3 things we learned from Commanders big win over the Jaguars
By Hunter Noll
The Washington Commanders had a pretty exciting win over the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 1. In a fashion that fans have grown far too accustomed to over the years, they didn’t make it easy. After jumping out to an early lead, the offense fell asleep for a while. However, they came storming back in the fourth quarter. And overall, this was actually a pretty good all-around team win.
Now, it is important to remember this is still the Jaguars. They made a lot of moves this offseason and should be an improved squad. However, they have a young quarterback who didn’t exactly light the world on fire in his rookie season in 2021. There are still plenty of question marks on that team.
So if Washington was facing a higher-caliber opponent this might be a much different article. It’s Week 1 though, so you can excuse a team not coming out of the gates firing on all cylinders. What we got was a game that gave us a lot of positives to build off of. There were clear improvements in some areas, while there were struggles in other spots that reinforced the idea that things still need to get better.
What did we learn in the Week 1 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars though? Let’s take a look at the performances of the Washington Commanders and find the three biggest takeaways from an entertaining game that has a lot of fans already looking forward to Week 2.
Top 3 takeaways from Commanders season-opening win vs. Jaguars in 2022
You have to take the good with the bad when it comes to QB Carson Wentz
Well, that was certainly a roller coaster of a game for new Washington Commanders’ QB Carson Wentz. The veteran got the offense moving decently in the first half. He led two touchdown drives that both ended with him finding the end zone through the air.
If we’re being honest though, he didn’t make many great throws in that time. There was a beautiful pass to Antonio Gibson for a big game. Outside of that though it felt like mostly screen passes and short under routes (mainly to Curtis Samuel). We saw a lot of Samuel and others making defenders miss to pick up the extra yards.
Meanwhile, we saw a couple of pretty bad throws as well. He overthrew wide-open receivers on a couple of occasions. Then Wentz threw ugly interceptions on back-to-back possessions to start the fourth quarter. Jacksonville had the lead and Washington was in a bad spot with a QB that looked lost.
This led to something we hadn’t seen all day though. Wentz started airing it out. After his second interception, the next drive was just four plays. We saw a three-yard scramble by Wentz, then a screen pass to Curtis Samuel lose a yard. Logan Thomas picked up a big 27 yards to keep the drive alive. Then we got the big hitter. A gorgeous 49-yard touchdown pass to Terry McLaurin.
Washington’s next drive was nice-and-long and saw Wentz throw another beautiful pass for a touchdown. This time it was a 24-yarder to rookie Jahan Dotson.
So we saw both sides. Wentz is great at getting away from sacks. He has a strong arm and can absolutely make deep throws. However, he’s going to rely too heavily on the short game quite often. And you’ll have to deal with the accuracy issues as well.
No one is expecting Carson Wentz to win an MVP this year. But the hope was that he would at least be an improvement from the QB situation in 2021. In Week 1 we definitely got an improvement, but it’s going to be a wild ride of a year. Expect a wide range of emotions each week.