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Taking a gander at the NFL’s toughest returning* division from last year.

*NFC South had a better overall record.  They will not return at the same level of strength.

As in most years, the NFC’s toughest division will be determined by divisional play.  Again.  Sort of.  The division champion Giants went a mere 4-2 against the rest of the NFC East, which, yes, was the best figure in the division.  The Cowboys and the Redskins went 3-3, and the Eagles 2-4.  Of course, the division was won by 3.5 games, so there was more going on here than simple divisional dominance.

The New York Giants

The Giants return as the nominal favorite to win the division, but if you end up with the option of betting (simply) on or against the Giants this year, bet against.  In 2007, 10 wins got the Giants into the playoffs, and in position for an eventual super bowl run.  10 wins this year might not be good enough to make the playoffs.

Gone is RB Derrick Ward, WR Plaxico Burress, and WR Amani Toomer, but 9 starters return to the offense.  The defense loses S James Butler, but adds well more than it lost, it’s offseason haul includes: DL Chris Canty, DT Rocky Bernard, LB Michael Boley and LB Clint Sintim.  Rookie WRs Hakeem Nicks and Ramses Barden will work with second and third year players Mario Manningham and Steve Smith to help fill the void at WR.

It’s hard to say if they improved or declined, if only because you can’t necessarily conclusively say where this team was last year.  The defense played worse in the second half of the year, playoff game included, than it did in the first, and the offensive line, best in the league for about ten weeks last year, was hardly stellar down the stretch.  The Giants started 11-1, but finished as a very average team, unable to beat the Cowboys or the Eagles, and catching the Redskins on a bad day en route to a relatively unimpressive rout.  They didn’t play particularly well against either the Bengals or Browns last year, and though they beat the Steelers on the road, it’s a game that the Steelers were able to close out the rest of the year.

If everything goes right, then…the Giants will again win the Super Bowl.  They need all of their offensive lineman to stay healthy for another 16 games to keep Manning comfortable in the pocket, they need one of Hicks, Smith, or Domenik Hixon to emerge as a dependable target on offense to keep Manning moving the chains, and the defense needs to be better than it was at the end of the year last year, which means the secondary must shore up it’s SS and No. 2 CB positions.

Honestly, what could go wrong?… Well, for starters, Eli Manning could crack early on.  Though baby Manning is as fundamentally sound as any passer in the NFL, he’s the least accurate passer of any player in the league who could be remotely considered an NFL quarterback.  If none of the receivers emerge early, it could be a rough season for Manning.  On top of that, the offensive line is aging at 4 out of 5 positions, and one or two injuries would open the floodgates for defenses to attack Manning.  Brandon Jacobs is hardly a productive runner behind a mediocre or weak offensive line (which he’s never had to deal with).  The linebackers could be worse than anyone currently expects, especially since no one really knows what the scheme will call for.  If Aaron Ross doesn’t develop this year, the Giants likely will not wait on him much longer.

For a half-assed prediction… The Giants are more likely to finish in second place this year than with any other result.  Their incredible defensive depth will keep them in the running for the division title deep into the season, but it’s the offense that might be of concern as the season drags on.  This is less about Manning himself, and more about what happens to Manning when conditions around him break down.  Over the last 21 games or so, we’ve seen Eli when everyone around him knows what to do, but this year, his performance should be much more of a mixed bag of baffling interceptions and gutsy-blitz defying throws.

Overall, if the NFC is significantly weaker than expected, the Giants are the team best built to weather adversity.  They are not the team who is most likely to avoid adversity altogether.  10-11 wins is likely, but 8-9 would not be pessimistic.

The Philadelphia Eagles

The Eagles very nearly parlayed a miracle playoff berth into a super bowl appearance.  Early on, the Eagles ran into some bad fortune when the Cowboys and Bears both played above their talent to win close games, and the Redskins defense showed a dominance of the Eagles’ offense that it simply never showed over any other team.  While the Eagles were crushing all their opponents in the games they were inning in the first half of the year, a three game winless streak against the Giants, Bengals, and Ravens put the Eagles’ season very much on the ropes.  After running off three consecutive victories, the Eagles once again failed to perform offensively against the Redskins, and lost pretty much all hopes of making the playoffs.

Except, with improbable losses by the Bears and Bucs in Week 17, the Eagles were given a reprieve against the Cowboys, a win and you’re in situation, a game that would be won 44-6, and the Eagles defense carried the team through the Vikings and the Giants, into the NFC Championship game.

