The NFC’s Top-Tier Teams Look Unstoppable. But They All Have Their Weaknesses.
The San Francisco 49ers, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Detroit Lions, and yes, even the Dallas Cowboys have separated themselves from the rest of the conference. But they all have flaws that could be exploitable come playoff time—especially by one another.
Let’s rewind a month. Do you remember how we were talking about the NFL’s two conferences in early September? On one side, you had the AFC: the good conference. The one hogging all the elite quarterbacks. The one whose playoff race figured to leave some legitimately talented teams on the outside looking in. And then there was the top-heavy NFC. The Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers were in their own class, but the rest of the conference was bound to get silly.
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Five weeks into the season, there’s been a role reversal. If the AFC playoffs started today, the Steelers, and not the Bengals or Ravens, would host a playoff game. The Texans sit just a game out of first place in the AFC South and own the division’s best point differential. The Bills are second in the AFC East and again find themselves in the middle of an injury crisis. The Dolphins have lived up to their preseason hype but still have plenty of questions to answer after their no-show in Buffalo last Sunday. And the Chiefs are on top in the West, but even the defending champs look vulnerable after back-to-back nail-biters against Zach Wilson and Kirk Cousins.
We’ll probably need at least another month before we can start making sense of all that mess. But meanwhile, in the NFC, a clear hierarchy has started to take shape. Four teams—the 49ers, Eagles, Lions, and Cowboys—have separated themselves from the rest of the pack, both on the field and in Super Bowl odds.
Odds to Make the Super Bowl, by Conference (via FanDuel)
Apologies to Seattle and Los Angeles, but the bookmakers have it right. The Rams and Seahawks are well-coached clubs, but both look like they’re still a piece or two away from posing a real threat. And if you want to talk yourself into Derek Carr or Baker Mayfield going to San Francisco or Philadelphia—or even Dallas or Detroit—and taking down those teams, have at it. I won’t be wasting my time.
After what we saw this Sunday, with the 49ers running the Cowboys off the field in front of a national audience, we could probably whittle the field of NFC contenders down to three, but remember: In playoff football, styles make fights. Some teams are more capable of exploiting a specific weakness than others, regardless of overall talent level. San Francisco may be a terrible matchup for Dallas, but Philadelphia and Detroit might not be. So to get a better idea of how the top four teams in the conference stack up, let’s look at their most glaring weaknesses and figure out which of the other contenders will be most likely to exploit those in January. We’ll start with the most vulnerable team coming out of Week 5.
Dallas Cowboys (3-2)
Sunday’s 42-10 loss to the 49ers was a total team effort in the worst way. The Cowboys were outclassed in all three phases of the game. But the critical gaze of pundits everywhere will land on the offense this week—and rightfully so. Dak Prescott threw three interceptions and averaged 6.4 yards per attempt. The run game produced just 57 yards on 19 carries. And the offense averaged minus-0.45 expected points added per play. Going back to 2010, that scores as a second-percentile performance—so quite literally one of the worst offensive performances of the last decade.
It makes sense that that unit would be under the microscope given all the change it underwent over the offseason, with Mike McCarthy pushing former offensive coordinator Kellen Moore out and taking over play-calling duties. Several factors led to that shift: McCarthy knew that if Dallas was going to take a step forward and challenge the 49ers and Eagles at the top of the conference, it’d have to get better on that side of the ball. And to do that, Prescott would have to fix his bloated interception rate from 2022. The Cowboys quarterback has been better in that department this season—even after his three-pick disaster class against the 49ers. His interception rate has dropped from 3.8 percent to 2.5 percent, according to TruMedia. Which is a significant improvement … but it hasn’t led to better results for Prescott overall.
Dak’s INTs Are Down ... but So Is Everything Else (via TruMedia)
While Prescott has thrown fewer picks, his EPA, average depth of target, average yards per dropback, and success rate have all dropped season over season. The passing game as a whole isn’t nearly as efficient, and everything looks more labored. In other words, this is a lot like the offenses we watched toward the end of McCarthy’s time in Green Bay—stagnant mishmashes of a quick passing game and a high school–level rushing attack. Actually, that’s an insult to high school coaches, who can be far more creative than McCarthy.
As The Ringer’s resident Dak apologist, I’m obligated to point out that the passing game has not regressed in the areas where Prescott typically succeeds. His efficiency on straight dropbacks—so no play-action—has not changed: He averaged 0.09 EPA per dropback on those plays last season; he’s averaging 0.09 EPA per dropback on those plays this season, per TruMedia. No, the drop-off has come on the schemed plays:
Play-Action Isn’t Working for Dak in 2023 (via TruMedia)
That’s where Dallas expected to miss Moore the most in 2023. The Cowboys’ former play caller was excellent at setting up shot plays with a meticulously planned sequence of calls that typically included shifts and funky personnel groupings. We’re not seeing any of that from McCarthy, and as a result, moving the football down the field has become a strenuous process. The issues in the red zone—where the Cowboys are scoring touchdowns on just 36.8 percent of their drives, 28th in the NFL, per TruMedia—have only exacerbated things.
The 49ers defense was designed to destroy offenses that have painstaking passing games that put everything on the QB. Well, most defenses are. But San Francisco, with its relentless front seven and sound coverages, is uniquely equipped to smother them. And we’ve seen that play out in back-to-back matchups between these teams, going back to Dallas’s 19-12 loss to San Francisco in last season’s divisional round.
But as bad as things looked against the 49ers, I’m still not writing this team off completely. Especially if it’s able to avoid San Francisco in the playoffs. The Cowboys stand a better chance against the Eagles and Lions defenses, which don’t have Fred Warner patrolling the middle of the field. Should one of those teams be able to do Dallas’s dirty work and take out the Niners, the Cowboys still have a somewhat realistic path to the Super Bowl. But only if McCarthy can get his shit together.
