Dallas Cowboys
2022 Record: 12-5 (2nd in NFC East)
Head Coach: Mike McCarthy (4th season)
Notable Additions: CB Stephon Gilmore, WR Brandin Cooks, RB Ronald Jones II
Notable Departures: RB Ezekiel Elliott, G Connor McGovern, TE Dalton Schultz
Biggest Reason for Excitement: Offseason Roster Additions
While there wasn't a ton of turnover on the Cowboys roster this offseason, Jerry and Stephen Jones did an excellent job of making sure every move aggressively attacked a need. Brandin Cooks is the perfect steady, reliable veteran #2 option to pair with top dog CeeDee Lamb and with Lamb drawing most of the attention, he might even be in a position to have a career year, Stephon Gilmore had a very good 2022 season with the Colts (11 passes defensed, 2 INT's, career-high 66 tackles) that proved his best days aren't completely behind him and having the luxury of being the #2 corner behind Trevon Diggs puts him in a great spot to have another solid season at age 33 and by finally severing ties with a declining Ezekiel Elliott, they're giving the explosive, dual-threat Tony Pollard the featured back role he's long deserved. Could've they done some more to bolster their OL depth beyond signing Chuma Edoga-who only played 55 snaps for the Falcons last year and was below average at best as a spot starter with the Jets from 2019-21 and bringing in a safer veteran RB option to back up Pollard than fumble king Ronald Jones II? Sure, but their non-splashy approach to secondary moves can't dull the shine and potentially massive impact their 3 biggest personnel decisions of the offseason could have on their team overall.
Biggest Reason for Concern: Firing Kellen Moore and Replacing Him with Mike McCarthy and Brian Schottenheimer
For the 2nd straight year, the Cowboys embarrassing exit from the playoffs came courtesy of the 49ers. Unsurprisingly, Jerry Jones needed a head to roll after the team mustered just 12 points in that game and since Mike McCarthy wasn't going to volunteer to go to the guillotine himself, he sent OC Kellen Moore instead. Since letting him go, McCarthy has criticized Moore's desire to "light the scoreboard up" with the passing game and explicitly stated that since Moore didn't run the ball enough, the defense was too tired and that's why they lost. This is a bold, flat-out ridiculous criticism since: 1: The Cowboys were consistently one of the most run-heavy teams in the league under Moore (during the 2022 season in which McCarthy alleges Moore didn't committee to the run enough, Elliott and Pollard earned 231 and 193 carries respectively in 15 and 16 games). 2: They never finished lower than 6th in the league in scoring offense or 11th in total yards during the season of Moore's tenure in which Dak Prescott was under center for the majority of the season.
With Moore gone, McCarthy himself will be taking over the playcalling duties. As Packers fans will tell you, this is a terrible development for the Cowboys. Going from Moore to McCarthy is like trading in your brand new G-Wagon for a 1982 Mercury Sable. He calls games in such a conservative fashion that you wouldn't be out of line for thinking somebody had snuck a coach from the 70's or 80's onto the sideline to run the offense when nobody was looking. This will be the first time since 2018 that McCarthy has called the offense, so just imagine how many new archaic game planning techniques he's come up with over the past 5 years!!!
Having McCarthy as the puppet master of the offense would be bad enough, but the Cowboys decided to make things worse by tapping Brian Schottenheimer to be the new OC. Even if he doesn't have playcalling responsibilities, putting this man in a position of meaningful power on an offensive staff in the year 2023 is just baffling. What more does Schottenheimer need to do to prove that he's terrible at his job?
He's been stinking up sidelines and meeting rooms for 15+ years now with his wretched gameplans and impeccably bad playcalling instincts and just when you think he's going to be forever banished to miscellaneous assistant gigs, somebody makes him an OC. This madness really needs to stop and hopefully it will once Jerry shitcans McCarthy within the next few seasons. At least Prescott's pick total will go down since he's about to throw the ball 200 times less than he did in 2022 in order to fit all in those HB dives they're going to run (pray for Pollard's surgically repaired ankle).