Despite another Championship game loss, the Eagles ended the season playing the best football of any team in the NFC East by far.  A lot of people think that their good performance will carry over into the 2009 season, in spite of some significant roster turnover.

If everything goes right, then…the Eagles will win the super bowl.  Donovan McNabb will produce another McNabb-like season, only this team, one of his three or so bad games a season won’t overlap with the playoffs.  McNabb, historically, has been a great performer in the playoffs, but his three worst performances have ended the seasons of the three best Eagle teams in memory, 2002-2004.  After a three year hiatus, McNabb was back in the postseason in 2008, and was as good as ever…up until the Championship game against Arizona.

Brian Westbrook will bounce back from an injury-riddled 2008 campaign to re-establish himself as the top offensive weapon in the NFC, and the defense will prove not to miss Jim Johnson at all, as a incredibly strong defensive line helps spring a productive linebacker corps, and the defense leads it’s offense to the super bowl and over the top.

Honestly, what could go wrong?… Three major things could de-feather the Eagles.  First, if Westbrook doesn’t return to form, and he’s 30 now, the Eagles offense will enter 2009 without a dynamic weapon to lean on.  The second major thing is the defense, which, talent-wise should be among the best or second best in the NFC.  It should be better than the Giants’.  But with Jim Johnson out of coaching for at least one year, the pressure-oriented schemes will change, and this creates a weakness in a long-ignored area on the Eagles, the linebackers.  We’ll get to see if Stewart Bradley is a scheme adaptable talent, or simply a good scouting find by the Eagles.  A middle of the pack defense would not be becoming of a super bowl contender.  The final issue: the offensive line.  They’ve infused the unit with both talent, and with youth, but is it better?  An improvement over last year’s not-so-terrible offensive line relies on Jason Peters to prove that his 2008 league-leading sacks allowed season was an aberration, it relies on Stacey and Shawn Andrews to find the right balance on the right side, and it requires a talent improvement in the middle of the line where Todd Herremans and Jamaal Jackson have been only somewhat adequate.  Any one of these three things becoming a major issue limits what the Eagles can accomplish this year.

For a half-assed prediction… These Eagles are not anything like last year’s version.  They might be significantly better, and they might also be moderately worse, but in the most likely of probabilities, they’ll somewhat resemble their team from last season.  We got to see the best, and the worst, of that Eagles team, as they at different times were close to securing a top ten draft pick, and heading to the super bowl.  I’m not forecasting a decline in McNabb’s numbers, but if Brian Westbrook doesn’t run wild right from the first carry, it’s necessary that the Eagles find a way to spread his excess offense around to guys like DeSean Jackson, Kevin Curtis, and Brent Celek, essentially making McNabb the focal point of the passing game again.

The Eagles have the makings of a 10-win team.  They have the talent to win 12-13, but also the uncertainty to be a 7-9 win team.

The Dallas Cowboys

Given the preseason expectations of the 2008 Cowboys, the argument could be made that last season’s 9-7 finish was a complete and utter disaster, but the hype around this team was 100% pure media creation.  Like any other team that comes out of no where to be a playoff team, if the fundamentals aren’t strong, you can expect a multiple-win regression in the next season.  The 2007 Cowboys didn’t have the fundamental statistics to back up their 13-3 record, nor did they have an over abundance of big game victories to suggest legitimacy.  They were just a good team, not a great one.  The 2008 Cowboys were also a good team.  But after an injury or two, they weren’t really a playoff team, and sure enough, they ended up missing the playoffs last year.

If everything goes right, then… The Cowboys have the talent to return to the playoffs.  Miles Austin and Sam Hurd are talented enough to replace Terrell Owens in the lineup, and Roy Williams can only get better.  Kyle Kosier’s return to the offensive line should help.  16 games of a healthy Terence Newman means an improved pass defense, and Keith Brooking is a better scheme fit at ILB than was Zach Thomas.  The running game figures to be the strength of the offense, behind a triple headed attack lead by Marion Barber.

Honestly, what could go wrong?… In Dallas?  There’s no guarantee that anyone will step up in the receiving corps, as Roy Williams has only one 1,000 yd season to his name, and a low catch rate, historically.  Austin and Hurd look like players, but have yet to prove anything as more than a 4th receiver.

And what if Felix Jones struggles in his second season?  Do the Cowboys relegate him to third string, or do they let him play out his struggles while blocking Tashard Choice?  Tony Romo could see his QB rating drop below 90 for the first time in his short career.  And as possible as it is for the defense to improve, it could also collapse with an injury or two.

But the biggest problem is on the offensive line where Flozell Adams hasn’t been good for two years now, Marc Columbo is a marginal RT, and the overall line has been uncharacteristically resistant to injury in the last three years.  If that doesn’t continue, the Cowboys offense could be a mess in the near future, and it could cost Jason Garrett his job.

For a half-assed prediction… The Cowboys need a lot of things to go right in order to make the playoffs.  They might actually receive a small bump over last year’s level of performance, but it’s going to take a lot more than a small bump to get this team over the hump.  Romo can hope that his receivers will be better this year, but it’s just hope.  So based on that offensive uncertainty, and a defense that figures to take a small step backwards this year, I’m seeing 7-8 wins with a ceiling of 9 or 10.

The Washington Redskins

They started  6-2, and finished 2-6.  But that doesn’t begin or end the story of the 2008 Redskins, it’s just stating what happened.  The best players, and best performers, on the Redskins were on the offensive side of the ball, including Chris Cooley, Chris Samuels, Pete Kendall, Jason Campbell, Mike Sellers, Santana Moss, and Clinton Portis, all among the team’s top ten players from a year ago.  However, the Redskins are a team that allows it’s defense to set the tone for it’s game, and when it’s usually consistent defense underperforms, the team’s performance goes with it.

With that in mind, rather than change that organizational philosophy (which would have seemed easier), the Redskins went out and spent considerable resources to get pieces to the defense that would help them with their tone setting.  Incoming players include: Albert Haynesworth, Brian Orakpo, Jeremy Jarmon, and Kevin Barnes, three rookies among the bunch.

If everything goes right, then…the Redskins are an easy pick to be the No. 1 seed in the NFC in the playoffs.  Between Haynesworth, Portis, Cooley, Samuels, LaRon Landry, London Fletcher, and Carlos Rogers, the Redskins sport the highest amount of individual talents of any team in the division.  If every one of them stays healthy and productive, this Redskins team sports a legitimate supporting cast to get it done.  The team is littered with young talent as well, possibly for the first time in a long while.  Add to the mix a very soft schedule, and the Redskins figure to win far more games than they lose.

Of course, over the last two years, the No. 1 seed in the playoffs have just served to get upset by someone else in the NFC East, so if history is a guide, the Redskins might be better off sneaking in as a No. 6 seed and knocking off the No. 1.

Honestly, what could go wrong?… Not much could go wrong with regard to the schedule, the Redskins are going to have about 5 wins thrust at them simply for playing bottom-10 type teams, which is 2 more easily winnable games than anyone else in the division has.

However, with the exception of Haynesworth, all of the star power on the Redskins is backed up by essentially nothing.  If Portis gets hurt, the Redskins have no running game.  If Landry gets hurt, the team loses a dual-threat in the secondary that won’t be replaced.  If Samuels gets hurt, the season is over.  If Fletcher gets hurt, the defensive scheme doesn’t work.  The supporting cast is still there, but it’s not going to win games in this division without it’s stars.

For a half-assed prediction… the Redskins, on paper, look like an 11 win team.  They could, however, win as few as seven games if but a few key injuries occur.  If the offensive line gels and they get productivity from last year’s receiving draft class, they could potentially surpass 11 wins to reach 12 or 13.  But that is asking a lot of things to fall right into place.  Barring multiple key injuries, the Redskins will win 10 or 11 games, which may or may not be good enough to win the division, or even make the playoffs.

Liveball’s Projected Order of Finish:

1. Giants (10-12 wins)
2. Redskins (8-12 wins)
3. Eagles (9-11 wins)
4. Cowboys (7-10 wins)

I was reading around last evening, and trying to make some sense of Royals-related win-loss trends…only to find that all I had to do was wait for Joe Posnanski to do the work for me:

Well, there are at least two ways you could look at it. One, you could point out that some really bad teams have gone 18-11 or so over 29 games. The 2002 Kansas City Royals lost exactly 100 games. They were 18-11 from June 22 to July 23. The 2006 Chicago Cubs lost 96 games and were one of the great bad teams in recent memory — they had an 18-11 stretch. The 1980 New York Mets lost 95 games — that’s the last full year of Joe Torre in Queens. They had TWO 18-11 records. The 1996 Detroit Tigers lost 106 games had one of the worst pitching staffs ever. They had a 30-game stretch of 17-13, which isn’t quite 18 games, but that team was awful.

…

Now, the other point is that the Royals have gone 19-46 since that 18-11 start. Does that tell you anything? Um, yeah. In 2008, only one team managed to go 19-46 over a 65 game stretch: The worst team in baseball, the Washington Nationals. In 2007, the only team to do it was … the worst team in baseball, the Tampa Bay Rays. In 2006, the only teams to do it were … the Kansas City Royals, the Chicago Cubs (who also went 18-11, you might recall) and the Tampa Bay Rays, the three worst teams in baseball. In 2005, only the Royals and Tampa again, two worst teams. In 2004, it was Kansas City (again), Arizona (horrendous) and Milwaukee, which was actually not the third worst team, but was plenty bad, a 94-loss dud.

And so on. So being that bad over 65 games just about ALWAYS tells you that a team is terrible. Being 18-11 over 29 games, meanwhile, doesn’t tell you much at all.

Poz is simply commenting on the small sample value of winning 18 games in a month of play as an indicator of strength, but I see something else at work here.  As noted in his post, a team that wins fewer than 20 games in a 65 game stretch is an awful team.  But, there are different kinds of awful teams.  And, more to the point, not all awful teams will be awful in year n+1.  A lot will.  Some will not.  And it seems to have little to do with the on-field product in year n, but with the circumstances surrounding those teams.  Let’s take a look at the 2006 Cubs, a team that, like the 2009 Royals, had the talent to win consistently for about a month, but was too flawed to be anything but a last place team.

I remember the 2006 Cubs well.  That was Dusty Baker’s last hurrah, at least with a team with a fighting chance in March.  It was Juan Pierre’s only season with the Cubs, although in my mind, he might as well have always been a Cub.  The 2006 Cubs were as much a “Dusty” team as the Cubs were in any other season, but a lot of the starting lineup was made up of Jim Hendry’s acquisitions, players who were younger than the typical Dusty player.  It remains, to this day, Matt Murton’s career year.  If not for Angel Berroa, Ronny Cedeno would have been the worst regular in baseball that year.  That team ended up playing with Todd Walker at first base for about half the season when Derrick Lee was injured.  Trust me, it was bad.

The rise of the Cubs from the Baker-led mess of the year before went further than having some notable injuries and the outsting of an inconsistently competant manager.  And, maybe to the surprise of many, it didn’t really benefit from the development of it’s young talent.  Offensively, in fact, the first version of the Pinella Cubs barely improved at all over the bunt-em-over, hit-em-in, out machine laden 2006 team.  They scored 40 more runs in 2007, a total that could be attributed to so many small things that it’s not possible to conclusively argue that the offensive talent improved.

Furthermore, the Cubs also made some questionable decisions about their young talent going into their 2007 season.  Matt Murton, going into his age-25 season, had his role decreased.  The team signed Cesar Izturis to play as Ronny Cedeno for a year while Cedeno was sent down to triple A Iowa for seasoning.  The Cubs made a curious choice to rush five-tool prospect Felix Pie up in the middle of the season and give him 200 PAs.  The Cubs didn’t improve because their young talent did anything of note.  They got better, overnight, because they spent money.  They bought Mark DeRosa, Cliff Floyd, and Alfonso Soriano, and all three were productive for the Cubs in 2007, and frankly, probably saved the team the embarrassment of losing production from the Dusty Baker offense that couldn’t score in the first place.  But the biggest, most critical signing, was pitcher Ted Lilly, who filled a huge hole in the Cubs rotation as a 1a-type starter.  Zambrano, Lilly, Hill was a 1,2,3 punch unmatched in the NL-Central, and this came only a year after the Cubs would throw Zambrano, and then pray for rain before going to Hill.

The result of the money spent was a worst-to-first job by the Cubs, a spot where they would stay for another 162-game season.  Only, the next Cubs team actually did get a kick in the pants from it’s young talent, specifically C Giovanny Soto, SS Ryan Theriot, and 2B Mike Fontenot.

