going to start with the reigning, defending World Champion Philadelphia Eagles (read in a Bruce Buffer voice), and then we’ll go from the division standings from the 2024 season. For every team, there will be a fever dream for a player and the team as a whole.
Philadelphia Eagles
2024 record: 14-3, Division record: 5-1
The vibe around the Eagles is different now than it was around the team in 2018, when they were coming off their first Super Bowl win. Now, the team has a healthy franchise quarterback, a very young defense that’s loaded with dudes, and an offense that somehow has even more dudes.
It’s tough to think of a fever dream for the Eagles this season. Last year, they ended the season on a 16-1 run and had one of, if not the most dominant, postseason runs in modern NFL history.
Player Fever Dream: Sacks Rule Everything Around Me
It is really hard for a defensive tackle to be the Defensive Player of the Year. Aaron Donald was the last one to win it, and he did it three times (2020, 2018, 2017) because he’s probably the best football player to ever live. Before him, the last DT to win it was Warren Sapp in 1999.
The most important thing a defensive lineman can do is get sacks. In each of those DPOY years, not only did they have double-digit sacks, but they were inside the top-15 of sack leaders for their respective seasons.
The fever dream is for Jalen Carter to be the 2025 DPoY. The problem is that he doesn’t get the gaudy sack production. In 2023, he had six, and in 2024, he only had 4.5… and that was on the best defense in the NFL.
The Eagles didn’t have an amazing pass rush during the vast majority of the 2024 season. Instead, the way that defense won was with Carbon Monoxide-like coverages that suffocated passing games.
If that’s not the case in 2025, and Carter’s the guy who has to get to the quarterback (like he had to at the end of the divisional game against the Rams), he’ll have the opportunity to get his sacks and be the DPoY.
Team Fever Dream: Make it delicious
To say that the fever dream for the Eagles as a whole is to go back-to-back isn’t quite feverish enough. They’re returning 10-of-11 starters from their Super Bowl-winning offense, and while they did lose five key players on defense, they still have one of the best defensive coordinators in the world. Another Super Bowl win would be crazy hard to do, but let's get weird with it.
The fever dream would be to get the first seed in the NFC and get the first-round bye in the playoffs. Then, in the divisional game, they get the Cowboys (somehow). In the NFC Championship game, it's against the Packers, and Jalen Hurts gets a Tush Push touchdown to end the game. Then the Super Bowl is a rubber match with the Chiefs. That’s a tasty playoff run.
Washington Commanders:
2024 record: 12-5, Division record: 4-2
The Commanders are trying to stay on the up-and-up. Jayden Daniels is their franchise. The team is only going to be as good as he is.
Luckily, he just had the best rookie season a quarterback has ever had, and general manager Adam Peters is doing everything that he can to make sure 2025 is another building year for Daniels.
Player Fever Dream: The Franchise guy is the guy
If everything the Commanders did this season all works: The trading for Laramie Tunsil. The trading for Deebo Samuel. The drafting of Josh Conerly. Sam Cosmi comes back from his ACL, and he’s a brick wall. Deebo Samuel turns back into 2021 Deebo Samuel. Terry McLaurin has 90 catches for 1,200 yards and 12 touchdowns.
That means Jayden Daniels is the catalyst for it all, and that means the fever dream of Jayden Daniels, 2025 NFL MVP, can come true.
If he does make a jump this season, the argument that he’s the best quarterback in the NFC East is going to hold some weight. If he’s the MVP, the discussion would be over.
Team Fever Dream: At least a repeat of 2024
The thing about MVPs is that they’re on good teams, and good teams win a whole bunch of games. In the past 25 seasons, there has only been one player to be voted MVP and be on a team with fewer than 12 wins: Matt Ryan in 2016.
Since the League went to a 17-game schedule, everyone who’s won the MVP has had at least 13 wins. If the Commanders are getting 13 wins, A. That means they’re going to be winning the division, B. They’re probably going to be a No. 1 seed in the playoffs, C. That would be their first time having back-to-back double-digit win seasons since 1991. Breaking that kind of streak will make you wake up thinking you’re dead
Dallas Cowboys:
2024 record: 7-10, Division record: 3-3
Well… So… Micah Parsons is gone forever, and he was traded to a team that has wrecked the Cowboys for pretty much the whole millennium, so that’s probably not good.
