ROLLASON: The craziest division in pro football

Year in and year out you can consider the NFC East to be one of the most competitive divisions in all of football. You can also consider it to be the wildest division as well.

In most years, you can look at the division in the middle of the season and say that it is a toss-up and is too early to tell who will come out on top. The funny thing is, you can usually say this going into the last two weeks of the season as well.

It seems that every year the winner isn’t determined until the very end of the season.

This season the Washington Redskins came out on top. It was the first time that the Redskins won the division since 1999. In fact, all season long it seemed like they would never make their way to the top of the division.

Washington started the season 3-6 and seemed to be on their way to an early draft pick once again. But after their week 10 bye they won seven straight games to finish their season 10-6.

They beat division rivals Dallas and Philadelphia twice in their seven game win streak, as well as a win over their other divisional rival the defending champion Giants and a win over the AFC North champion Ravens.

From the beginning of the season, up until their last game against the Cowboys, and everywhere else in between — no one gave the Redskins a chance to win the division.

There were some who said they might steal a wild card berth, but it was hard to believe that the team that finished 5-11 the season before would win the NFC East.

A large part of it has to do with rookie sensation Robert Griffin III who came through big time for the Redskins this season. RG3 finished the season with 3,200 yards passing, 20 touchdowns and 5 interceptions and was also named a captain of the team by his teammates.

RG3 exceeded expectations on his rookie season and led Washington into the playoffs. The Giants had a disappointing season after winning the Super Bowl last season and completely missing the playoffs and the Cowboys had a sad ending to a season that seemed to be saved by Tony Romo who had been playing great up until the last week of the season.

The Cowboys finished 8-8 but still had a chance to win the division going into their last game in Washington, but Romo threw a late interception that put the Cowboys in a hole that they couldn’t get out of.

Last season the New York Giants won the division and went on to win the Super Bowl, which is the first time that the NFC Champion won the Super Bowl (2007 Giants were a wild card team).

RG3 might not be able to lead the Redskins through the tough NFC playoffs and into the Super Bowl, but what he and the Redskins have done this season is impressive enough. No one would have thought that the Redskins would have taken the NFC East.

The NFC East has the most parody than any other division in football, in the last four seasons each team in the division has come out on top one of those years: the Cowboys in 2009, the Eagles in 2010, the Giants in 2011 and now the Redskins in 2012.

Tyler Rollason is a Winder-Barrow High School graduate and mass communications major at the University of West Georgia. You can e-mail comments about this column to tyrollason@yahoo.com.