“Thank You” to all those who are reading this. It’s my first blog and will NOT be my last. For years I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a weekly blog regarding my views on the sports world but never thought I could be successful at it. But after recent life events and support from family members(mainly my mother and girlfriend) I’ve decided that you’ve got to just do certain things, take chances and not look back. Today I will being giving you my opinion on “The Battle For The NFC East!”
As of this writing my team(The New York Football Giants in my Chris Berman voice) are 8-3 and currently in possession of the first wild card spot. The So-Called “America’s Team” Dallas Cowboys are first in the NFC East at 11-1. The Washington Redskins are sitting at 6-4-1(we remember that early Sunday morning tie) and the Philadelphia Eagles are sitting in last at 5-6. At this point in the season I’m extremely impressed with 2 out of the 4 teams.
Let’s start in Texas. Hats off to Dallas for having only one loss(Go G-Men) with a rookie QB and rookie RB. It shows that they really do have one of the best offensive lines in football. They are most likely going to get the 1 seed in the NFC and have a bye along with home field advantage through the playoffs unless they have a major collapse at the end of the season. Once they get to the playoffs I feel we will finally see if this team is for real or not. The Cowboys have had a relatively easy schedule so far with 5 of their wins being to teams who .500 or better(but no more than 6 wins) and 6 wins to teams who are under .500. The only team they lost to are the New York Giants and we can take into account that it was the first game of the season. Everything is going right for the Cowboys offense and look like they can score with the best of them. I do think though if they are going to go deep into the playoffs they are going to need to play better on defense. Currently ranked 21st in the league, teams are averaging 358.5 YPG against the Cowboys. Luckily for them teams are only averaging 19 PPG which is one of the reasons for their success. With Dak, Zeke, Dez, Witten and Beasley plus an amazing offensive line scoring 20 points or more isn’t difficult. I can say with confidence that as long as they can keep scoring at will like they have, they should be fine. But if they start having trouble offensively it’s only a matter of time before that defense starts giving up more point when they start playing better offenses. It’s going to be interesting to see how far they can go on the backs of the offense.
Next up is my New York Giants. Another team who in all honesty has had an easy schedule and still barely got by. At 8-3 they have already won 1 more game than I thought they would this whole season. With only 2 of their wins coming to teams .500 or better it’s should have been easier to get to 8 wins. But in typical Giants fashion they have played to their competition. They only beat Dallas by 1, the Saints by 3, The Ravens by 4, Philly by 5, and the Bengals by only 1. The Rams put up a 10 spot in the first quarter before the Giants put up 17 un-answered to win in London, Chicago lead 16-9 at halftime only to go scoreless in the second half losing 22-16 and Cleveland held the Giants scoreless until there was 7:03 minutes left in the second quarter in which the Giants won 27-13. If you haven’t caught on yet, the Giants have just barely pulled out these wins and haven’t played or looked like an 8-3 team. The only silver lining to this season is that the defense is starting to play like they should given all the money the spent in the off season and typically under Spags, the defenses usually got rolling in the second half of the seasons. With 5 games remain, 4 of them are against teams .500 or better and 3 of them are divisional showdowns, they’ve got to play better than they have.
Washington isn’t to far behind New York sitting at 6-4-1. They have had stellar player for Kirk Cousins who has passed for 3540 yards with 20 TD’S and 7 INT’S and Jordan Reed who has 59 REC’S for 630 YD’S with 5 TD’S. On Thanksgiving, Cousins went 41 of 53 for 449 yards with 3 TD’S and 0 INT’S just for Washington to lose 31-26. The worst part about the loss was the fact that Dallas only had 358 yards of total offense. You can’t fault Josh Norman because stat wise, he’s carrying his weight for the most part. Breeland on the other hand has been getting burned left and right. And then you have a kicker who’s been inconsistent so when you combine all the negatives on the defensive side of the ball, 6-4-1 isn’t as bad as it could be.
Rounding out the NFC East is the Philadelphia Eagles which is somewhat of a surprise considering how they started the season. After winning the first 3 games before a week 4 bye, they followed it up by going 2-6. Carson Wentz who wasn’t supposed to be the starting QB started the season throwing for 769 yards with 5 TD’S and 0 picks. The next 8 games weren’t good to Wentz to say the least as he threw for 1824 yards more: an average of 228 YPG. He didn’t help his TD/INT ratio either adding only 6 scores to his total and 8 picks bring his season totals to 11/8. The running game has been solid but hasn’t been used as much since they’ve been trailing teams. Between 7 players they’ve totaled 1264 yards over 292 carries: an average of 4.3 YPC which puts them in 8th place for rushing league wise. Overall it’s not where I thought they would be coming into the season.
In all honesty, I believe that the NFC East has been one of the most competitive divisions in the league this season. With all the talent across the board and a lot of divisional games over the final weeks, it’s gonna be interesting to see how it all plays out. You have to love December Football!!
A Fans Point Of View 