Washington Football Team: Takeaways from preseason loss to Patriots

Special Teams is a wild ride

The Washington Football Team doesn’t exactly have the best special teams. It is helped immensely by the fact that they have Tress Way, one of the best punters in all of football. However, there are a lot of other question marks.

They have a new long snapper this year, and it looks like it has caused some problems with snaps. Not sure if it’s the snaps themselves, or the holds, or what, but there’s an issue.

Meanwhile, Washington hasn’t had a good returner in years. Brandon Banks was really exciting and while some people weren’t the biggest fans, he was at least liable to break off a big return at any time.

Now it feels like a treat when someone just holds on to a punt, let alone returns a kick for more than 20 yards.

This year it doesn’t seem like they have a plan there yet again. DeAndre Carter led the team with two punt returns for a very solid 38 yards. One for 20 and the other for 18. The issue is, he might not even make the team. Dax Milne had one return for 19 yards, he also might not make the team. Then Steven Sims Jr. had one return for zero yards — he also doesn’t have a guaranteed spot, though.

Kick returning saw Danny Johnson get two returns (for a total of 39 yards) and Sims Jr. get one for 32 yards. It would be great if Washington could find that guy again because a good returner really does make a massive difference.

Finally, Dustin Hopkins didn’t have a good day, going 0-for-2 on field goal attempts. However, people were mentioning that the whole process wasn’t great so that might not be 100% his fault, as it could’ve been down to a bad snap or a bad hold.

That being said, they need to do better. Can’t be missing all your field goals and expect to win. In reality, Hopkins has had some fantastic years in Washington, but it feels like they haven’t had an “automatic” or even close to that in years.