The Sam Bradford-for-Nick Foles trade seems like a huge disappointment for both teams, but there's no question that Bradford has been significantly better than backup Mark Sanchez this season. According to DVOA, Philadelphia's offense was 5.5 percent worse than average in Weeks 1-9. With Sanchez at quarterback, the Eagles offense was 30.1 percent worse than average for the next three games. This week, Bradford was back, and the Eagles offense was back to being mediocre instead of terrible, with minus-5.8 percent offensive DVOA.
The return of Bradford is the biggest reason why the Eagles are now the division favorites; with him at quarterback, they're the best team in the NFC East. The Eagles play the toughest remaining schedule based on average DVOA of opponent, but that's balanced out by the fact that they have three of four games at home. We currently have the Eagles winning the division 42.7 percent of the time, with Washington at 31.0 percent, the Giants at 20.8 percent, and Dallas at 5.5 percent.
Although every team in the NFC East currently has a losing record, our simulations think we're still likely to get a division champion that's at least 8-8. The NFC East champion goes 9-7 in 16.5 percent of simulations and 8-8 in 52.2 percent of simulations. We also get a 7-9 champion 31.3 percent of the time and a 6-10 champion 1.3 percent of the time.