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They were supposed to be the beasts of the NFC, but in the end, they were the NFC Least.
As in the least strong division in football when it mattered most.
The NFC East is the only division that isn’t sending a team to the second round of the NFL playoffs after the Eagles and Cowboys had colossal meltdowns that could very well leave both teams looking for new head coaches.
Who saw that coming a month ago?
The Eagles were in the Super Bowl last February and then became only the second team in history to start a season 10-1 and finish with seven losses, joining the 1986 Jets. For a team with this much talent to lose six of its final seven games — bookended with 23-point beatdowns — and be shut out in the second half Monday against the 9-8 Buccaneers is a fireable offense.
Forget the three straight playoff appearances for Nick Sirianni. He’s responsible for how sloppy this team played during its historic collapse. He’s the one who chose to puff his chest to Chiefs fans when leaving the field after the Eagles’ revenge win against Kansas City in November, but the last laugh goes to the defending Super Bowl champions who are still in the playoffs. Now Sirianni can own it while likely looking for another job in the coming weeks.
The Cowboys, meanwhile, won seven of their final nine games during the regular season to win the division but had an even more embarrassing playoff loss Sunday with the NFL’s No. 1 offense.
They were the only home team to lose in the six Wild Card games, but even more shocking, it was the Cowboys’ first loss in Dallas since the 2022 season opener, ending a 16-game winning streak.
And they, too, lost to a pedestrian 9-8 team, with the Packers — who five weeks ago lost to the Giants — jumping out to a 27-0 lead and stunning Jerry World with a pick-six with two minutes left in the first half.
There is now a significant body of work stacked against Mike McCarthy, who has just one playoff victory in four seasons as Cowboys head coach. Jerry Jones has shown more loyalty to coaches than Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, but it would be unfathomable for the 81-year-old Jones to run it back with McCarthy for a fifth time after not even advancing in the postseason as a division winner.
Furthermore, Dallas has the NFL’s longest active streak of 13 straight postseasons without even reaching a conference championship game.
Could the Eagles and Cowboys make a run at six-time champion coach Bill Belichick, who is now a free agent after leaving the Patriots? It would certainly be worth a call, and what a story that would be for the NFC East next season.
All of this reflects poorly on the Giants and Commanders. They went a combined 1-7 this season against the two frauds. The 6-11 Giants even played the Eagles both times during their collapse, but their Christmas Day loss wasn’t enough to spark a turnaround for Philadelphia because, well, it was the Giants.
They did manage to beat the Eagles in the season finale, but as yours truly wrote before that game, a win was never going to create some magical momentum for the franchise in the offseason. They still need to find a quarterback, better roster depth across the board, and at least two new coordinators (we still don’t know the fate of offensive coordinator Mike Kafka) to work for Brian Daboll, who has yet to prove he is cut out for the job after overachieving for one season and being awful in the next.
And now Daboll is under even more scrutiny after a New York Daily News report surfaced Monday with sources inside the building suggesting that Daboll has undermined his assistants with finger-pointing yet not many solutions.
Talk about offseason momentum!
As for the 4-13 Commanders, they inexplicably stuck with Ron Rivera as their head coach for four years before finally giving up after a second straight last-place finish. That franchise has the third-longest drought without a postseason victory dating back to 2005. Only the Raiders (2002) and Dolphins (2000) have suffered for longer.
This season became so bad for Washington that hours before the Oct. 31 trade deadline, it decided to dismantle its stellar defensive line by trading former first-round picks Chase Young and Montez Sweat for nothing more than the No. 40 and No. 100 overall picks in the upcoming draft.
The Commanders also may be in the market for a new quarterback after Sam Howell was benched twice late in the season, and it’s hard to sell those fans on another rebuild when you’re an organization that has gotten it wrong for so long.
The entire division got it wrong this year, ultimately, and that’s why all four teams will be watching the other seven divisions in the next round of the playoffs.
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