Hogs Haven
Over 7 in 10 Hogs Haven readers expect the team to win at least 11 games
In this week’s Reacts survey, we asked Hogs Haven readers to predict Washington’s record for the upcoming 2025 season and to forecast the winner of the NFC East. The answers to both questions showed overwhelming belief in the home team.
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Ninety-seven percent of respondents predicted a winning record for the Commanders, with 82% expecting the team to produce at least 11 wins.
When it comes to the division championship, a majority of Hogs Haven readers believe that the two-decade long streak without a repeat champion in the NFC East will remain unbroken, with 56% saying that the Washington Commanders will hang another division banner at the end of the ‘25 season, while 41% expect a Philadelphia repeat.
The NFC East championship seems to be a two-horse race in the minds of the survey respondents, with only 3% predicting that the Cowboys or Giants would grab the division crown.
The comments under the survey article offered a broad range of opinions about the relative strengths of Washington and Philly, but one theme seemed to find its way into many of them — that Washington could play better football this year and still end up winning fewer games compared to a year ago.
One reason is that there is broad — but not universal — belief that the entire NFC East will be playing a tougher schedule in 2025. The most notable factor here is the inter-division matchups on tap.
Each season, all four teams in the NFC East have to play all four teams from one NFC division and one AFC division.
Last season, the NFC South had a combined W-L record of 28-40 (.412) while the AFC North had a combined record of 34-34 (.500). The two divisions had an overall combined record of 62-74 (.456).
Next season’s opponents had the following results in 2024:
No two divisions in the NFL had more total wins than the AFC West and the NFC North in the 2024 regular season. Of course, the W-L records of individual teams vary quite a lot from season to season, but the difference between playing the NFCS/AFCN (.456 win %) in ‘24 and the AFCW/NFCN (.625 win %) in ‘25 seems pretty stark.
Another factor is the number of home games.
One inequity of the 17-game schedule is that half the teams in the NFL will play nine home games each season while the other half play only eight. The NFL partially resolved this dilemma by setting up a scheduling system where NFC teams all...
