After five weeks, the NFC East has turned into the kind of division nobody expected to see this early: open for business. The Cowboys, Eagles, Giants and Commanders have all stumbled, and none of them looks like a true conference threat at the moment. Still, one of them is going to reach the playoffs by winning the division - and for Dallas, that makes every misfire feel heavier.
Last week summed up the division’s mess perfectly. No NFC East team won.
The Cowboys fell to Tampa Bay and handed the Bucs their first win of the season. The Eagles also lost.
The Giants and Commanders played to a tie in their division matchup. For a group that entered the year with the NFC East framed as a two-team race between Dallas and Philadelphia, it has been a rough and strange start.
The Giants deserve some credit for sitting at 3-1-1 with Jaxson Dart out since Week 2, but even that comes with a caveat. Since their season-opening win over the Cowboys, they’ve been getting by against weak competition, and that current place in the standings does not feel built to last.
Philadelphia has not exactly taken control of the division either. The Eagles’ offense has struggled to settle in or finish plays in key moments, and the defense has been more generous than expected.
Dallas, though, is the team that keeps staring at a golden chance and letting it slip. The Cowboys are 2-3, and last Thursday’s loss to a winless Buccaneers team led by an undrafted rookie quarterback was the kind of defeat that lingers. It has already pushed the team into a stretch of introspection during the long break.
That has helped create the sense that the front office may be ready to act. The Cowboys already had an unusually active offseason last spring, then went out and traded for cornerback Joey Porter Jr.
This week, they added veteran coach Mike Pettine to Christian Parker’s staff. Put together, it looks like the most aggressive the Jones family has been with roster management in roughly 20 years.
There are still moves left to make. Dallas has about $15-$16 million in remaining salary cap space, along with premium draft picks. The team could even explore moving WR George Pickens if a long-term deal for next year does not look realistic.
But there’s a catch. The Cowboys are already short on draft capital and have a lot of money tied up in players whose long-term value is uncertain, including tight end Jake Ferguson and CB DaRon Bland. That creates a real question about how far they should keep pushing chips into 2026 if it risks weakening what comes next.
And the bigger picture extends beyond this season. Jerry Jones also has to consider whether Brian Schottenheimer is the right coach to carry this forward.
If the NFC East stays this soft and the division is won at 9-8, Jerry is going to have a hard time swallowing that if the Cowboys are not the ones standing at the end. With a league-leading offense and so much investment already poured into the defense, someone may end up paying the price.
Christian Parker may be the more immediate candidate, but his youth and inexperience could buy him time. Dallas has essentially acknowledged that he needs help by bringing in Pettine, but it is another thing entirely to admit so quickly that Parker was the wrong hire.
Schottenheimer is already carrying the weight of one losing season, and his seat is getting hotter now. Unlike Jason Garrett, he does not have the same kind of built-in history with the front office that once helped Garrett survive multiple disappointments. And with Jerry turning 84 this week, the urge to get back to the top one more time is only growing stronger.
Even if the division were stronger, plenty of these questions would still hang over Dallas. But in a year when the NFC East looks so winnable, the Cowboys’ failure to grab hold of it makes the whole situation sting even more.
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