But Dak Prescott is healthy. That’s probably a nice thing to focus on. Yeah. Let’s just go with that. The Cowboys have a good offense when Dak is healthy.
Player Fever Dream: George Pickens works for the whole season
Can George Pickens be a good receiver? Of course. In 2023, he had 1,140 receiving yards and five touchdowns. That year, he was getting thrown to by a combination of Kenny Pickett, Mason Rudolph, and Mitch Trubisky. To put that in perspective, he had 35% of that team’s receiving yards and 38% of their receiving touchdowns.
If your name is George Pickens, you can probably stop reading because you won’t like this.
The Cowboys didn’t trade for George Pickens for him to catch a million balls and have a million yards. He can do that, but that’s not the point. CeeDee Lamb is who that offense flows through, and Pickens is there to make Lamb's job easier.
If George Pickens is working, it can’t just be ‘We need a guy to run sprints every play and take the top off the defense’ working. If that’s the case, he’ll just freak out on the sideline and be off the team (mentally or physically) by Halloween.
He’ll need a real target share that keeps him engaged, and also keeps the defense engaged with him. If he’s working like that, then Lamb will be even more of a weapon, and Prescott will just have a much easier life overall. Pretty basic stuff, but it feels like a stretch.
Team Fever Dream: Stop the run?
After Jerry traded Micah Parsons, he did a press conference (because of course). I would not recommend listening to it, because in the very first second, he made the ‘old guy with a dry mouth’ noise, and then kept doing that every four or five words for the entire rest of it. It’s awful.
But one thing that he kept bringing up was that the Cowboys can’t stop the run. He said, “We need to stop the run, and we haven’t been able to stop the run at key times in several years.”
Maybe he’s right, but not really. During Parsons’ time in Dallas (going back to 2021), the Cowboys were ranked 32nd, 10th, 5th, and 22nd in EPA per rush (per NFL Pro). EPA allowed isn’t a perfect measure, but it’s decent enough. It doesn’t seem like a Micah thing since it’s been all over the place with him on the team.
This seems like Jerry Jones is having a fever dream where he thinks the Cowboys’ defense has been perpetually terrible at stopping the run. If that’s his fever dream, then that’s the fever dream for the team. What a lunatic. Long live Jerry Jones.
New York Giants:
2024 record: 3-14, Division record: 2-6
The Giants are in a whole different world than the rest of the NFC East. Yeah, they’re kind of close to what the Cowboys have going on, but at least the Cowboys fired their deadweight coach.
The Giants are giving Brian Daboll, whose career coaching record is 18-32-1, another go at it. Because of that, expectations have to be on the floor.
Player Fever Dream: Quarterback of the future
The Giants traded back up into the first round of the 2025 draft to draft quarterback Jaxson Dart from Ole Miss. It wasn’t exactly an awe-inspiring, fun, good, or smart pick. It was more of a pick that a head coach and general manager would make because they’ll want to pull an emergency parachute at some point during the season.
That time will come, and Jaxson Dart will start at least one game for the Giants in 2025. The fever dream for them is that Dart actually shows that he can be an NFL quarterback.
In 2020, the Eagles benched Carson Wentz and started Jalen Hurts in Week 13… four full seasons later, and Hurts was the Super Bowl MVP. The Hurts that season was nothing like the Jalen Hurts now, so no one is asking for Dart to come in and drop a nuke. But when he does play, it would be euphoric for the Giants to know that their inevitable top-10 2026 draft pick doesn’t have to be used on a quarterback.
Team Fever Dream: A top-3 pick
The best thing for the Giants as a franchise this season would be to lie down and die from the first snap to the last. Unfortunately for them, the defense is going to be pretty good, which means the failure would have to come from the offensive side of the ball.
With Russell Wilson as the starting quarterback and Jameis Winston waiting on the bench, that immediate offensive collapse is peaking over the horizon.
Here’s what the fever dream timeline should be: score no points, win no games, Dart makes his first start around Week 6, Daboll gets fired, interim head coach comes in, Dart gets benched because he’s not ready, Winston gets a handful of starts, Dart comes back to start the last four games so he can develop, Giants get a top-5 pick in the draft, ???, profit. It’s as easy as that.