Key to Reaching Their Ceiling: Having a More Balanced Defense
Watching NFL games on regular-ass cable means consuming Cowboys football is an option nearly every week and since the team is good at the moment, I tuned into most of their games last season. One of the most striking things about the 2022 team was how huge the gap in their defensive play was when their pass rush was playing well and when it wasn't. When it was on, they were a downright stifling group who generated QB pressure/sacks and takeaways at an absurd clip and did a good job of keeping points off the board. When it was off, the ball got moved against them pretty easily and they typically allowed 24+ points. This is supported by several stats such as their poor numbers against the run (22nd in YDS allowed), middle-of-the-rank in passing TD's allowed (14th) despite being ranked in the top against the pass and in scoring defense and the massive point totals they allowed in some games where they got 2 or fewer sacks (31 to the Packers in Week 9, 34 to the Jaguars in Week 15, in Week 16, 27 to the Eagles in Week 16).
As great and aggressive of a DC as Dan Quinn is, they can't continue to live and die by the effectiveness of their pass-rush. Certain teams are going to have the size, speed and skill on their offensive line and/or a mobile QB that will be able keep a pass rush at bay and if you don't have any other way of executing on defense, you're going to find yourself in a heap of trouble somewhere down the line in a game that matters.
In this quest for a more balanced defense, there's certain deficiencies that they're going to have to work around. Micah Parsons and Dorrance Armstrong are breathtakingly awful run defenders. Diggs' eagerness to make big plays on the ball is going to lead him to allowing some long TD's. Malik Hooker's health will always be a top concern as he's missed multiple games in every seasons of his career prior to his arrival in Dallas in 2021.
What the Cowboys are able to hang their hat on is what they did to help boost their roster. The aforementioned addition of Gilmore should help sure up their #2 corner spot that had been manned by the famously up-and-down Anthony Brown for the past 5 seasons. 1st round pick Mazi Smith is a mauler on the interior defensive line that should provide an immediate boost to their poor rush defense while also giving them yet another terrific pass-rusher. And with the expectation that Parsons will play more with his hand in the dirt this season, they should be able to get more reps for a better run defender like Damone Clark or rookie DeMarion Overshown in their linebacking corps. Now, it'll be up to Quinn to make the necessary philosophical and subtle lineup tweaks to take this group to the place they need to get to become a more complete unit.
Bottom Line:
As talented as the Cowboys are, the pilgrims running the offense could very well cause at least a bit of regression from their 12-5 campaign in 2022.
New York Giants
2022 Record: 9-7-1 (3rd in NFC East)
Head Coach: Brian Daboll (2nd season)
Notable Additions: TE Darren Waller, ILB Bobby Okereke, C/G Nick Gates
Notable Departures: S Julian Love, G Nick Gates, WR Kenny Golladay
Biggest Reason for Excitement: Seeing What Brian Daboll Can Do in Year #2
Through some solid coaching and getting a whole lot of buy-in from a not overly talented roster, Brian Daboll was able to greatly overachieve in year #1 on the job to the point where the Giants snuck into the playoffs. GM Joe Schoen and ownership rewarded Daboll's excellent rookie season by investing more in the team via some splashy pickups (Darren Waller, Bobby Okereke) and rewarding their cornerstone players (Daniel Jones, Andrew Thomas, Dexter Lawrence) with new deals that keep them with the team long-term. To think what he could do as an encore after effectively expediting their rebuilding efforts by at least 3 years is tremendously exciting for a team that hasn't had much to get excited about as of late.
Biggest Reason for Concern: The Possibility of 2022 Being a Fluke
I'm well aware of the irony of "immediately" diving into "Was 2022 a fluke?" talk after praising Daboll's coaching job, but that narrative has far too much potential truth in it to be written off as just some jumping off point for a pessimistic WFAN segment . Part of what made the Giants success last season so shocking was how generally unremarkable they were most weeks. They really didn't do anything overly well outside of running the ball (in which they ranked the 4th in the league) and most of their victories seemed to come from simply not turning the ball over much (they actually ranked dead last in giveaways) and playing hard enough for 60 minutes to eek out a win in a close game (8 of their 9 wins were by 8 points or less and 5 of them were by 6 or less). The magic of the overachieving Giants started to fade once late November hit as they went 2-5-1 in their last 8 regular season games. What caused this skid? Simple: They entered a much tougher part of their schedule than what they had faced out of the gate and they came crashing back down to Earth (their 2 wins during the closing span were over the Commanders and Colts, their 7 wins in the opening stretch were over the Texans, Bears, Titans, Panthers, Packers, Ravens and Jaguars-who were 2-4 when they played). As for their playoff victory, that was more a product of the Vikings having an abysmal defense and embracing their cursed loser status at the end of the game with the Kirk Cousins dump-off pass to T.J. Hockenson well short of the stick on the 4th down than anything special the Giants did.
