With every passing year the Philadelphia Eagles keep distancing themselves from the rest of the NFC East. With the exception of the Washington Commanders’ improbable run to the NFC Title game last Sunday, the division has pretty much been an exhibition of “the little engine that couldn’t” if you don’t don a green jersey.
Is there any more evidence of how important a franchise quarterback is to a franchise than the resurgence of the team from our nation’s capital? If you don’t have one you don’t have a team, ergo you don’t have a chance. The Washington franchise hasn’t had a franchise quarterback since Mark Rypien who’s now almost eligible for Medicare, finally landed one in last April’s draft in Jayden Daniels and viola, Washington ended up snapping a 33 year old drought of not having played in a Conference Championship game this season when they played the Eagles last Sunday.
Jonesin’ For A QB
Then there’s the New York Giants who tasted the post-season a couple years ago but ironically, winning a playoff game against a porous Minnesota Viking team yielded epically catastrophic diminishing returns due to the fact that the Giants’ front office miscalculated the ability of their quarterback at the time and rewarded Daniel Jones with a four-year 160 million dollar contract that didn’t last half that long as New York benched Jones then released him just 10 weeks into this past season.
I know Giants’ Owner John Mara and General Manager Joe Schoen have taken a lot of hits this year every time Saquon Barkley hits a bomb, which seems like at least once a game if the opponent is lucky, but in fairness #26 would not be having the year he’s having in Philadelphia if he was still employed by the Giants.
As much as Barkley, Derrick Henry and Josh Jacobs restored the value of the running back position this season, drafting a running back with the 2nd overall pick like the Giants did in 2018 was still a bit of a risky move if you don’t have the infrastructure in place for him to succeed so as to take your team to the next level.
At the time Eli Manning had three years left in his right arm and the Giants did attempt to draft the heir apparent in Jones the year after they selected Barkley. But the draft is a crapshoot, especially when it comes to quarterbacks, and then Giants’ General Manager Dave Gettleman, who was highly criticized for the move, selected Jones with the sixth overall pick in 2019. Jones showed some flashes here and there in his first couple of years but as the talent around him deteriorated, so did Jones as the “franchise” quarterback.
One can only wonder where the Giants would be if they had selected Josh Allen instead of Barkley with the 2nd pick overall back in 2018.
The Boys Will Be The Boys
Then there’s the Cowboys. Can there be a bigger train wreck in the NFC? But they haven’t been the type of disaster from a wins and losses standpoint. They’ve had some excellent regular seasons that have ultimately ended in catastrophe due to their substandard showing in the postseason and it all starts with the quarterback, Dak Prescott.
Prescott won 13 games in his rookie season and then his Cowboys lost their first playoff game at home to the Green Bay Packers. He led the Boys to a 10-6 record two years later in 2018, win a playoff game in Seattle but then lost the very next week to the Rams.
Then from 2021 through the 2023 season, under head coach Mike McCarthy, Dallas won 12 games each year but went 1-3 in the postseason in those years, losing at home to the 49ers, beating the Buccaneers in the Wild Card round in 2022 only to lose in San Francisco the following week. Then last season after reeling off their third consecutive 12 win season, got their doors blown off by the Packers and first year starting quarterback Jordan Love in Dallas 48-32 that saw Prescott throw two first half interceptions, one of them a pick-six.
Amazingly just prior to this last season, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones , in all his brilliance, decided to make Prescott the highest paid quarterback in the league signing him to a four-year, $240 million extension in September that included $231 million in guaranteed money. The average annual value of the deal and guaranteed money were the richest in NFL history. His season ended after Week 9, when he tore his hamstring. The Cowboys were 3-5 under Prescott last year. They went 4-5 with back-up quarterback Cooper Rush after Prescott went down with that injury.
Prescott has had a decent run as the Cowboys’ quarterback, improving on Tony Romo, but based on how much he’s getting paid, more than any other QB in the league, he has to lead his team to postseason success to validate his often stellar play in the regular season. His regular season record is 76-46 but the problem is that his record in the playoffs is just 2-5 with 14 touchdowns and seven interceptions thrown. His regular season winning percentage is (.630) but it drops significantly in the playoffs to (.280). And there-in lies the problem – if you pay a “B” quarterback “A+” money you’ve hamstrung yourself to surround him with highly sought after talent and sealed your own fate.
