NFL Oh-Nine Previews: NFC East

Back when Smokey and I were doing our own thang at the Sports Brethren, we would double-team a weekly post about every Carolina Panthers game. We might not see eye-to-eye on everything, but we always brung the heat and the passion in our weekly chronicles of the NFL’s greatest team. Here at the Cube, we’re hoping to bring that same noise and funk on the NFL as a whole, in our true double-team style.

With that in mind, holyfuckingshit football’s a’comin! We are but a scant 24ish days from NFL kick-off, which means it’s high time we stop pandering on about baseball and fanciful things and get down to business.

Thus we present the Cube’s NFL Oh-Nine Previews: NFC East

The NFC Least! Hah!

Mickey: Ah, the great NFC East. I’ve always imagined the NFC East as the great, old statesman division of the NFL. The NFC North may be older, but they’re more “get off my lawn” kind of old, whereas the NFC East has the war veteran, wise, strong persona to it.

With 19 Super Bowl appearances and 11 titles between the four three squads who have won titles (haha Iggles), this “Greatest Generation” division leads the league in both of those categories. A division to be respected surely — but not to be loved. No, in fact, all four of these teams can go straight to hell as far as I’m concerned. Not a redeeming quality among the bunch at all.

I’m sure J.Price would disagree — although he struggles with his own love/hate relationship — but the simple fact is that the rest of the country rightfully can’t stand these four teams. And it’s not because we’re “jealous” or because we wish we had their history or any BS like that. It’s, quite simply, because these are some obnoxious-ass teams.

I will admit, I was once a fan of the Skins’ Hoggettes, Mark Rypien, Art Monk, and Darrell Green squads from the early 90s back before the league gifted me with my own hometown team in 1995. And so I still dislike them the least out of these low-life teams. I certainly enjoy The Cooley Zone, his hot wife, and the all-access joy the Redskins Pro-Bowl Tight End has given to the blogosphere. I enjoy the loving embrace the team and fans have given to Sean Taylor’s memory, for he was one bad-ass free safety and a good man from all accounts. Hell, I don’t even mind most of the players on this team; I just can’t stand the way their ownership and management decides to build the franchise.

In the salary-cap era, try to name one team that has won on pure free-agents. Go ahead. Give me one example! You can’t do it — in the NFL, you must build your core through the draft, and add a missing piece here and there through free agency. It is blatantly arrogant to do so otherwise, and even worse, stupid. So go enjoy your inconsequential 9-7 or 10-6 season, Skins fans. You’ll never get it right.

But fuck, from there, pick your insufferable poison. After living in New York City for over two years, I certainly can’t stand the G-Men and the constant “let’s GO!” snarls I hear after any routine tackle. I will say I respect that team the most, however, despite their mouth-breather quarterback. I rooted for them hard against the New England Cheatahs in the 2008 Super Bowl, and they do have a mean running attack, which I unquestionably fear. They even have some pretty underratedly awesome helmets. And for these reasons listed, they are my 2009 favorite, with the Skins and Iggles not far behind.

Which brings us to Michael Vick’s newest employer: the Philadelphia Iggles. I, like most red-blooded Americans, can’t stand Philadelphia sports teams and the Iggles certainly bring an obnoxiousness that is easy to hate. Their fans don’t know shit about football: they boo and hate Donovan McNabb, a quarterback any other fanbase would have embraced with open arms this past decade. They hate McNabb because he “lost” them the 2005 Super Bowl, which is bullshit. Andy Reid fucking lost that Super Bowl, not McNabb. He’s a quarterback that has excelled in this league, taken his team to five NFC Championships, and the one year he had an elite receiver, he took them to the Super Bowl. They’re an ungrateful lot, these Iggles fans. And they’re still a talented team — I’m just glad they come to Charlotte the first week of the season and we play them while Vick’s suspended. At the end of the day, I see them wrastlin with the Skins for 2nd place behind the Giants.

And now we’re on to my preseason prediction of the bottom-dweller of the NFC East: the Dallas Cowgirls. A team that has made generally no improvements in the off-season, a team whose QB has done nothing to earn real respect as a solid leader of men, the team America somehow got lassoed with. I despised them when they were winning championships in the early 90s, I loved when the Panthers would constantly knock them out of the playoffs in the late 90s/early Aughts, and I definitely have enjoyed their current 13-year drought of playoff wins. I expect 2009 to be another year the Cowgirls don’t make the playoffs and keep that streak alive.

Smokey: Nicely put, brethren. That’s the kind of hate that stems from decades upon decades of fine tuning and honing. A hate that can be appreciated, but only fully realized by someone from the South.

Last night I played a spot of poker with a raucous, motley crew. We discussed sports and movies, and retold old Norm MacDonald bits from that year he hosted the ESPYs. The subject of “Whatever Works” came up and the general consensus was that it’s terrible. This made me think about the Gints because Larry David is the human embodiment of the New Yawk Giants: he fails upwards. Despite having the demonstrably dimwitted team in the entire league (see also: Plaxidents) they’re still the most fearsome team in the entire division. My only real investment in this team is the ever-present chance that Elisha will throw a tantrum on the sidelines that makes Phil Helmuth seem mature.

It’s true we were raised in a Redskin household and some of my fondest memories are of listening to Sonny Jurgenson and Theissman on the radio while watching a Skins game on the tv, and seeing how out of sync they were. However, ever since the NFL corrected their egregious error and gave Carolina a team in the mid-90s, the Skins have been just about dead to me. Our cousins still root them on in an adorably Sisyphusian way, and I don’t think I’ll ever truly hate them because Joe Gibbs once came to my high school and when the Q&A session started a kid asked if he could see Gibbs’s Super Bowl ring and Gibbs just casually took it off and threw it to the kid. That’s pretty boss.

The Viggles should be an interesting team to watch this year. Monday night’s Panthers/Giants pre-season opener left one thing clear: the Panthers really should’ve tried a lot harder to pick up Michael Vick. At one point Josh McCown presided over three turnovers in four offensive plays. Vick would rather be caught selling Ookie’s Rapestands out of the back of a Pinto than start his season that way. If Andy Reid’s smart enough, this team could be a demon hellbent on Super Bowl glory, but as Mickey pointed out, Andy Reid has shown he is not smart enough.

Which leaves us with the Cowgirls. This should be another Mediterranean Ave to Baltic Ave season in Jerry Jones’s grand scheme of things. I can’t in good conscience say they’re ever going to achieve anything with Wade at the helm. The problem is, I don’t ever want him to leave because then the world wouldn’t have new episodes of Wade and Jerry and I don’t want to live in a world without new Wade and Jerrys.

Gratuitous Cap’n Pappy quote (Growing up, our pappy, “Cap’n Pappy,” had many a’sayings that we didn’t exactly reckon we knew what they meant, but had a vague idea. In his honor, we’ll assign a quote for how we think he’d describe each division): Update: The Cap’n has informed we have misremembered. Factual quote now up.The NFC East gets a “THEM boys shootin and THEM guns” expression: this is actually what my dad’s grandma said when he and his childhood friends shot a neighborhood boy in the face stomach with a BB real gun on accident when they were trying to find something to do on a Saturday the boy was placing cans on posts across the creek one day after school in Memphis, TN, and it’s exactly the kind of old, outdated logic that sounds right, but doesn’t really have a place in today’s society.

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