This weak finish is where moves such as sticking with Daniel Jones and only making a couple of big additions while otherwise staying pat or making lateral moves to replace departed starters like Julian Love and Jon Feliciano with Bobby McCain and Nick Gates could come back to haunt them. Sure, Jones may've had his best year as a pro by a longshot in 2022, but is he good enough to warrant handing $160 million over 4 years to when it's still clear just how good he is after 4 seasons? Do they have enough talent on their roster (especially at the skill positions on offense) to compete in a deceptively tough division, let alone the rest of the league? Can they hold up better against strong opponents than they did a year ago, especially when their schedule is expected to be much tougher this season (their non-division slate consisting of the AFC East, NFC West, New Orleans Saints, Green Bay Packers and Las Vegas Raiders is pretty brutal). If this team wants to prove that 2022 wasn't just a fluke, the answers to all of these questions are going to have to be at least a pretty resounding yes.
Key to Reaching Their Ceiling: Making Plays in the Passing Game
Discovering that the Giants had the 26th ranked passing offense in the league in 2022 is actually kind of shocking. Their leading receiver last season was Darius Slayton-who registered only 724 YDS on 46 catches and the only other person to finish with over 500 was Richie James (569 to be exact)-who became a favorite target of Jones down the stretch as he hauled in 26 receptions over the final 5 games he appeared in. Simply put, those aren't the kind of numbers you see out of the top receivers in a healthy passing game-especially since Saquon Barkley has become more of a last-ditch checkdown option (his line in 2022 was 57 catches for 338 YDS) out of the backfield than an actual asset in the passing game in recent years.
The sheer lack of weaponry in the passing game in 2022 is a big part of why it's difficult to tell what Jones can be as a passer. He hit his targets at an impressively high clip (67.2 CMP%-which was the best in the league last season), but outside of Slayton reeling in some deep balls from time to time, no one was able to separate or make players after the catch with any consistency.
Will things be any different on this front in 2023? Hard to say, but there's certainly more playmaking potential in this year's group than there was in last year's. The most obvious contender to take on a true top target mantle is Waller-who cleared 1,100 YDS in both 2019 and 2020 and at 6'6, 245 lbs with roughly 4.5 speed, is one of the toughest downfield matchups in the league. There's some concerns he's starting to wear down after back-to-back injury-shortened seasons that caused the Raiders to sever ties with him, but he's entering the back-end of his prime (he turns 31 in September) and should benefit from a fresh start with a Giants team that should prioritize putting the ball in his hands.
If the training camp depth charts are to be believed, rookie Jaylin Hyatt and Parris Campbell will also be getting at least a fair amount of reps. While Hyatt's game isn't completely pro-ready (his route-running is pretty weak and DB's can take him out of the game with physicality at the point of attack), his top-end vertical speed provides the Giants with the ability to chuck some more long bombs downfield, which would almost certainly help pump their overall numbers up. Campbell, on the other hand, could be a useful short-yardage option in the slot and out of the backfield like he was in his final season with the Colts in 2022 (if he can stay healthy of course).
Among the returning players, Wan'Dale Robinson-who tore his ACL late last November and put together a few solid games prior to being sidelined-could prove to be a huge factor once he's healthy enough to return and Slayton stands a good chance of remaining a starter and getting a solid target share given his history with Jones. It really doesn't matter where the contributions come from or if a true #1 is able to emerge, they just need to get something meaningful out of their passing game if they want to keep winning games and see what Jones is really made of.