Taking Schotts
But wait, it gets better. Following this last season owner Jerry Jones decided to let head coach Mike McCarthy walk and he ended up hiring offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer, who has bounced around the league for upwards of three decades, but has never been a head coach before.
Then to top is off as Jones, Schottenheimer and Jerry Jones’ son, Stephen took questions at Schottenheimer’s introductory press conference, Jerry, after stating that he didn’t want to make it about him, went on to ramble for 11 awkward minutes , in one of the most cringe-worthy introductory pressers you’ve even seen. It was so bad I was personally hoping he’d go on for another 11 minutes. Here’s the best of Jerry, not wanting to make it about him, at his new head coach’s meet the media press conference on Monday.
“I know that Shotty is no stranger to these guys (players)…I know he’s no stranger to this building. I get my proverbial ass kicked over needing people in my comfort zone. Without this thing being about me in any way, if you don’t think I can’t operate out of my comfort zone, you’re so wrong it’s unbelievable.
“This is as big a risk as you can take. As big a risk as you can take. No head-coaching experience.” Jones went on to call his decision to hire Schottenheimer “not a glamorous hire” as Schottenheimer sat there waiting his turn to speak and doing his best not to flinch.
The hire has attracted a plethora of criticism. Schottenheimer wasn’t a highly desired candidate anywhere but Dallas, and his hiring followed a prolonged evaluation period in which the Cowboys waited nearly a week before parting with McCarthy, costing them valuable interview time in the hiring cycle.
But as Jones sees it, Dallas had a diamond in the rough already in its building. That stone just needed to be polished and put on display, which the Cowboys believe they’re doing in hiring Schottenheimer.
“Now let me share something with you, with all of that you’ve just heard him reference his osmosis. His family,” Jones said of Schottenheimer. “Anybody in this room who doesn’t believe that the apple doesn’t go far from the tree missed it someplace down the road, especially if there was an effort to make it that way.”
Um, what?
“You go around to the countless number of coaches that Shotty has served on staff with and been around. The countless players. How often do you have someone that has 25 of years of working through the human relationship?
“How often do you have a chance to take advantage of all of that at 50 years old, which is a puppy. Yet he’s had 25 years being around the kind of things he’s going to have to draw on to be the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. I like his baggage. I like his baggage. I like that experience.”
I think I watched the press conference almost as many times as I’ve watched Point Break and A Few Good Men combined. It felt like comfort T.V. especially hailing from the Philadelphia area where the Cowboys are public enemy number one, which I personally don’t quite get. It’s not much of a rivalry if one team wins most of the time and has been to eight NFC Title games and four Super Bowls, winning one of them, since the last time that Dallas tasted a Conference Championship Game in the 1995 season.
But not to be outdone by his pop, Stephen Jones then eventually answered a question about the 29 year championship game drought the Cowboys have experienced with air quotes when talking about the “drought”. Um, Stephen, no one is making that up or exaggerating it. The “drought” is real, it’s absolutely real, whether you do that little quotes thing with your fingers or not.
The press conference lasted an hour with Schottenheimer speaking for only about 20 minutes. The whole thing looked and felt like a bad blind date. Jerry Jones tends to make everything about him, but even so he probably could have softened “this is the biggest risk I’ve taken.” Mind you, this is a guy who’s spent his life betting millions on what’s unseen beneath the earth’s crust.
So I’m not going to criticize or evaluate the hire until we see how Schottenheimer and his team performs under his guise. Remember Eagles General Manager Howie Roseman hired a 39 year old unknown head coach named Nick Sirianni a couple of years ago. Two Super Bowl appearances later, Sirianni has amassed a 52-22 record including playoffs in his four years at the helm. And that number also belongs to Roseman as he is the architect of the team. Those eye-popping totals alone scream “gold standard” and if the Eagles can finish the job in 11 days they will most likely cement Roseman’s legacy into football immortality.
