This is the athletic football show.

Welcome to the athletic football show.

Today is Tuesday, September 7th.

I'm Robert Mays. Joining me today is my good friend, Shiake Pottia. How you doing, buddy? Good. When I heard you say on one of the last pots that you're a creature of habit, I was like, hey, yeah, that's right. I think I did the NFC East last year, too. So I think whether by design or not, we're back a year later to talk about.

I mean, the best division in football, I think there's not even an argument against it.

You know how they talk about coaches and how it's a good joke?

It's early.

It's early on Labor Day Monday.

It's a good joke, though.

You know, they talk about coaches and they talk about how flexibility and adaptability is the most important thing. I would be a terrible football coach. I think that's going to apply to probably some of these guys we're talking about today. So good setup. You are back to talk about the NFC East. A lot to dig into here. We're talking about this before the show. The team that I've thought about the least, which we'll get to, is the team you think about the most. So that's why I'm very glad that you're here to do this with me. Let's talk about this, though. Again, I've set these up loosely in the order I think that the teams will finish. You can make an argument for a couple different teams in this division. We'll dig into that. Let's start with the Dallas Cowboys, though. They're the betting favorites in most places. You lay out, in your playbook,

which you've done for the athletic, if people have not gone and checked it out, you dove into all 32

teams, what they did situationally against certain coverages out of certain formations,

passing the ball, running the ball. It's a ton of great

information. If people have not checked it out, please do. At the top of your Cowboys section, you lay out

a fairly simple plan and set of goals for this team. Their path to the division title, hints on the

return of deck, Prescott fixing their offense, and the arrival of Dan Quinn doing more with less on their defense. That's really it. Like that is the story of this team, and it doesn't get any more complicated than that. Yeah, it's pretty simple. You know, it's like, all right, if the offense can be what it was two years ago, you know, even not that good, but sort of in that neighborhood of top five, top five. Yeah, in the NFL. And I think the pieces are there. If you just look on paper compared to every other offense in the NFL, the pieces are certainly there to do that. And then defensively, you know, it's the formula we see every year. Great offense plus mediocre defense. Probably like playing in the second round of the playoffs. You know, you're probably going to be in there. You're going to win double digit games. And so the question is on defense, can you get to mediocrity? Because, you know, there are some areas of that defense that aren't pretty. How much can Dan Quinn do? What should we expect based on his history? And so those are some of the key

questions, I think, with this team. So let's get to the defense in a second. Let's start with the

offense to just talk about why there's so much optimism surrounding this group. And I think it's

obvious. The component parts are there for them to be a really good unit. We saw it in flashes last

year before Dak Prescott got hurt. You had them as a borderline top five offense over those first

four games in change when he was playing. And they return every major piece from that group,

plus some reinforcements, right? They lost Tyron Smith for most of the season last year, which

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