The NFC East is back! Well, maybe. At least it was in 2016. After six seasons as one of the weakest and most uninspiring divisions in the NFL, the league's one-time glory division rebounded with a monster season.
It was the first season since 2009 that more than one NFC East team made the playoffs. The 13-3 Dallas Cowboys won the division and the 11-5 New York Giants qualified as a wild-card team. Washington finished third with a record of 8-7-1, marking the first year since 2008 that three NFC East teams boasted winning records in the same season.
Even the Philadelphia Eagles, at 7-9, had a better record in 2016 than any other fourth-place team in the league had. The NFC East's winning percentage in 2016 was a combined .619 -- the first time since 2009 that it was over .500.
So ... does this mean the glory days are back? Possibly. This year's NFC East schedules offer a significant word of caution, as the division has drawn NFC West and AFC West opponents, which means lots of long plane rides. The Giants leave the Eastern time zone five times to face Denver, Oakland, Dallas, San Francisco and Arizona. The Cowboys, who played a fourth-place schedule last season, get a first-place schedule this year, which means a trip to Atlanta and a home game against the Packers to go with trips to Denver, Arizona, San Francisco and Oakland.
"We haven't been to Los Angeles in 20 years, and we're going twice this year," Washington team president Bruce Allen pointed out during training camp, and indeed Allen's team makes two trips to L.A. as well as to Kansas City, Seattle and New Orleans. The Eagles also visit L.A. twice (though they'll probably stay out west in December when they have back-to-back road games at the Seahawks and Rams).
Given the schedules, there's a decent chance this division contracts a bit on itself in 2017. The idea of a 13-win team and an 11-win team this season is far-fetched, and the division champion is more likely to come out of a four-team slugfest with 10 or 11 wins at most. If that's the case, then every one of these four teams has a reason to think it can win. Let's look at what those reasons are, and why they might or might not be right:
Dallas Cowboys
Why they think they can win it: The Cowboys believe in Dak Prescott as a franchise quarterback who will take a big step forward in his second NFL season. They believe in their offensive line, which still features three former first-round picks and another guy (La'el Collins) who could have been but for a weird off-field issue that wasn't his fault. They think they have enough running back depth to weather Ezekiel Elliott's six-game suspension. They believe in defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli's chicken salad-making abilities. They spent four months as the best team in the NFC last season, and they expect to win by pushing people around up front.
Why they might be wrong: Setting aside the bizarre (and probably pretty random) fact that no NFC East team has repeated as division champions since the 2003-04 Eagles, there are reasons to worry about the Cowboys. They might have running back depth, but none of their current options offer Elliott's explosive playmaking ability. They will miss him. And even before Elliott's suspension came down, Dallas was already dealing with a rash of suspensions on its already questionable defensive side of the ball. The Cowboys lost three-fourths of their secondary in free agency and have spent the offseason putting that back together. The Giants beat them twice last season and finished only two games behind them. The gap between the teams wasn't that wide.
What they told me: "This year is a totally different mindset for Dak," offensive coordinator Scott Linehan said in a phone interview. "You're a second-year starter on a playoff team that won 13 games last year. Now, you look at how people study you, and you anticipate what you're going to do about it."
New York Giants
Why they think they can win it: They beat the Cowboys twice last season and finished only two games behind them. But unless you skipped right to this section, you already knew that. The Giants allowed fewer points in 2016 than any team but the Patriots, and their only significant loss on the defensive side of the ball was free-agent defector Johnathan Hankins. Adding Brandon Marshall and first-round pick Evan Engram to the receiving corps will offer Eli Manning more options in the passing game than he had last year, when the Giants scored fewer points (19.4 per game) than all but six other teams. Manning has a history of bouncing back well after down seasons. They still have Odell Beckham Jr.
Why they might be wrong: The schedule is a potential problem. The Giants will log more air miles this season than any other East Coast team except Miami and Jacksonville. They play five games against teams that will have had more rest than they did the previous week (including Denver, Kansas City and Seattle all coming off their respective bye weeks), and only one team (Oakland) that will have had less rest heading into the game. Offensively, the Giants should be better, but the run game remains a major question mark as does the offensive line until left tackle Ereck Flowers shows progress and consistency. As fun as Manning's array of weapons looks, it won't matter if he doesn't trust his protection. His career offers plenty of evidence for this.
