Good news for the entirety of the NFL universe that loathes watching the four misbegotten bumblers of the NFC East: eventually, the season’s going to end, and at that point the Eagles, Giants, Cowboys and Commanders can’t hurt you anymore. They won’t infect your precious, limited football viewing experience with their distinctive brand of incompetent, unprepared and overmatched football. One day, we’ll all be free. 

But until then, friends, we’ve got to slog through a lot of you-know-what. Because it encompasses two of the nation’s most population-dense cities, one of the NFL’s old-school bone-deep fandoms, and America’s largest (and most inexplicable) bandwagon, the NFC East slithers its way onto national broadcast after national broadcast. There is, quite literally, no escaping the NFC East.

Ten weeks remain in the NFL regular season, and nine of those already have their television schedules mapped. (Week 18 remains in scheduling limbo and will depend on the available matchups.) Over the course of those nine weeks, the NFC East are currently scheduled to appear in an astounding 12 national timeslots. Twelve! Each of these four dogs gets at least two more national games! 

That figure double-counts games where NFC East teams play each other, including the Commanders and Giants next week, and Eagles-Cowboys on Thanksgiving (Enjoy your turkey!). But that’s because each NFC East national game slot takes away a space where a more deserving team could shine on the national stage. 

For comparison purposes, that’s just one fewer total game than the 13 that the NFC North will get — and right now, all four of those teams are in the playoff hunt. The NFC East’s most comparable division, the equally woeful NFC South, only has three games remaining on the national slate. Now that’s a quarantine that we can respect! 

Of course, some of those games could — should — get flexed out, but are networks going to give up on the Cowboys or Giants no matter how bad they are?

What’s gone wrong with the NFC East? Pick your poison. There’s injury (the Giants, who lost their starting quarterback for the year in Week 2). There’s a regression to the mean and an inability to adjust to a rapidly changing NFL (the Commanders, who haven’t come close to hitting the highs of Jayden Daniels’ rookie season in 2024). There’s fundamental coaching incompetence fumbling away a season despite talent on the roster (the Cowboys, whose defensive struggles are now epidemic). And then there’s the Eagles, who suffer from all three and are on a six-game skid as a result. 

This isn’t a new issue, either. Last year, the NFC East was the worst division in football, going 15-28-1 against non-divisional opponents. So far this season, the division has won only six games against non-division opponents, worst in the conference and ahead of only the AFC South’s five. And it’s not likely to get better anytime soon. 

The remaining slate for all four teams brings to mind that old line about the sucker at the poker table — when you can’t see a guaranteed W anywhere on your schedule, you’re the guaranteed W on everybody else’s schedule. 

After losing to the Cardinals in humiliating fashion on Sunday, the Cowboys still must face the three stronger teams of the NFC West. The Seahawks and 49ers also await the Giants and Eagles, while the Rams, Bengals and Vikings still lurk on Washington’s schedule. The cross-conference opponent is the AFC South; the Jaguars already diced up Philadelphia overseas and still must play the other three. 

And after all that, we still have to see one of these teams in the playoffs, taking a home game away from a more talented NFC West or NFC North team. My current pick is the Giants; the Commanders are too inconsistent, the rot in Dallas is too deep, and Philadelphia might as well just start planning for the 2027 draft. 

This wretched NFC East season is likely to result in as many as three total sideline overhauls; the Giants cleaned house last year, and head coach John Harbaugh is one of the few moving parts in this entire division that isn’t a problem. 

There’s a whole lot of ground to cover before the draft, but the Eagles currently “lead” the division in the race to the bottom. It’s the NFC East’s bad luck that some truly terrible AFC teams — Chargers, Titans, Dolphins — are clogging the draft’s top spots and don’t look likely to budge from there. Every NFC East team still has a first-round pick, though the Cowboys must give the earlier of their two to the Jets for last year’s Quinnen Williams trade. 

So there’s no easy fix here for any of these teams, not through the draft, not through free agency, not through a wholesale burn-it-all-down torching. On the plus side, though, at least we’ll always get to watch them try to figure it out on national TV, week after week after week after …