The entire NFC East is a combined +33.5 today.

— Mike Tanier (@MikeTanier) October 4, 2020

Let’s take a quick look at the point spread for the NFC East games today:

The Cowboys are 3.5 point home favorites against the Browns.
The Football Team are 14-point home dogs against the Ravens.
The Giants are 13.5-point underdogs in Los Angeles against the Rams.
The Eagles are 9-point road underdogs tonight in San Francisco.

Yes, indeed, Mr. Tanier is correct: the NFC East are underdogs of 33 or 33.5 points today (the Baltimore/Washington line has fluctuated between 14 and 14.5 points). That sounds like a lot. It is a lot. But how much of an outlier is that?

As it turns out, there has been just one week since 1978 (which is as far back as PFR’s points spread database goes back) where the collective points spread for Dallas, Washington, New York, and Philadelphia was worse: week 13 of the 1998 season. That was the week that Randy Moss had three 50+ yards touchdown catches on Thanksgiving against the Cowboys, Washington was 2-9 under Norv Turner but upset the Raiders, the Giants under Kent Graham were 13-point dogs against a high-powered 49ers team (and lost by 24), and the Eagles and Koy Detmer were 18-point dogs against the two-time defending NFC Champion Packers.

And that’s it. Week 4 of the 2020 season is the second-worst week in history, at least as far as perception relative to opponent goes, for this quartet of teams. ^[1]Note that I am not saying NFC East history, as I am excluding the Cardinals from this post. Here’s the average points spread over the course of each season since 1978 for the Giants, Cowboys, Eagles, and the WFTFKATR. Remember, when looking at point spreads, it’s the reverse of points differential: a positive number indicates a weaker team.

As you can see, 1998 was in fact the worst time in modern history for these teams. Will 2020 top that?

We can do it in graph form, like this, with each team having color-coded lines and ANY/A on the Y-Axis:

Or we can do a heat graph that shows the actual data, with blue shading for the best years and red shading for the worst years:

If you wanted to tell a story about the NFC East passing since 2002, what story would you tell, and which graph is more useful?