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:
