I say it every summer and all the former players I do TV with laugh at me like it's silly: The NFC East has not had a repeat champion since 2003-2004.
This is real, folks, and it is not silly. There are legitimately inexplicable mystical forces at work keeping this streak alive. These forces stole Dak Prescott's mojo at key times last year, causing him to lose a critical game to Eagles backups in December, and they appear to have done the same to Carson Wentz this season.
The Eagles, you see, won the NFC East in 2019. That means they cannot win it again in 2020, no matter how bad every other team is. So these capricious hobgoblins of history have somehow managed to reach inside the soul of Wentz and remove his ability to do things that used to make him one of the most promising quarterbacks in the league. Things like converting third downs -- a thing at which he was so good in 2017 that many thought he was on an MVP track before his season-ending injury.
Philadelphia was 2-for-12 on third down in Sunday's listless loss in rainy Cleveland. That's a week after going 0-for-9 on third down in a loss to the Giants that actually now looks as if it might mean something.
Yes, inexplicably, the first-place Eagles are 3-6-1, just a half-game in front of the 3-7 Giants, Washington and Cowboys in a division race that, yeah, is pretty much any team's to win. Except the Eagles, of course. They can't possibly win it. Remember, they won it last year.
It is in the City of Brotherly Love that we begin this week's overreaction column:
The Eagles have to bench Carson Wentz, even if it's for just one game
We've heard all of the excuses -- offensive line injuries, wide receiver injuries, tight end injuries. They're legit. But the result of all of the injury issues the Eagles have had this season is that a lot more pressure has been put on Wentz. And the reality is that he has not responded. He entered Sunday ranked 27th in Total QBR, just behind Gardner Minshew and ahead of Nick Foles. When you're hanging out in the same statistical neighborhood as the Jaguars' 2019 QB depth chart, you're pretty lucky to still be in first place.
Wentz leads the league in interceptions, with as many of those (14) as he has touchdown passes. He has taken more sacks than anyone else in the league, by kind of a lot. His 40 sacks are the most for any quarterback in his team's first 10 games since Ryan Tannehill in 2013. He's not seeing the field well, not making good decisions, holding the ball too long -- he's a mess.
And in a division "race" that might require only seven or eight wins to win it, he's costing the Eagles. Coach Doug Pederson & Co. have put rookie second-round pick Jalen Hurts in for a gadget play or two here or there, but the calls for seeing what Hurts can do as the actual starting quarterback are only going to grow louder after the egg Wentz laid Sunday in Cleveland.
The verdict: OVERREACTION. First of all, the Eagles aren't going to do it. Pederson was asked point-blank Sunday whether Wentz would start again next week and said, "No question about it. He's our starter." Pederson went on to say that benching Wentz for Hurts would amount to "sending the wrong message to your football team that this season is over, and that's a bad message."
There's this persistent idea among NFL fans and pundits that change for change's sake is good, but it isn't always. The Eagles know where Hurts is in his development better than you or I do, and it's not difficult to imagine that working with Wentz and hoping he turns things around is the better move for keeping their playoff hopes alive than switching to an unproven rookie.
This thing is all still in the Eagles' hands. If they win the rest of their games, they win the division, no matter what anyone else does. And truth be told they probably won't have to win even that many. Sitting down Wentz for a game to clear his head or whatever could work, but that's a gamble. Fact is, there might not be any truly good answers here, because the Eagles are up against forces beyond their control. Nobody wins the NFC East two years in a row. Nobody.
It is panic time in Baltimore
Last season, the Ravens went 14-2, Lamar Jackson was the MVP and they appeared to be set up for continued greatness in 2020. We were doing TV segments in the offseason in which people wondered if they could go 16-0. Man -- life comes at you fast.
Baltimore blew a 10-point lead and lost to Tennessee on Sunday to drop to 6-4. The Ravens are in third place in the AFC North, four full games behind unbeaten Pittsburgh and a game behind the Browns. They play at Pittsburgh on Thursday. As in, three days from now. Jackson was, at one point, 21-0 in his career in games in which his team led by 10 or more points. In the Ravens' past three such games, they are 1-2. They were 6-1 against teams with winning records in 2019; they're 1-4 against them this year.
What's most amazing is that this Baltimore team that was built around the run and absolutely crushed people in the run game in 2018 and 2019 has been outrushed in four of its past five games. Something is amiss.
The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. I mean, the Ravens won in Pittsburgh last season, but that was the game in which Mason Rudolph got knocked out and Duck Hodges had to finish it, and they still needed a JuJu Smith-Schuster fumble in overtime to win it. This year, the Steelers look fully capable of dropping their division rivals to 6-5 and eliminating them from division contention Thursday night.
Some of the issues the Ravens have might be correctable, but others are definitely not. Marshal Yanda isn't coming out of retirement and Ronnie Stanley isn't coming back from his ankle injury until next year, so the cavalry isn't coming for the offensive line.
