Dart Warming: An NFC East Preview artwork

Dart Warming: An NFC East Preview

The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny

July 1, 2026

Mina is joined by Derrik Klassen to preview the NFC East ahead of the 2026 NFL season. They break down the Eagles, Cowboys, Commanders, and Giants, highlighting each team's biggest strengths, weaknesses, and questions on both offense and defense.
Speakers: Mina Kimes, Derrik Klassen, Ryan Reynolds
**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Mina Kimes** (0:35)
To The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny, Only NFL Podcast, one of the hosts favorite defensive coordinator is Vic Fangio, solely because his nickname is Fangs. That's Lenny who rarely bears his Fangs at anyone. Honestly, it would be a good choice, even if not for the joke.
Vic Fangio is one of the best coaches in the NFL. We're gonna talk about him today, cause we're talking about the NFC East, here to join me in my very first division preview of the off season. We were just discussing this, it's been a long time since it's been on the show. Looks great, camera looks amazing. One of the co-hosts of the Athletic Football Show, Derrik Klassen, welcome back.

**Derrik Klassen** (1:11)
Thanks for having me back. I'm honored that this is the first division preview. It feels great. It's funny too, cause for our show, we do them as late as possible. So I'm doing all the prep for the NFC East, and I'm probably still not gonna talk about it for us for like six more weeks.

**Mina Kimes** (1:24)
NFC East is a safe division to do early on, cause first I hit you with the AFC North, and then I realized the Browns is having an unbelievably cursed quarterback competition, means we gotta wait. I was looking at all the divisions and the ones that have basically quarterback competitions, and there's like three or four that are safe. One of which is this division, we know who the quarterbacks are, is not really, the only dramatic thing, I think like the Malik neighbors aspect is the thing that's we're gonna discuss the Giants obviously in depth that is going to be a point, something to monitor for this division all summer. But I feel like we kinda know who these teams are, Derrik.

**Derrik Klassen** (2:02)
We do, yeah, we know a lot of what's gonna happen, what these teams and I think it's actually a really interested division. I'm really excited to talk about the Cowboys and the Eagles specifically. I will say I was mildly heartbroken to get moved off the AFC North because I wanted to do a little bit of Carson Sweshenger propaganda. But I'll survive. I can do Jihad Campbell propaganda and I'll be okay.

**Mina Kimes** (2:21)
That's actually like the only thing I want to talk about the Eagles defense because we not the only thing, but for those who are loyal listeners to the pod, we've talked about the Cowboys offense and the Eagles defense in the top 10 offenses and top 10 defenses podcast.
We haven't talked about the Giants and Commanders, neither made either of those. So I'm interested in getting into those. Let's start with the Eagles though, and let's start with the offense, which I think it's funny because there's two teams in this division that are dramatically changing their offensive schemes in similar fashions.
Kind of a trend across the NFL. Obviously, it's been a multi-year trend, the transition to the Shanahan Tree offense. But I think with this division, you have two quarterbacks, two offenses where it is a radical transformation. So let's start with Philadelphia and let's start about the offense. First of all, quickly to recap, the offense, obviously AJ Brown is gone. So now you're looking at a right receiver room that's really interesting. Fonte Smith, Mekhi Lemon, they drafted in the first round. The Dantavian Wicks, Hollywood Brown were two big additions as well, kind of competing for that wide receiver three spot. Tight ends, Dallas Scotter, Johnny Munt, sneaky signing that I loved.
They also drafted Eli Stowers. So it's an interesting tight end group. Running back room, largely the same. Barkley, Bigsby, offensive line, larger the same, only hopefully with better health. So the big question, the big elephant in the room, something we're going to be talking about a lot, is whether or not the new offense with Sean Mannion makes sense, not just for Jalen Ernst, but I think for the whole group. The whole group, Derrik, it strikes me, if you take quarterback out of the equation, and we'll talk about him in a second, it seems very obvious, especially as I rattle off that depth chart, that the Eagles front office, Howie Roseman, rebuilt this depth chart to suit the new offense. Just listening to all those players, they all make so much sense in the context of a Green Bay style, we can talk about what that means, a Green Bay style offense.

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