The Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins have one of the biggest rivalries in the NFL.

At least, that is what history would lead you to believe.

The teams battled relentlessly for decades. They met in an NFC Championship game, on Thanksgivings and Christmases, at the beginning of seasons and at the end with only two constants: the teams were almost always good, and they always hated each other. Those two factors made Cowboys vs. Redskins appointment television every single time they played.

But nowadays, the rivalry just isn't that heated. And it starts with a very simple fact: the Redskins haven't been very good.

The Redskins haven't won more than 10 games since their Super Bowl victory in 1991. The Cowboys have won at least 11 games a whopping eight times in that span. Washington is 41 games below .500 in the past 15 years. They've made it past the wildcard round of the playoffs once in those seasons. They have been among the least relevant teams in the NFL for more than two decades.

Compare that to the two other teams in the NFC East. The Philadelphia Eagles have made the playoffs twice as often as the Redskins over the past 15 years with eight appearances. The Giants are slightly behind with seven, but that includes two Super Bowl victories. One of those championships included a heartbreaking victory over the Cowboys in the Divisional Round of the playoffs. That stirs up quite a bit more hatred than anything the Redskins could do in the regular season.

A lot of that hatred could be directed at specific players. The Cowboys don't just consider the Giants rivals. That fact is pounded into the heads of the fanbase yearly because they have to watch Eli Manning twice per season. The Cowboys have played more games against Manning alone than they have the entire Chicago Bears franchise, according to Pro Football-Reference.

But how many marquee players have the Redskins produced over the past two decades?

Cowboys fans didn't even have time to learn to hate Robert Griffin III. When he beat Dallas in Week 17 of the 2012 season to win the division for Washington it appeared as though the rivalry was renewed. That was the last relevant moment of Griffin's now-dead career.

It was also the last relevant moment of this rivalry, because in the rare moments that the Redskins are good, the Cowboys are in a down year. Since the turn of the millennium, the Cowboys and Redskins have only made the playoffs in the same season once. Without the emotion that comes from hating specific players on a team and objective stakes that comes with both teams being good at the same time, how can the Cowboys and Redskins even claim to have a rivalry at all nowadays?

In fact, it's rather obvious to say that the biggest rivalry for the Cowboys right now exists with the Giants.

Almost every time the teams suit up against one another there are serious stakes. They have met on Sunday Night Football seven times in the past six years, and nearly all of their games are nationally televised in some manner. They have played for the NFC East in the final week of the season just as the Redskins did with the Cowboys in 2012, but they have also opened seasons with legendary battles and dueled in the playoffs. Narratives have formed around the career arc of Tony Romo against Manning. The games actually matter.

Moving forward, the Philadelphia Eagles seem primed to take that spot from the Giants. The Cowboys and Eagles both have star quarterbacks in their second NFL seasons in Dak Prescott and Carson Wentz, and as Manning heads towards retirement and the Redskins' continue to screw up their negotiations with Kirk Cousins, that duo will be the main attraction of the division for possibly a decade or more.

The Eagles and Giants are, for the most part, well-managed organizations that deserve to play in big games. They rise to the occasion against America's Team. They give Cowboys fans reasons to hate them that go beyond games that their parents might not have even been old enough to watch.

Rivalries are fluid. They cannot be sustained solely on the past. They can change based on what is happening in the present and what will happen in the future. Until the Redskins get their act together and build a sustainable contender or at least a remotely interesting team, they cannot be considered rivals to a Cowboys team that actually wins football games somewhat consistently.

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