By 2008, the Cubs had used their financial resources to completely import an outfield that, by the end of May, had booted it’s last Baker-holdover (Jacque Jones) and consisted of Kosuke Fukudome, Reed Johnson, Jim Edmonds, along with Soriano and DeRosa.  Murton and Pie were blocked, this time for good.  Unwilling to let Rich Hill work through some severe control issues in 5 April starts, the Cubs banished their last young pitching prospect from the rotation, eventually replacing him in a trade for Rich Harden, a 24 year old pitcher who sports the body of a 34 year old.  None of the Cubs prospects from the Hendry era: Cedeno, Pie, Hill, or Murton, made it into Pinella’s third year with the team.  When you have that many prospect failings, for any reason, superior financial resources will only keep you afloat for so long.

Of course, the 2008 Cubs were every bit as good a Cubs team as we’ve seen in the last 100 years.  They didn’t just float to the top of the perennially weak NL Central, the Cubs destroyed the division.  A late season run by the Brewers made the standings look closer than they ever were.  And, I think, the dominance of the Cubs in the 2008 regular season, I think it overshadowed a very unsteady organization.

Relief pitcher performance, in general, tends to be very fickle.  However, the Cubs had produced a much better than average bullpen in three and a half consecutive seasons, heading into the 2009 all-star break.  Whether in first or last, the Cubs had always been able to get batters out late in the game at relatively little cost.  This has proven to be sustainable thus far, however, it also appears to be a fickle principal that the Cubs have grown reliant on.

Still, given all the underlying problems, the Cubs outscored their opponents by 184 runs in 2008, and in 2009, the Cubs are on pace to give up the same number of runs against as they did in 2008 when they were the best team in baseball.  As noted above with the bullpen, they can’t necessarily expect to keep that up, although the fact that the Cubs are a strong defensive team certainly helps.

The culprit has been the offense.  They are averaging over a run per game less than last season.  But, as stated above, this is more or less the team the Hendry-led Cubs have always been.  Last year’s team led the NL in scoring, but in hindsight, involved nearly a perfect storm of career years, as well as excellent depth, and had much less to do with the development of it’s young talent, which has always been this organizations main issue.  Theriot and Fukudome have progressed naturally, Derrick Lee is chipping in his usual 120 OPS+ season, Aramis Ramirez has been hurt for a significant part of the year, but truly, only two players on the Cubs offense have been underachieving: Soto (who is hurt), and Soriano (who may just be in decline).

The Cubs have actually found depth in other places: 1b/3b/c/of Jake Fox tore up triple-A this year before taking his anger out on big league pitchers, while 2b/3b Bobby Scales was a pleasant surprise as well, and the Cubs have gotten use out of the glove of UT Andres Blanco.  None of these players, however, can fix the larger problem.  If Soriano is in fact in decline, if the Cubs don’t get another productive season with their Catcher spot, and if Mike Fontenot’s 2008 season was just a small sample fluke, we’re talking about three black holes in a national league lineup going forward that would have to be fixed, once again, through free agency…which, if you’ll remember got the Cubs into this mess in the first place

And when you look at it from a year-to-year perspective, the Cubs are one of the oldest offenses in the league, with only one starter (Soto) having theoretically his best years ahead of him, and given his decline this year, that isn’t even a foregone conclusion.  Their lone hitting prospect, Josh Vitters, will not be with the major league team in 2010, except in the most optimistic of projections.

What Pinella has brought to the Cubs was consistency in the pitching rotation, which has been excellent for three consecutive seasons under his watch.  Lilly and Zambrano should be a nice one-two punch next year, and Randy Wells is at least a fringe number four starter.  The team will likely need to add a single starting pitcher in the offseason as Harden’s contract is expiring, and he’s giving the team little reason to consider bringing him back.

When the Cubs rose from the ashes of their 2006 season, they did it with strong pitching and a developing defense which has improved behind it’s staff in every season.  The offense, however, has hardly improved at all since the Dusty days, and not for lack of money that has been dumped into it.  It’s two best offensive players (Lee and Ramirez) are the same two players who led them in hitting back in 2006.  The year to year variation in runs appears to be simply a function of relative health, and improvement every year at the shortstop position.

Whether the Cubs’ fall is long or short term is entirely reliant on it’s offense, on 30-something players like Soriano, and Fukudome, and on long-time contributors like Lee and Ramirez.  In my estimation, the true level of the Cubs offense is much closer to what we’re currently seeing than to what they produced like last year, and thanks to a generally unproductive farm system, this is more or less a .500 team with great pitching and below average offense who has played pretty much up to it’s potential every year since Dusty was ousted.