The reason for optimism is that, even with 10-0 Pittsburgh staring them in the face this week, the Ravens have the easiest remaining schedule of any team in the league, according to ESPN's Football Power Index. After the Steelers game (and the ensuing 10 days off), they play the Cowboys at home, the Browns on the road, the Jaguars at home, the Giants at home and they finish the season in Cincinnati. Even if they drop to 6-5 on Thursday night, the schedule still affords them a chance to finish 11-5, which would surely get them into the postseason. But even if they do get there, it's going to be hard to expect greatness when we just haven't seen it from them this year.
The Raiders are the team that should scare the Chiefs the most in the postseason
What a treat Sunday night was -- Derek Carr and the Raiders trading blows with Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs until the final two minutes, when Mahomes marched down the field for the game-winning touchdown. Moments earlier, Carr had found Jason Witten for his own go-ahead touchdown.
The Chiefs needed to win to split the season series and make sure the Raiders didn't get any ideas about maybe having a chance to catch them atop the AFC West. The Raiders needed a win to bolster their standing in a claustrophobic AFC wild-card field. It was two-way brilliance mixed with just a whiff of desperation, and it was beautiful. Kansas City avenged its only loss of the season by the skin of its teeth, and it appears a rematch in January would be nothing but fun.
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. Look, the Chiefs are the better team. There's no question about that. But what the Raiders have in their favor is that they are very clearly not afraid of the Chiefs. They believe they have built a roster that's equipped to beat Kansas City head-to-head. They've done it once and they came within a few seconds of doing it again. Would you favor Las Vegas in a playoff game in Kansas City? Absolutely not. Would you be shocked if the Raiders won that game? Not if you watched the two games between the teams this year.
The Steelers are unbeaten and still have the inside track on a first-round bye and a home game if they see Kansas City in the postseason. The Bills played them tough in Buffalo. The Colts are tough to score against. The Titans still have Derrick Henry. You can come up with arguments for a handful of teams as the one that could potentially knock off the champs. But Las Vegas is the team that knows it can, and plays like it.
Kevin Stefanski is the NFL's Coach of the Year
Let's circle back to that point about the Browns being in second place in the AFC North at 7-3. This is the fourth time in the past 18 years that they have won at least seven games in a season, and they're there with six games to go. Their next win will be their eighth. They haven't won eight in a season since they were 10-6 in 2007. They haven't made the playoffs since they were a 9-7 wild-card team in 2002. And yes, there's (at least) one more playoff team per conference this year, but the fact is, if the season ended right now, the Browns would be a playoff team.
Stefanski, the former Vikings offensive coordinator, is in his first year as Cleveland's coach, and he has done that thing good coaches do: figured out his team's and his players' strengths and built a plan around them. The Browns have two great running backs and a mauling offensive line. They run the ball. And they run it some more. They haven't suffered without Odell Beckham Jr. because their DNA is the running game and they can operate their passing game off of that as needed.
Their hope in hiring Stefanski had nothing to do with his offensive philosophy or any particular schemes he planned to run. They believed they were getting a calm, competent coach who could settle things down in Cleveland and let the talent on the roster come to the surface. To this point, he has done exactly that and should be commended for it.
The verdict: OVERREACTION. Yeah, those are all really good points, except Mike Tomlin is in his division, is 10-0 so far and should be the runaway winner if the vote were taken right now. There are other candidates as well. Sean Payton is an NFC-best 8-2, has barely had Michael Thomas and just won a game with Taysom Hill as his quarterback. Sean McDermott has the Bills in first place. Brian Flores has the Dolphins in contention. Andy Reid is still coaching the Chiefs.
This is a fascinating race, and Stefanski deserves to be mentioned in it. But it's too soon to anoint him the winner, at least until Tomlin loses a game. Or probably two.
The Colts have the league's best defense
Entering Sunday's games, the Colts were the stingiest defense in the league in yards allowed per game, at just over 290. They ranked seventh in ESPN's defensive efficiency metric. They were one of only four teams in the league allowing fewer than 20 points per game.
But if you watched the first half of their game Sunday against Green Bay, it didn't feel like they were that great a defense. Sure, the Packers benefited from some good field position due to some ball-security issues on the part of the Colts. But at halftime, Aaron Rodgers & Co. had a 28-14 lead thanks to 206 total yards, 15 first downs and a 3-for-4 performance on third-down-conversion attempts.
The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. Somebody on the Colts' defense flipped a switch at halftime, because they came out and smothered the Packers on the way to a 34-31 victory. Green Bay had just six first downs in the second half, its second fewest in a half this season. The Packers were 1-for-5 on third downs after halftime and, perhaps most amazingly, had just 10 rushing yards. This is a team with Aaron Jones and Jamaal Williams at running back behind a very good offensive line that had a two-touchdown lead at halftime and had just 10 rushing yards the rest of the way.
The Packers did not score in the second half until Mason Crosby's game-tying field goal in the final seconds, and they fumbled the ball away on their second play of overtime to set up the Colts for a game-winning field goal. The Indy defense recovered from a rough first half and clamped down on one of the best offenses in the league, setting the Colts up for a huge rematch with the Titans next week.
"This is the best defense I've seen since '95, when we almost made it to the Super Bowl," team owner Jim Irsay said after the game.