The NFC East is the National Football League's historic, stately neighborhood, featuring four franchises with grand traditions, big fan bases, and Lombardi Trophies in the display case (even if some are much newer than others).
But the neighborhood has fallen on hard times. The mansions are crumbling, the gardens are overgrown, and rusty gates are falling off their hinges.
Enough with this metaphor - the NFC East stinks, is what I'm saying. And that's all the more notable because each of these glamour franchises had reason to be optimistic heading into the campaign.
Instead, as the season approaches the halfway point, only the New York Giants are above .500 (just barely, at 4-2-1). The betting markets don't expect any NFC East team to reach 10 wins.
It's hard to decide which team should be the most disappointed, but we'll go with the Philadelphia Eagles. A franchise that has two Super Bowl appearances (and a win!) in recent years still somehow came into the season with a fan base ready to revolt. There were doubts about head coach Nick Sirianni and quarterback Jalen Hurts, although new offensive coordinator Sean Mannion was supposed to bring a spark to that side of the ball after last year's plodding performance.
But the offense kept plodding, the once-feared defense lost some of its edge, and the Eagles looked perfectly middling in their 2-2 start. Then things got much worse. In London, Hurts played despite the detection of blood clots in his calf - on little to no sleep, depending on which report you believe - and the Eagles lost anyway, partly due to some spectacular late-game mismanagement from Sirianni. Then the blood clots were discovered to have moved to Hurts' lungs. He's now out for the season (and hopefully no longer). With Tanner McKee at quarterback, the Eagles have limped to two more losses to make it five straight defeats overall. If nothing else, they've learned that McKee probably isn't the answer to their offensive malaise.
The Eagles and the league insist that the Hurts injury was handled correctly, but it's hard to remember another instance of a team putting a franchise quarterback in such a dangerous on-field situation.
Oh, hang on - it's actually not that hard! The Washington Commanders threw Robert Griffin III out on the field despite a wonky knee only to see him suffer a much worse injury, and he was never the same player again. They seem weirdly determined to go down that path again with Jayden Daniels, who dislocated his left elbow while playing meaningless minutes last year. He dislocated the elbow again this year. He's now wearing a brace that's supposed to prevent yet another dislocation, but you can't help but wince a little every time you see him take a hit.
The Commanders could nevertheless have taken control of the division in Week 5 with a win over the Giants. Instead, Washington handed them a tie when some combination of Daniels and head coach Dan Quinn botched a play call at the end of overtime that resulted in time expiring before a winning field goal could be attempted. Daniels has since thrown a ball away on a red-zone fourth down, prompting another round of finger-pointing about another blown series. It is not what you would describe as a smooth-running operation, and Quinn now tops lists predicting the first coach who will be fired.
The beneficiaries of their overtime blunder, the Giants, would be in crisis under normal circumstances. They lost quarterback Jaxson Dart for the season with a knee injury, and new head coach John Harbaugh seemingly benched would-be star running back Cam Skattebo for a game. New York appeared doomed to ride the Jameis Winston roller coaster. But then the newly acquired J.J. McCarthy came in during a blowout and was ... kinda good? The former Michigan star, who had been nothing short of terrible for the Minnesota Vikings until they gave up on him, followed his relief appearance with a shockingly strong start against the Houston Texans. McCarthy appears to have won the QB1 gig. The downside: No one can be confident this will last, and indeed, the Giants still aren't favored to win the division - even though they effectively have a 1.5-game lead over the Dallas Cowboys thanks to that earlier tie.
Given the wreckage of the NFC East, Jerry Jones' team should be cruising, but the Cowboys are not. The revamped defense is still near the bottom of the league in most categories, and when the Cowboys had a chance to seize control of the division, they delivered two prime-time eggs against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Green Bay Packers.
They recovered last week against the Eagles and McKee, although that game was much closer than the 38-21 final score suggests. Dallas has just one tough matchup - the San Francisco 49ers - in its next five games, so the Cowboys should be able to assert themselves.
But it's the NFC East in 2026, so don't bet on it.
Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.
