If the red-hot Eagles keep rolling and go into Levi’s Stadium and take care of the 49ers Sunday night, they’ll steam into first place in the loaded NFC East.
OK, not exactly.
But the hapless, winless Eagles will indeed take over sole possession of first place in the division just by beating the 49ers Sunday night in Santa Clara.
Because as bad as the Eagles have been, everybody else in the NFC East is pretty bad, too.
The Eagles, 0-2-1, would improve to 1-2-1 with a win over the 49ers, and that would lead the division.
With the Cowboys and Washington both losing at home and falling to 1-3, it guaranteed that all four teams in the NFC East will have a losing record through four weeks.
The Cowboys lost 49-38 to the Browns in Arlington, and Washington lost 31-17 to the Ravens in Landover.
The Giants were 0-3 going into their game later in the day against the Rams in Inglewood, Calif., so even with an improbable win they would still trail the Eagles in that scenario at 1-3.
There’s never been a year since the formation of the NFC East in 1970 where all four teams (or five through 2001, the Cards’ last year in the division) when all the teams in the division had a losing record after four games.
That also never happened in the old Capital Division, which the Eagles shared with the Giants, Washington and Saints from 1967 through 1969. The NFL did not have divisions until 1967.
Before the start of play Sunday, the FiveThirtyEight NFL prediction calculator had the Eagles with a 15 percent chance of winning the NFC East and an 18 percent chance of reaching the playoffs.
After the Cowboys and Washington lost, the Eagles’ probability to win the division improved to 21 percent and their chances of reaching the playoffs increased to 23 percent.
FiveThirtyEight still lists the Cowboys with a 60 percent chance to win the NFC East, Washington at 12 percent and the Giants at 7 percent before their game.