Bottom Line:
I wasn't a believer in the Giants amidst their lengthy early-season winning streak a year ago and despite some marginal roster improvements during the offseason, I am still not a believer now.
Philadelphia Eagles
2022 Record: 14-3 (1st in NFC East)
Head Coach: Nick Sirianni (3rd season)
Notable Additions: S Terrell Edmunds, RB D'Andre Swift, RB Rashaad Penny
Notable Departures: DT Javon Hargrave, ILB T.J. Edwards, G Isaac Seumalo
Biggest Reason for Excitement: Their Roster is Still Loaded
Losses are inevitable for a Super Bowl team, especially for one that had as many younger guys (T.J. Edwards, Miles Sanders, C.J. Gardner-Johnson, Isaac Seumalo) in contract years as the 2022 Eagles did. What isn't common is being able to replace those guys with promising young players or established veteran talent across the board. Here's a breakdown of the starters they lost this offseason and who will be replacing them in 2023.
Starters Lost:
Offense: Miles Sanders, Isaac Seumalo
Defense: Javon Hargrave, T.J. Edwards, Kyzir White, C.J. Gardner-Johnson, Marcus Epps
Replacements:
Offense: D'Andre Swift, Tyler Steen
Defense: Jalen Carter, Nakobe Dean, Nicholas Morrow, Reed Blankenship, Terrell Edmunds
Just ridiculous stuff. On top of that, they were able to re-sign James Bradberry to a multi-year deal, convince veterans leaders Jason Kelce, Fletcher Cox and Brandon Graham to return for another year and ink Jalen Hurts to a massive extension that will keep him in Philly through the end of the 2028 season. This is still easily among the most loaded overall rosters in the league on both sides of the ball and it would be a shock if there was a non-injury-epidemic scenario where they didn't end up at the top of the NFC hierarchy once again.
Biggest Reason for Concern: RB Health
As I just mentioned above, Miles Sanders was among the players the Eagles decided not to re-sign this offseason. With RB's having the short shelf life that they do in the NFL and his 2022 campaign being significantly better than his previous 3 (his 1,269 rushing YDS cleared his previous career high by 402 YDS and the 11 rushing TD's he scored were 2 more than the previous 3 seasons combined), moving on was the sensible decision. The primary candidates to replace Sanders as the top back are veterans D'Andre Swift and Rashaad Penny. On paper, this is a great solution. They're both explosive runners with some pass-catching ability that could complement each other well as Swift is exceptionally quick/ shifty in the open field while Penny runs like a bull unleashed on the streets of Pamplona and the money on them is short with Penny inking a 1-year/$1.35 mil deal in free agency and Swift entering the final year of his rookie deal after being traded from the Lions. In practice, it could be catastrophic since neither Penny or Swift has ever played a full slate of games in the pros.
Yes, you read that correctly neither of these guys have ever been healthy over the course of an entire season. The severity of the ailments and time missed however is pretty significant as Penny has suffered multiple season-ending injuries (torn ACL in 2019, broken fibula last year) while Swift tends to get dinged up with ankle sprains, groin strains, etc. and miss 3-4 games per year. In the event that they do both get hurt and miss games, the incumbent trio of Kenneth Gainwell, Boston Scott and Trey Sermon would be left to handle the RB duties-which wouldn't be ideal since the former pair are mostly only effective as pass-catchers and the latter only managed to get 2 carries last season after being a surprise cut from the 49ers final roster last September. Having a productive running back capable of handling a heavy workload was an underrated aspect of the Eagles offensive success in 2022 and the shaky durability of their presumed new 1-2 punch at the position could compromise their ability to replicate that dynamic ground game this season.
Key to Reaching Their Ceiling: Not Letting the Super Bowl Loss Get to Them
Being so close to achieving the ultimate goal every NFL, but ultimately falling short is the type of devastating failure that can cause a team to unravel. Doubt can creep in, chemistry can fracture and the pressure to get back there can prove to be too much to handle. The Eagles are the latest team to face this struggle and despite having the misfortune of both coordinators (Shane Steichen, Jonathan Gannon) leaving to take head coaching jobs elsewhere this offseason, they're better positioned than most teams to not let their Super Bowl loss consume them.
