NFC East Preview

Many Calling for NFC East Chalk to Prevail...Not so Fast, My Friend!

NFC East has the longest streak of back-to-back winners – no one in 20 years has repeated. 

Cowboys: have a lot of value in my opinion to bet on early and win the division. I’m not usually into division futures except some pizza money parlays before the season that pay out astronomically (and you never actually hit, lol), but I think the Cowboys have value particularly in the beginning of the season. 

Micah and Dak missed last year. Obviously Micah is a big loss (huge defensive EPA/play with and without him). 

Bill Barnwell pointed out the Cowboys’ red zone differential discrepancy which was very wide – 4th worst differential in 25 years. He says the worst 30 differentials evened out the following year and they improved by 3 wins! Now, some is talent and scheme, but I definitely expect that to follow suit and even out since it was historically bad and they of course have Dak back. I think some forget just how good and productive Dak can be, and now he has another weapon in Pickens and what should be a better run game. I think the offense has the capabilities of being very good. Obviously guys have to make jumps at the tackle position, but Dak can make up for some of that. The interior line has strengthened. Turpin should thrive in the offense with the addition of Pickens—3 very good complements. On defense, a better defensive coordinator, creativity on the back-end, strong DTs, and an improved linebacker corps can lift the ceiling of the defense. With Turpin and Aubrey they have some upside to take advantage of the kick-off rules. Just all around I think they’re being judged harshly for the Parsons move (rightfully so) but have had a solid offseason and some things that indicate positive regression and therefore value. The glaring deficiency with this team was its really bad run defense, and they’ve done some things to improve that. 

Commanders: historic 4th down conversion rate alone will revert and slow down this team offensively. I do like the Deebo addition and they obviously feel good about the WR room to release two guys they just signed. The defense is just not great and they haven’t added enough talent. I don’t know if they did enough defensively to make a jump this year. Brought in younger smart players, but I just don’t know how much to expect them to improve this year, particularly early in the season. They could make a nice run after the late bye, but I think they’ll struggle a little early on. 

Their luck ranking was 3rd overall by teamrankings.com which indicates some regression this year. They still have a subpar offensive line even given their investments there and what figures to be a worse defense than last year’s 18th in EPA/Play ranking due to them having to come on the field more often when the 4th down efficiency reverses. And can Daniels repeat that amazing season with defensive adjustments AND stay healthy with that frame? A lot of question marks for this team as I see it. There are cracks in the armor late last season that were attributed to Daniels’ rib injury, but if you look at Kingsbury’s history at Texas Tech and the Cardinals, he has a history of not adjusting fast enough and/or self-scouting and has always produced poorer results late in the season after fast starts. This reminds me a lot of the Texans from 2023 to 2024. 

Eagles: elite production all around as you’d expect a returning Super Bowl champion to have, ranked high in EPA/play on both sides of the ball, but middle of the road in success % offensively. Insanely efficient run game and best offensive line in the league. 

Jalen Hurts turnover worthy play to interception ratio was the third highest in the league, meaning he was the third ‘luckiest’ QB in terms of turnovers. They had turnover luck in general at the 2nd best turnover differential. 

Eagles have a really good injury luck as well – 2nd in adjusted games lost in 2024. This will likely regress, especially when you have key players with injury history like AJ Brown with his knee, Hurts’ concussion history, Barkley with huge usage in 2024 and several other key players with longevity flags. 

They also had one of the NFL’s easiest schedules versus the 4th most difficult this year. They were 8-2 in one score games

Third down D was very good, 3rd overall, which usually regresses as well as allowing the fewest big plays. Overall, their luck metric was high at 4th overall. 

The Eagles’ record-breaking health, favorable schedule, and high turnover-performing edge fueled their championship run—but these are classic indicators of potential regression. With 2025 bringing tougher opponents, question marks around key players’ durability, and Hurts’s known volatility, we should expect less margin for error and more risk of negative regression. I’m not saying this won’t be a good football team or they’ll regress to a non-playoff team, but there are a lot of things that went their way last year. 

Giants: I don’t like their coaching staff and I don’t like their draft very much outside of Carter. 

However, they were 28th in luck rating so some of that should reverse positively, and they’ll have a top 5 defensive line for sure. QB play should be better. There could be some betting value to be had here, but I’d feel a lot better with a better coaching staff. 

Giants were bottom 3 offensively in almost every metric. If it wasn’t for the Browns, they’d have collectively the worst advanced stats offensively of any other team. And then they were a bottom 6 in EPA/play defensively. I don’t think they did enough to address this. The offensive line in particular figures to be a bottom 3-5 unit. Not much else to say here – I think they’re primed to be quite bad again but bettable in certain spots when they’re facing a high negative regression opponent. This is a pretty neutral team that I likely won’t be too interested in this year. 

Divsional Outlook and Summary:

Cowboys have a lot of value: Clear play on team, particularly early on. See my Eagles Cowboys game preview where I go into more match-up detail.

Eagles have a lot of negative regression value: Clear fade team

Commanders have negative regression value and luck regression as well, just not as steep as the Eagles: Slight fade team

Giants have some minor positive things going for them, but not enough for me to call them a play on team: Neutral for now