Washington Football Team: Evaluating the current situation

Evaluating the current situation that the Washington Football Team is in.

The Washington Football Team is in a very weird spot. They are 2-4, which obviously isn’t good. However, the NFC East isn’t exactly scary – and it’s a 17 game season. That being said though, the Dallas Cowboys lead the division at 5-1.

So Washington is already in a pretty deep hole. And to make matters worse, they face the 5-1 Green Bay Packers in their next game. They have to contend with the 5-1 defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers just two weeks after that.

Washington’s struggling to find an identity. The defense has been horrendously disappointing. Meanwhile, the offense hasn’t done all that much either. Taylor Heinicke hasn’t been bad at quarterback, but it’s safe to say he’s lost his footing a bit lately. The offense is devoid of weapons with Logan Thomas and Curtis Samuel hurt. Terry McLaurin can only do so much.

With all this in mind, where does the Washington Football Team go from here?

Washington Football Team: Evaluating the current situation

They are far from out of the playoff race. It’s way too early to be claiming a team is dead. It’s 100% an uphill battle though. And it starts with the Packers.

Look, “moral victories” are stupid. Claiming that a loss doesn’t matter that much because a team should be happy with their efforts is hard to believe in. That being said, it’s really hard to imagine Washington will be winning their upcoming game. It’s not completely out of the realm of possibilities, but it’s certainly a long shot.

Washington needs to show life. Move the ball on offense and for the love of everything, please make some stops on defense. Far too often this year, the defense has given up back-breaking play after back-breaking play. They need to show that they can stop an offense.

Last week, Washington looked good for a half. Or at least, decent enough. They were beating the Chiefs 13-10 at the half. And they had a chance to go up 16-10 midway through the third quarter, but Dustin Hopkins missed the kick. Kansas City ended up going on a 21-0 run the rest of the way, and Washington went from winning in the second half to getting blown out 31-13.

It was the perfect analogy for how their season has gone. They have the tools to be competitive. But for some reason absolutely can’t get anything clicking. In the end, they end up getting boat raced. It’s happened three times already this year. And their two wins weren’t pretty either.

Washington is not out of the playoff race. They have a lot of climbing to do in a very short amount of time if they want to be playing meaningful games in December and January though.

Offensively, they’ve been made a B- or C+. I’ll give them B- because of some of the injuries they’ve had to deal with and due to the fact that expectations weren’t exactly sky-high, to begin with.

The offensive line has been very solid, and they have a few players performing well. Heinicke’s been decent-to-good in his role, McLaurin’s a star, Antonio Gibson‘s been good (if not a little underwhelming), Thomas was great while healthy, and a few others are playing their role nicely. Overall though, they stall out far too often.

Defensively though, that means we have to give them an F. Expectations were very high and they’ve been one of the worst in the NFL. Not much to say here, the secondary has been horrendous and the front seven isn’t racking up the sacks like expected. No one is playing up to expectations.

Simply put, the defense needs to wake up and the offense needs to find a few more playmakers. If the Cowboys stumble, Washington is in striking distance. In a few weeks, we could be talking about a tight race. We could also be discussing who Washington is taking with their early first-round pick in the next NFL Draft though.

It’s too early to really be 100% sure which way it’s going to go. But the Washington Football Team needs to improve dramatically if they want to be in the mix at the end of the year. No one is safe from criticism, except maybe Tress Way – that man can do no wrong.