It isn’t often that division rivals can commiserate over shared failure. However, the 2019 NFL season has been anything but normal for fans of the NFC East’s four teams (Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins).
Although the Eagles punched their playoff ticket on the last day of the season, there probably won’t be much for any of these teams to celebrate for the time being.
When the dust settled on Week 17, the division’s combined record was 24 wins and 40 losses. Put another way, these four squads combined to win only 38 percent of their games.
To put that into perspective, consider that the NFC East was only one of two divisions, along with the AFC North to have two teams to lose at least ten games in the 2019 NFL season. The NFC East had the New York Giants who finished with a mark of 4-12 and the Washington Redskins who went 3-13.
However, even by this measurement the AFC North proved to be the superior division as its two worst teams, the Cleveland Browns and Cinnicinati Bengals went 6-10 and 2-14 respectively.
The AFC North also had the advantage of being home to the 14-2 Baltimore Ravens who finished with the NFL’s best record.
Because I’m a glutton for punishment (full disclosure: I’m a fan of both the Giants and New York Mets), I complied the win-loss records of each NFL division as shown below:
NFC West 38-26 59%
AFC East 34-30 53%
NFC North 34-30 53%
AFC South 32-32 50%
NFC South 32-32 50%
AFC West 31-33 48%
AFC North 30-34 47%
NFC East 24-40 38%
Interestingly enough, three of the division’s four teams had winning records at the end of the season’s first month.
Specifically, the Eagles improved to 2-2 with a win over the Green Bay Packers on Sept.
27. Two days later (Sept. 29) the Giants also moved to 2-2 after topping the Redskins 24-3. Then on Sept. 30 the Cowboys lost their first game of the young season in a close 12-10 loss to the New Orleans Saints.
For whatever reason, two of these teams couldn’t consistenly win enough to qualify for the playoffs.
For the Cowboys, their offense and its talented trio of Dak Prescott, Ezekiel Elliot and Amari Cooper scored 27.1 points per game, good enough for the sixth-most points per game in the NFL. Similarly, their defense held its own in allowing 20.1 points per game. However, the Cowboys were hurt when came to special teams; specifically the kicking game. Dallas kickers combined to miss ten of their 40 field goal attempts this season.
Those missed kicks could have made a difference in close losses to the Saints and Jets.
The ‘Boys were joined in kicking ineptitude by a fellow member of the NFC Least, the New York Giants. While the Giants only attempted 17 field goals all season, they missed five of them. That meant they only complete 70.6% of their field goal tries or third worst in the NFL.
But the giant struggles of the boys in blue didn’t end there. They also finished in the bottom half of NFL offenses by scoring a total of 341 points this season. On top of that, the Giants gave up the third-most points in the league this year (451).
While all of this statistical evidence verifies what we saw on the field this season, there is a glimmer of hope for the NFC East.
Two of the four teams (Giants and Redskins) have already fired their coaches ahead of the playoffs and a third (the Cowboys) are likely to join the club around press time Wednesday.
While I’m not advocating for anyone to lose their job, I’m also the competitive type that wants to see my team led by a coach who will turn talent into wins. My guess is that Cowboys (and probably Redskins) fans are of the same mind.
After all, we don’t watch the games to see our teams lose. With some luck and blessings from the football gods, we’ll be talking about two or three playoff teams coming from our division this time next year.
On second thought, maybe we should see who the new coaches are first.