Cowboys-Eagles heavyweight tilt looming in NFC East

Dak Prescott has had his way with the NFC East teams over the past few years. But Jalen Hurts' Eagles look ready to take back the division crown.

Video Transcript

VOCH LOMBARDI: What's up, y'all? It's Voch Lombardi. Watch every second of the NFL season when and where you want it only on The Zone.

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So in week 6, the internet is going to be a very scary place, Twitter in particular. You're going to have two teams and they're just fighting their own fights right now. They have their own storylines, but they're just going to come together and they're going to meet in week 6 and the internet is not going to be a fun place. Both fanbases are going to make it very uncomfortable.

The content creators are going to be in the middle of it, including me, being a Cowboys fan. But what's going to happen is in week 6, there's going to be this heavyweight fight, right? Cowboys versus Eagles is shaping up to be something of legend. And I don't even want to be around for the buildup and the nonsense that comes along with it, but I want to be around for the result.

Because there's a lot riding on this, right? The Cowboys have effectively beaten the hell out of everybody in the NFC East for the past five or six years. Now, there are some exceptions. When Dak Prescott is not playing, of course, they'll maybe get a win here, a win there.

I'm talking about Giants-Washington Football Wizards and the Philadelphia Eagles. But when Dak Prescott is playing, I don't think he has double digit losses against these guys, right? Why is this important? This is important because the Philadelphia Eagles have basically built their roster to combat the Dallas Cowboys, right?

And this isn't the first time that this has happened. If you go back to 2016, which is Dak Prescott's rookie year, the Giants spent all that money on defense. They wanted to go get Janoris Jenkins.

They got a bunch of pass rushers, they got guys on the D-line just so in particular they can beat the Cowboys. This is kind of that Tony Romo fear that he was putting into those guys. I think Dak Prescott has earned that same level of respect from his NFC East opponents. Now, what also makes this interesting is that the Cowboys are so, I don't want to say undefeated, but they beat the hell out of the NFC East so much that the outside world, the outside media, they look at the NFC East as a bad division.

The "NFC Least" is what they call it. Well, the Eagles have turned into this contender and now everybody's just soaking it up. When I say everybody, I don't mean me included, I mean them out there. Everybody is soaking it up.

They're soaking up this Jalen Hurts thing and people saying that he's an MVP conversation. And PFF is making me mad saying he got the best quarterback rating, when clearly there's a couple other quarterbacks that's doing better than him. Now listen, do I think the Eagles have improved? Yes.

Do I think their roster have improved? Indubitably. Do I think that Jalen Hurts has gotten better? 100%. But I think we're not really going to have the answers of who's really, really better until the Cowboys play versus the Eagles in week 6.

Now, they're going to play again in week 16 later down the line. It's going to be a whole other conversation. Playoff implications are going to be on the line. That's a whole different talk.

But as of week 6, I think that's the first real heavyweight fight for the NFC East because it's the first time we get to see the Philadelphia Eagles versus dudes that they've been beaten by for the past couple of years. Now, I've seen a couple of graphics on the internet. They say, boy, look at Jalen Hurts. Look at his last six games and what he's done versus the last six games.

Well, that'll be the Washington Football Team, it'll be guys like the Lions, it'll be Kirk Cousins on Monday Tonight Football. We'll never get a good vibe from Kirk Cousins on Monday Night Football. But I just haven't seen the Eagles truly be tested in that way. Well, they got the Jacksonville Jaguars this week, which will be an interesting test, but the Jaguars aren't necessarily that proven team, right?

They're not that team that we can really properly test the Eagles. Because if the Eagles beat the Jags, that's going to be more so, oh, well the Jags didn't rise to the occasion to beat the Eagles. That's not the Eagles being a good team. The Eagles aren't going to fully, fully get their credit until they beat the Dallas Cowboys.

But then there's the other side of this. The other side of this, which is a lot more fun for me. What if the Eagles go on this streak and they look great and they walk in the week 6 and they get smoked by Dak Prescott like they always have been?

Then what's the conversation going to be? And that's why the internet is going to be a scary place coming into week 6. Now, both of their trajectories going into this game have been totally different, right? We're hyping up.

When I say we, I mean y'all. I don't mean me, but we're hyping up the Eagles as this next contender. They're definitely a playoff team. I'm going 100% give them that credit.

They're 100% a playoff team. But Dak Prescott has been injured, so now the Cowboys are just kind of fighting to keep that record up with Cooper Rush. And it just happens that it could be because the team is built in a certain kind of way that makes us eligible to win some of these games.

But Cooper Rush has beaten the Cincinnati Bengals and they just had a W on Monday Tonight Football versus the New York Giants. The former is a lot more impressive than the latter party. Which one is that, the latter more part? The damn Bengals win is more impressive than the Giants win.

Now, Cooper Rush winning these games isn't important to me, right? I see a lot of Cowboy fans saying, well Voch, should we just roll with Cooper Rush since he's winning games? No, that's nonsense.

Cooper Rush only put up 20-something points on the Giants and Dak Prescott would have put up 40 on them, right? This is what it is. I think the Cowboys are led by the defense now, which makes this team totally different.

The Cowboys have been an offensive team the last few years. And we're always in these shootouts, right? We're always the number one offense in yards and points and things of that nature. But what happens when the Cowboys are a top five defense?

That's when this looks different. What happens when Micah Parsons gets going and Trey Diggs gets going? Demarcus Lawrence is the guy that we have to be afraid of. Malik Hooker's looking like classy Malik Hooker, as long as he can stay healthy, knock on wood.

What happens when a healthier version of the Dallas Cowboys run into that Philadelphia Eagles team, when Dak Prescott is back, when Michael Gallup is healthy? James Washington is a guy that I really didn't have faith with, but if you look at the wide receiver core that we've been winning with, James Washington would be very much so loved addition to that group. What happens when that team runs into the Eagles? I think it'll be fun. But we got a long way until we figure that out.

That's the week 6, when the world is going to be crumbling. But now the Philadelphia Eagles got the Jacksonville Jaguars, so we'll be watching that to see what happens. If the Jags win, I will laugh a very, very hard giggle. And the Cowboys have the Washington Football Wizards who seems to just lose to everybody. So we're going to take this thing week by week, but we will check back in week 6 and it'll be scary.

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