There’s a lot at stake in the NFC East this season. The Philadelphia Eagles are an established super-awesome team, and the Washington Commanders are an upstart with a high ceiling and a young quarterback.
In reality, the division is a two-horse race between those two, and whoever wins it has a good chance of getting the top seed in the NFC playoffs. Unfortunately, it’ll probably all get decided in Weeks 16 and 18, but that’s a long time from now.
An hour-long Week 1 rain delay makes grading tough
In Week 1, we saw the Eagles tie a hand behind their back and then win a fist fight against the Cowboys, and the Commanders ran the ball until the Giants gave up.
Technically, all four teams in the division are still in the race, so for the time being, we as a society have to track their progress. So we’re going to look at each team’s offense and defense, and judge whether or not they were winners or losers in Week 1. This time, it’s based on expectations going into the season.
Winners: Eagles offense, Cowboys’ offense, Commanders’ defense
The Eagles’ offense came out of the gate hot. Jalen Hurts was making all of the right decisions. He’d hit his receivers when he needed to, and he’d take it himself when things broke down. The offense only had seven real drives and scored 24 points. They did it while only targeting A.J. Brown once, and it was with 1:45 left in the game.
If you can have that level of efficiency, and for some reason you do it while excluding one of the most dominant wide receivers in the NFL, things are going good.
The Cowboys' offense is a winner here because they did well against the kind of defensive line that they’re going to see more often than not. By that, I mean a defensive line without a game-wrecking defensive tackle like Jalen Carter. They were able to run the ball decently well, and (except for CeeDee Lamb’s drops at the end of the game) the passing game was clicking the way that you thought it would.
You also have to give props to Dak Prescott for getting Jalen Carter kicked out of the game. When you’re thinking about quarterback intangibles, Prescott knocks it out of the park with his obnoxious personality and punchable face.
It’s his 10th year in the NFL, and he finally has a head coach who knows how to unlock the power of his scumbaggery. #DakSpitFirst
The Commanders’ defense is a winner because they did their job. They walked onto the field, looked at Russell Wilson dead in the eyes, and karate chopped him in the throat. They held the Giants to six total points, and those came from two field goals. That’s a big win.
Losers: Giants’ offense, Giants’ defense
It was a bad day in Giants' world. Russell Wilson looked a whole lot worse than they expected and just as bad as everyone else knew he would. So… it's pretty much the same as last season, and that’s a really, really bad thing.
That’s not going to stop the Giants from changing, though. On Monday, Brian Daboll said that he was going to throw Wilson back out there as the starting quarterback in Week 2 instead of changing it up.
If he doesn’t want to throw the rookie Jaxson Dart out there behind a terrible offensive line, they also have Jameis Winston, who couldn’t possibly be worse than Wilson… right?
It’s like Daboll and Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniels are playing in a ‘who can get fired first’ competition. Someone’s going to pull a George Costanza and run across the field wearing a flesh colored body suit.
As for their defense? They were slightly less of a failure, but they did allow a ludicrous 432 yards. They have a stacked defensive line with Dexter Lawrence, Brian Burns, Kayvon Thibodeaux, and stud rookie Abdul Carter. Those guys ended up with the third-lowest pressure rate of any team in Week 1 (21.6%), but they did have three sacks.
You could argue that the defense kept the Giants relatively in the game since the Commanders only made it a two-score game with a touchdown when there were seven minutes left in the fourth quarter… but come on… they have the horses on the defense to be better than what they are.
I still don’t know: Eagles Defense, Cowboys’ defense, Commanders offense
It’s tough to judge a unit when they lose their best and most important player before he ever gets to take a snap. That’s the exact case with the Eagles' defense because of Jalen Carter getting ejected six seconds into the game after his retaliatory spitting on Dak Prescott #DakSpitFirst.
Because of that, the Eagles' would-be run-stuffing defense allowed 119 rushing yards and two rushing touchdowns. They were also one of the three teams that didn’t have any sacks in Week 1 (along with Detroit and Carolina).
Everything was different for that defense, and they had no time to plan for it. Week 2 will (hopefully) be more telling.
The Cowboys' defense is an “I don’t know” because of how polarizing they were. The Eagles scored on their first four drives of the game, and they did it with little to no resistance. Then, before their next drive (post-fumble recovery), the game went into an hour-long rain delay, and the vibes of the entire game changed. And by that I mean, no one scored at all.
Did the Cowboys make some big adjustments? Sure. They affected Jalen Hurts with blitzes, and they shut down the Eagles’ attempts to run and kill the clock. It was a weird game, and it’s hard to suss out what was real with their defense and what wasn’t.
The Commanders' offense found itself up against a Giants defense that was supposed to be good. They also found them behind schedule a whole lot.
If you take out their final drive where they were trying to kill clock, they had 25 total second downs. 13 of those were at least a second-and-seven. 10 of those were at least second-and-10. Six of those were at least second-and-15.
Now, it very well could’ve been just some Week 1 weirdness, and they did end up converting on six of those second-and-longs… but having that many unsuccessful/detrimental first downs is something to pay attention to. Of these three “I don’t knows,” the Commanders' offense is the closest to being a winner.