Several of their leaders (Kelce, Cox, Graham, Lane Johnson) were around when they won the Super Bowl in 2017, severe more of their standout players (Darius Slay, A.J. Brown, Bradberry, Hasson Reddick, Jordan Mailata, Josh Sweat) have been around long enough to know that you can't let one stinging loss affect your focus and perhaps most importantly, their young ascending star QB is an even-keeled kid who has had to overcome his share of adversity in his football life and showed during that loss that he's capable of shining bright on a big stage. The 2022 Bengals were able to shake the Super Bowl hangover by maintaining their identity and not shrinking under pressure. My gut tells me that the 2023 Eagles will do the same thing.
Bottom Line:
Unless they start playing with their heads up their asses, suffer a massive coaching downgrade with new coordinators Brian Johnson and Sean Desai or get hit with a massive wave of injuries, the Eagles should be strong contenders to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl once again.
Washington Commanders
2022 Record: 8-8-1 (4th in NFC East)
Head Coach: Ron Rivera (4th season)
Notable Additions: QB Jacoby Brissett, ILB Cody Barton, T Andrew Wylie
Notable Departures: C Chase Roullier (retired), S Bobby McCain, QB Taylor Heinicke
Biggest Reason for Excitement: Dan Snyder Has Finally Sold the Team
After 24 excruciating years, a nightmarish chapter in DC/Virginia sports history finally closed on July 20th when Dan Snyder officially sold the Commanders. Many felt that Snyder was a cancer that couldn't be cured as he brushed off scandal after scandal during his tenure as owner (especially over the past few years) and as recently as a few months ago when some hiccups with the tentative deal to sell the team to Josh Harris emerged, it seemed like the sale possibly wouldn't go through. Now that he's officially gone, Commanders fans can breath a sigh of relief and look forward to the future for the first time since the dawn of the new millennium when they were still a pillar of the league. They'll probably move out of the decaying dump that is FedFex Field in short order, players/coaches will likely be more willing to stay (although that hasn't been as much of an issue under their current regime of Ron Rivera/Martin Mayhew/Jason Wright) and above all, their organization will be free from the toxicity and ineptitude that trickled down from the top. While Harris hasn't achieved much meaningful success with his other sports enterprises (he also owns the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils) since entering the space in 2011, the bar for him to clear is so low that the fans will give him a lot of grace for the foreseeable future as he tries to dig this team out of purgatory.
Biggest Reason for Concern: Any Possible Outcome Coming from Eric Bieniemy being their OC
After being passed over for head coaching vacancies over 5 (!) straight hiring cycles, Eric Bieniemy decided he needed to leave Kansas City and Andy Reid's shadow in order to improve his chances of landing one of the NFL's top gigs. The job that he settled on was the vacant OC gig in Washington, who is in desperate need of an offensive facelift after finishing last year in the bottom half of the league in every important category outside of rushing offense-where they ranked 12th despite having the 4th most attempts in the league .
While it's definitely unfathomable that Bieniemy became the 1st OC under Reid in Kansas City that didn't get a head coaching gig within 2 years of taking the job and saw many guys with less impressive resumes got hired over him (Urban Meyer, Nathaniel Hackett, Matt Rhule, Kliff Kingsbury, Freddie Kitchens, David Culley, Brandon Staley) from 2019-23, there are plenty of historical reasons to not view Bieneimy as a slam dunk hire-even if his reported struggles in interviews are merely the product of a fabricated media narrative.
The harsh truth is that Doug Pederson is the only Reid acolyte from the offensive side of the ball that has excelled as a head coach/sole playcaller. Matt Nagy was basically a .500 head coach while he was with the Bears whose offense was sluggish and predictable following his terrific inaugural campaign in 2018, Brad Childress managed both higher highs (2 playoff berths, 2 10+ win seasons and 1 NFC Championship Game appearance) and lower lows (2 losing seasons, a massive blowout loss to the Eagles in the 2008 playoffs) with the Vikings than Nagy had with the Bears, but he only lasted about 4 and a half seasons before getting axed during the 2010 season after starting 3-7. As for Pat Shurmur, simply uttering his name in the greater Cleveland or Tri-State area is frowned upon as he led both the Browns and Giants to 9-23 records as HC. Not to mention, Shurmur also just fizzled big time as the Broncos OC in 2021-where he led them to be the 23rd ranked scoring offense and 19th passing offense during Vic Fangio's last year as HC.
