EAGLEMANIACAL.com

IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN KIDDIES!!!

GENERALLY when I talk football, it’s about my Eagles. I tend to keep mum about our rivals, unless we have a game coming up against one of them. Otherwise, I’ve reserved most talk about them for my Pre-Draft Preview, which drops each April. (Look for it).

In 2017 however, I decided to try something new, and give our fan base a running commentary of what the division is doing around us. This ensures that Eagles fans ARE actually the best informed, and most knowledgeable fans, in the NFL. (Provided you visit this site often.) These updates will come out three times during the season: After Weeks 3, 9, and 15.

This is where we left off Part 1 

This is where things are today:

Washington Redskins: 1 – 8, 4^th in the NFC East

There’s the basement, and then there’s being thrown into the Rancor pit. It took playing the Miami Dolphins to get this team a win. The Dolphins. The ones tanking publicly, and throwing out players like a desperate mother pitching her babies from a burning building. With 8 losses already, the Redskins ceiling is .500.

They’re ranked 31st in offense, only because the Jets are, well… the Jets. The bright spot of their season was that Week 6, 17-16 win over Miami. It was the last time they scored more than 9 points. (Perhaps for a long time.) Let’s take a look at their personnel.

In the backfield, starting QB Dwayne Haskins has an interception percentage of 9.1, and has yet to throw or run for a single touchdown.

Methuselah is their starting RB, but he produces. Everyone behind him is trash. Just pure trash.

The ‘skins leading receiver is 200 yards ahead of the next closest guy on their roster, despite not catching for more than 40 yards in three weeks. Their second leading receiver doesn’t start, and hasn’t played a down in three weeks. The guy in third is a professional WR with 6 starts in the 9 games he’s played.

This offense isn’t just bad. It’s nuclear waste bad. It’s cancer risk bad. Right, Trent?

Defensively S Landon Collins is everything the giants hyped him up to be this offseason. (I know, I know. That was mean.)

All jokes aside, DE’s Jonathan Allen and Matt Ioaniddis come to wreck shit every week. I’d jump at the chance to see either of them in midnight green.

New York Giants: 2 – 7, 3^rd in the NFC East

“YOU had dreams, of a Lear jet

But then it ended up, like Aliyah’s jet” – Loaded Lux

When QB Danny Jones took over an 0 – 2 team, in Week 3, giants fans were eager to see what the kid had. Then after two straight wins (over bottom feeders), you couldn’t tell giants fans anything. “Eli was holding the team back!” “We love Danny Dimes!” They were convinced that the team would battle back, and win the East this year.

Then, the worst thing that could happen to a breakout rookie, happened to Danny Dimes: Teams got some tape on him. PFFFT!!! Don’t look now, but if you compare Jones to deposed starter QB Eli Manning, they look a lot alike this year. So what? The giants still have RB Saquon Barkley. Right?

Barkley is the worst kind of tease. He’s like watching partly scrambled, soft-core porn, on a “chipped” cable box. Just when you think you see somethiiing… NOPE! Nothing at all. Typical Saquon is 17 carries for 36 yards, and then 1 carry for 65. For that day it’s a 6.1 yard average, but it doesn’t reflect his actual average carry. And so the giants stall on drive, after drive, after drive. His deliveries often fall so short, that if he worked for the Post Office, most of the time you’d have to walk to the curb to get your mail.

As far as catching the ball, there’s TE Evan Engram! Did I mention that right now he has an injured foot and will miss at least Week 10. At least. Through nine weeks the leading WR for this team has 29 catches. I could go on, but it just keeps getting sadder. This isn’t me picking on the team. This is actually who they are. Look it up. If you root for this team you should already know this stuff.

Midway through the season and the giants two leading tacklers are their Safeties, with 65 and 67 stops. Safeties leading a team in tackles isn’t unusual, but 132 tackles this early in the year, indicates that teams are bypassing the LB level at an alarming rate. Especially when sporting a minus 10 takeaway figure, and surrendering 28 points per game.

This team not being in the basement, tells you just how awful the Redskins truly are.

Dallas Cowboys: 5 – 3, Top of the NFC East

Boasting a Top 10 Defense, a Top 5 Offense, and an amazingly healthy roster, the Cowboys have ridden their good luck all the way to a staggering, one game lead in the division. Media pundits everywhere, say that QB Dak Prescott (15TD, 8INT) is finally playing his best football. Um, okay.

Accompanying the virtuoso passing, is RB Ezekiel Elliott. He had a 27 yard run in Week 2, and a 27 yard catch in Week 5. His longest plays of the year! He remains a player you have to watch for on every down, despite the fact that his explosive plays get less explosive, every season, for three straight seasons in a row. But who cares?! What he lacks in explosiveness, he’ll make up for in volume. In fact, he’s on pace for another 350 touch season, and is showing no ill-effects from that workload. Nor will he next year.

The catalyst to this whole thing is The Anointed One, WR Amari Cooper. Cooper leads the NFL in recep- Wait, that’s actually the Saints Michael Thomas. Well Cooper leads the league receiving yar- Hold on! No, that would also be Thomas. Okay, yards per catc- Nope! Chargers Mike Williams owns that. How ‘bout them touchd- Ooops! Tampa Bay’s Mike Evans, and Detroit’s Kenny Golladay share that lead. So what’s all this Cooper talk about?

You know, when I step back, their offense doesn’t look quite as dominant as we keep being told it is by football pundits. Perhaps we should talk defense.

You can’t argue with 17 points allowed per game, and a plus one turnover margin. Those are either luck vs a couple of early winless opponents, or pretty good marks with such a weak pass rush They only have 22 sacks so far. That’s one ahead of the Redskins, tied with the giants, and two behind the Eagles.

All the media buzz aside, this looks like a pretty stoppable team to me. 

TRIVIA: During the 2019 season, only one NFL team allowed the Jets to score 24 points on them, while losing to them mano y Mono. Who was that team? (Hint: It was not the dreadfully awful Redskins. Then again the Jets and ‘skins don’t play until next week. So the Jets could hang 24 on them, but if they don’t, man, it’ll just make this trivia question so much more amusing.)

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So that’s the state of our division rivals as your Eagles head into Week 10