Philadelphia Eagles (5-0)
The 49ers’ dominance has made it easy to overlook the team that won this conference last season and is sitting at 5-0. Somehow the wins just keep piling up for the Eagles even though nothing has worked out quite as well as it did a year ago and there seems to be a new sideline spat every week—on Sunday it was between Jason Kelce and the coaching staff.
But there are legitimate concerns about this team going forward, and despite all the talk about Jalen Hurts’s sluggish start to the season, those worries aren’t really centered around the offense. Hurts broke through on Sunday in a 23-14 win over the Rams. It was really the first time all season we’ve seen him create as a runner. He took off on several scrambles and even broke a few tackles after spending most of September giving himself up if a defender got anywhere close to him. Some wondered whether Hurts was protecting an undisclosed injury, but Sunday’s game should quiet that talk for now.
But the concerns about Philly’s defense, which ranks 20th in EPA after five weeks, will not be going away. While the Eagles are doing exciting things schematically under first-year coordinator Sean Desai, statistical regression is kicking this unit’s ass at the moment. And that’s hardly a surprise after the team set a franchise single-season record for sacks last year while putting up a good-but-not-historically-great pressure rate.
This pass rush is getting after the quarterback quicker this season, but that isn’t leading to more negative plays for the offense. Sacks are down. So are interceptions. And the decline in sacks doesn’t fall squarely on the defensive line, either. The coverage unit isn’t holding up its end; quarterbacks are getting the ball out faster, and that’s resulting in more explosive plays. This isn’t the same defensive formula that helped Philadelphia make the Super Bowl a season ago.
The Eagles Pass Rush Has Regressed (via TruMedia)
If nothing changes, this defense will be susceptible to both explosive offenses and more patient quarterbacks who can string together long drives. The 49ers may seem like the worst possible matchup for these Eagles—or for any team, for that matter—but Detroit and even Dallas could also potentially exploit the deficiencies in Philly’s defense. And the way both the Lions and Cowboys play defense has historically given the Eagles passing game issues. As wild as it sounds, Philadelphia might have the best chance against San Francisco on paper. Let me explain why …
San Francisco 49ers (5-0)
This 49ers team looks unstoppable at the moment, and the numbers back up the eye test. Through five games, San Francisco has been one of the better teams in modern NFL history.
Brock Purdy is leading the MVP race, Christian McCaffrey is reshaping running back value debates, and Kyle Shanahan has widened the gap between himself and the rest of the league’s top play callers. Even the defense looks the same as it did a season ago even though it lost its architect, DeMeco Ryans, over the offseason.
It’s challenging to find a weakness in this team, but there is one hiding in plain sight. It’s the same weakness the Eagles were able to exploit in last season’s NFC title game: the run defense. The 49ers rank 19th in run defense EPA, per RBSDM.com. More concerning, they’re 26th in success rate allowed. The front office attempted to bolster this group by signing defensive tackle Javon Hargrave away from Philly this offseason, but the results haven’t changed. This …
… doesn’t look any different from what we saw when the Eagles and 49ers played in January:
On early downs, the 49ers play a four-down front with safe zone coverage on the back end. That structure is ideal for limiting explosive plays, but it puts a lot of stress on the interior of the defensive line, where defensive tackles are asked to get upfield in a hurry against the pass and occupy double-teams against the run. It’s an intentional trade-off that may work against the other 30 teams in the league, but not against Philly.
If the 49ers offense stays healthy, that weakness may not matter. They can simply outscore opponents like they’ve been doing all season—their 167 points scored are second in the NFL only to Miami. But the Eagles do have the perfect offense to make San Francisco’s defense look pedestrian—and that’s not a word we often use when discussing the undefeated Niners.
Detroit Lions (4-1)
I saved Detroit for last because this is the team I understand least of this group. And that’s more of an exposure problem than anything else. We just haven’t seen the Lions play a big game late in the season. Nor have we seen this iteration go up against the other NFC contenders. They did give the Eagles a competitive game in the 2022 opener, but this Detroit team is not the same as that one.
On paper, Detroit is the most balanced team in the conference. The Lions are the only NFC club that ranks in the top five in offensive and defensive DVOA. Not even the all-powerful 49ers can make that claim. And EPA metrics paint a similar picture. The Lions rank seventh in EPA per pass and seventh in EPA per run, according to TruMedia. The defense is ninth against the run and 14th against the pass.
That pass defense is a worry that needs to be addressed by the trade deadline if the Lions are going to make up ground on the 49ers and Eagles. Detroit has the draft capital to swing a trade for a cornerback—general manager Brad Holmes should be calling Denver about Patrick Surtain II every single day until the Week 9 deadline—and if they do, we might have to get used to a world in which the Lions can realistically make a Super Bowl.
Hell, we might already be there thanks to offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, who has proved that his breakout campaign in 2022 was no fluke. Johnson continues to add layers to his scheme, which has helped him (and Jared Goff) stay a step ahead of defensive coordinators. There’s a little bit of everything here: The Sean McVay influence has been clear for some time, but there’s also some Sean Payton in there, a hint of Mike McDaniel, and even a bit of Matt Canada—though Johnson’s version of Canada’s plays actually works. Johnson isn’t afraid to copy other coaches’ homework, and that’s what makes him such a great play caller.
But play-calling can take you only so far when you’re chasing Philly, San Francisco, and Dallas in the talent department. Even if, on paper, the Lions have the running game to play with the 49ers, the passing game to exploit the weak spots of the Eagles defense, and the pass rush to disrupt the Cowboys offense, we still haven’t seen those elements in practice. Detroit and Dallas are scheduled to play in December—but we’ll have to wait until January to see how the Lions match up with the NFC’s two best teams.