There's also the matter of Bieniemy's poor performance as Colorado OC's before he left the position in 2013 to become the RB coach under Reid in Kansas City (he likely wouldn't have been retained at Colorado anyways since his boss Jon Embree was fired after the 2012 season). In Bieniemy's 2 years on the job, the team went a whopping 4-22 and his offenses ranked 109th and 120th respectively in scoring in all of D1 college football (note: there were 124 teams in D1 at this time). Now, he didn't exactly have much to work with as wide receiver Paul Richardson was the only future NFL player on the roster, but posting bottom 10 offenses in the country while playing outside of the heavyweight conferences of the SEC and Big Ten is unacceptably awful.
What all of this points to is that we don't really know what kind coach of Bieniemy is without Reid by his side and the implications of that are kind of scary for a team that has plagued by bad offensive coaching throughout Rivera's tenure with the team and pretty much every year since their hotshot whippersnapper OC Sean McVay left to become the head coach of the Rams in January 2017.
Key to Reaching Their Ceiling: QB Play
The concerns over what Bieniemy is going to be able to as their OC directly tie-in into what his most difficult assignment will be: getting something out of the QB position. At this moment in time, it appears 2nd year pro Sam Howell will be their Week 1 starter as there has been no chatter of a QB competition taking place in camp and Rivera has hinted since late January that he'll get the 1st crack at the starting gig. As dicey as this could be given Howell's lack of meaningful game experience (his Week 18 start against the Cowboys was his only game action as a rookie), finding out what you have in the young kid makes more sense than just rolling out the reliable yet unexciting veteran Jacoby Brissett on the grounds of the established floor he provides.
In terms of raw skills, there's a lot to like about Howell. He's a true dual threat, his decisionmaking is excellent and his ability to go through his reads in a quick yet efficient manner is a rare for a kid who played in a spread offense in college. Early public endorsements from top receivers Terry McLaurin and Jahan Dotson as well as the flashes of strong play as both a passer and a runner he had during that Cowboys game last year are encouraging signs that the Commanders might've found themselves some late-round gold when Howell unexpectedly tumbled all the way down to the 5th round in the 2022 draft for reasons that still aren't quite clear.
On the downside, the kid has a wiry 6'1 frame that makes him more susceptible to taking a beating at the professional level, he holds the ball for far too long (this showed up in the Cowboys game as he took 3 sacks) and while the unreliable hands of his receivers in college contributed to his unimpressive completion percentage numbers in 2019 (61.4) and 2021 (62.5), his accuracy-especially downfield-is a bit inconsistent. Given Howell's experience level, Bieniemy's desire to prove himself as a strong offensive mind and Rivera's questionable job security, the likelihood of an RPO-driven system being established here that allows Howell to make quick decisions/easy throws with play action and not throw the ball 40 times per game, and thus, give them the best chance of winning games, seems very strong.
If Howell flounders or gets hurt, Brissett is as strong of a backup as you'll find in the league. His low turnover rate (23 career INT's in 48 starts and 76 game appearances over 7 seasons) alone would make him a considerable improvement over what Taylor Heniecke and Carson Wentz gave them last season and the Commanders reliably strong defense would put him in a better position to win games than he was in with the Dolphins and Browns over the past two seasons. As shocking it sounds, this is probably the best position the Commanders have been in at QB since before Alex Smith suffered his massive leg injury in 2018 and considering that this team has been consistently competitive in 3 seasons under Rivera without getting much from the position, this could mean that they're about to surprise some people this season.
Bottom Line:
If the offense can find an identity and perform at least a respectable level, the Commanders could find themselves returning to the playoffs for the first time since 2020.
Predicted Standings:
1.Philadelphia Eagles (12-5)
2.Dallas Cowboys (10-7)
3.Washington Commanders (9-8)
4.New York Giants (7-10)
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