What they told me: "About our tackles, I mean ... young kids," left guard Justin Pugh said after a training camp practice two weeks ago. "They came in young, they've played young. I can personally attest to how hard it is to play tackle in the NFL. And they're just continuing to get better. It's learning that savviness, learning the offense inside and out, where you can get away with some sets, where you have some help coming from the outside chips -- and they're getting better and better every day. Bobby Hart's taken tremendous steps. Ereck stayed here throughout the entire offseason, so he's putting everything into it. At the end of the day, it's not for lack of effort. And that's something that I can live with. He knows he left it all on the floor, and we're going to find out this season. It's gotten off to the right start, though."
Washington
Why they think they can win it: Washington is confident in its offense. The team's feeling is that the addition of Terrelle Pryor Sr. and a bigger role for Jamison Crowder will help make up for the free-agent losses of 1,000-yard receivers DeSean Jackson and Pierre Garcon. They return the same starting five offensive linemen with whom they finished the 2016 season. And there's absolutely no concern about Kirk Cousins' ability to handle playing on a one-year contract, because this will be the third season in a row he has done it. The Saints and Falcons were the only teams to roll up more yards on offense last year than Washington did. On the defensive side, they're excited about the addition of safety D.J. Swearinger, who gives them something they haven't had at that position for a while, and the possibility of pass-rusher Junior Galette finally returning from injury.
Why they might be wrong: Galette can't be counted on, obviously, after missing two years, and they still have a fair number of question marks in their defensive front seven. And while the offense should be able to move the ball if it's at full strength, Washington was 29th last season in red zone efficiency and has to show more of an ability to convert when it gets close to the end zone. The key player on the offense is tight end Jordan Reed, who has missed 18 games due to injury so far in his four-year career and was on the PUP list until Aug. 21. The run game needs to sort itself out, and Pryor has really only had one year as a productive starting wide receiver in the NFL. Finally, plenty of people in the building believe former offensive coordinator Sean McVay, now the head coach of the Rams, was a more important part of what Washington did on offense than people outside of the team realize. It's possible the offense will teeter a bit as Cousins gets used to head coach Jay Gruden as playcaller.
What they told me: "It's not like I didn't call any plays the last three years," Gruden said after an early-August morning walk-through in Richmond. "I still called plays and had my fingerprints all over the game plan and all that stuff, so it won't be that big of a change. The reason I handed it over in the first place was I tried to keep a lot of the terminology the same for Robert [Griffin III] when I first got here -- some of the zone-read stuff and all that stuff, so I would let Sean call it but I would interject when I wanted. But now, three years into it, we've kind of gone away from the zone-read stuff and more back into the West Coast scheme that I'm comfortable with, so I feel good about it."
Philadelphia Eagles
Why they think they can win it: The Eagles really like their offensive and defensive lines, and that's a fine place to build a winning foundation. They also feel very good, as the Cowboys do, about their own second-year quarterback. Carson Wentz returned from an offseason working with his own coaches in California with a shorter, more efficient delivery and has looked excellent throughout camp. The Eagles believe they have upgraded at the wide receiver position with the additions of Alshon Jeffery and Torrey Smith, and Nelson Agholor's progress was part of the reason they felt OK dealing away popular wideout Jordan Matthews to address their need at cornerback. The addition of LeGarrette Blount should help power a run game that suffered due to Ryan Mathews' injury issues.
Why they might be wrong: This still feels like a team that's under construction a bit. The issues at cornerback are significant, and likely won't be completely solved by the acquisition of Ronald Darby from Buffalo. Blount was great in New England but has been ordinary elsewhere, and you have to be wary when the Patriots let a guy walk. Jeffery has a significant injury history of his own, and to some extent the team views him and Smith as veteran place holders while Wentz develops chemistry with the younger receivers on the team. Jason Peters is one of the greatest left tackles ever, but he is also 35 years old. And right tackle Lane Johnson's last drug suspension was 10 games long. The Eagles may like the offensive line, but it's likely they'll need it to run more than five deep. Overall, this is a promising roster that's likely at least a year away from being what it hopes to be. But if the teams at the top of the NFC East do come back to the pack, you never know.
What they told me: "Just surrounding Carson with talent," coach Doug Pederson said after training camp practice in early August. "And it's the timing of everything -- in this business, it's really about timing, and when the pieces begin to fall. I'm not saying that we're there. We've still got to continue to work. But if we keep putting pieces around Carson, and you want to bring young guys, like Mack Hollins, and Shelton Gibson's a young receiver, and Marcus Johnson was here last year on the practice squad. But these young guys begin to work with him, they can kind of grow up together. I can go back to Green Bay, when we had a young Antonio Freeman and Robert Brooks, and you've got the veteran Don Beebe, who we brought in. Andre Rison. So you bring those older veterans in who can kind of pave the way for the younger guys, and it helps you."