Tony: in 2015, the NFC East was the worst division in the NFL. However, with the emergence of Kirk Cousins in Washington, preseason hero Dak Prescott in Dallas, the Giants spending big in free agency and the Eagles firing Chip Kelly and trying to undo his damage, we can expect 2016 to be…probably still the worst division in the NFL. Seriously, the only thing that any of these teams really have going for them is the fact that none of the other teams in the division seem to be that interested in pulling away.

Possibly the most confusing team in the division is the New York Giants, who are presumably trying for one last shot at glory for Eli Manning, and on paper made some enticing moves, signing Janoris Jenkins and Oliver Vernon. It’s when you look at the dollars that it starts to get confusing—a record setting deal for Vernon, who is on the small side as a DE, and has 29 sacks in 4 seasons, with a career high of 11.5 set three seasons ago—not exactly All-Pro numbers, unless you’re Pro Football Focus. Add in $62.5 million for Jenkins—a deal that even Pro Football Focus graded as a ‘D’—and you’ve got almost $150 million tied up over four years in two guys that are not proven superstars. Not the kind of moves that would seem to put you over the top for winning the division, much less a Super Bowl.

Andy: Yeah, there’s no Super Bowl team coming from this division. If there were any justice in the world, there probably wouldn’t even be a playoff team coming from this division. Historically, most of these teams are among the league’s proudest and most competitive. Right now it’s a cesspool of garbage football.

Washington, now fully committed to Cousins, seemed closest to being on the right track last season. But Matt Jones seems to like to dance and fumble and the backup plan at running back is … Chris Thompson? Keith Marshall? Mack Brown? Robert Kelley? So that means Cousin is likely going to have to fling the pig a lot, again, and I’m not sure he can A) Match his 29-11 TD-INT ratio from last season or B) not get killed in doing so. Add in the injury and inconsistency histories of guys like stud TE Jordan Reed and WR DeSean Jackson and, I don’t know, this feels like a team that could either improve on 9-7 and repeat as NFC East champion or revert back to about 6-10.

The encouraging thing for  Washington, though, has to be that with the Eagles in a rebuild, the Giants in … whatever they are in, and the Cowboys desperately hoping to hold Tony Romo together with duct tape and super glue, 6-10 might be enough to win the NFC East this year.

Tony: I sincerely hope that 6-10 isn’t really good enough to win a division—it’s bad enough when people whine about letting the six best records in when a 7-9 team gets in and a 10-6 team misses the cut—the Bernie Sanders argument for the NFL playoffs. I realize it sucks that a team with a sub-500 record gets in, but the answer isn’t eliminating division winners getting playoff spots (which would kill rivalries), nor is it letting in a 7th team (welcome to the NBA, folks). It happens like once every 15 years—the answer is to suck it up, shut up, and deal with it.

Off the top of my head, the Cowboys seem like the biggest threat to Washington’s division title defense, with still one of the best offensive lines in the league, and a really solid running back situation that includes both a rookie that has already been anointed by many (especially in the fantasy ranks) as a top-3 running back, and a solid Alfred Morris who was somewhat inexplicably jettisoned from Washington after one down year. But as Andy mentioned, health is a big concern—they’ve already lost Tony Romo for the first half of the season since they only put a plate on his clavicle, not his spinal column, and with Ezekiel Elliott already missing some time with a hamstring issue, Cowboy fans may already be sweating more than your average Packer fan does while walking to the mailbox. And that doesn’t even bring up their defensive questions, which include a suspect secondary, injury prone linebackers, and a defensive line that has a tendency to get themselves suspended, to the point that I am half expecting a call from Jerry Jones to see if I would be interested in coming out of retirement to play defensive end…and I haven’t played since high school. And I never played defensive end.

Andy: Ouch. So you’re not in favor of my suggestion from awhile back to require eight wins to be a playoff team? If it were up to me, the sub-.500 teams would be replaced by the team with the best record that didn’t otherwise qualify (link if we can find it).

Anyway, I think Washington is the best team in the division, but we also know that you rarely, if ever, see all the same teams make the playoffs in back-to-back years. And this is the worst division, so I am going to go with a new team here. I will say the Giants will pull it together. Jason-Pierre Paul will figure out how to play semi-dominant defense with what’s left of his right hand. That will help improve a defense that added a couple bodies in the secondary.

And the offense, which has been competitive throughout the team’s suckitude, adds Sterling Sheperd to a receiving corps that also improved by getting rid of Reuben Randle. Eli Manning seems to have achieved comfort in the XX offense. So even if the defense isn’t exactly good, New York should be able to put enough points on the board to approach .500 or slightly better.

Tony’s addressed Dallas’ issues with Romo. Dak Prescott has looked good and I think he’ll be better than anything the Cowboys tried passing off as NFL-caliber QB play last year, but he hasn’t faced anything yet that resembles a regular season defense. And the team’s defense is mostly suspended right now. So … Dallas will struggle again.

Let’s see, oh yeah, Philadelphia is still in this division too. Doug Pederson should be an improvement as coach, but … There’s a lot of digging out to be done. (And, as an aside, Sam Bradford sucks and has not done nearly enough to warrant holding out for parts of the summer because of hurt feelings over the team drafting a QB in round one. He can suck it.) If I were the Eagles I’d think of selling off as many parts as possible for draft picks and looking forward to 2017, when the Carson Wentz era likely begins.

Tony: Yes, the NFC East will at least be interesting to watch, if not entertaining—so long as you’re ok watching bad football.

Tony Projection:

Washington
Dallas
New York
Philadelphia

Andy Projection:

New York
Washington
Dallas
Philadelphia