Washington is far from being good, but it’s not that far from the playoffs
By Jerry Brewer,
In the 2020 NFC East, it is not a terminal predicament to be a bad football team. It seems it is also not terminal to be flat-out terrible. The once-dominant, NFL-defining division hasn’t been itself for a while now, but almost halfway through this season, the lows couldn’t be much lower.
So allow the Washington Football Team to reintroduce itself — as a contender, sort of.
Washington’s current status is similar to its name: to be determined, but the incomplete version might hang around for a bit. On Sunday, the TBDs celebrated an impressive 25-3 pounding of the battered and listless Dallas Cowboys at FedEx Field. They improved to 2-5, scooting within a half-game of Philadelphia (2-4-1) for first place in the division. If they had lost, they would have remained just a game clear of the winless New York Jets in the Trevor Lawrence Tankathon.
If this flimsy NFC East crown is destined to fit nothing better than the most tolerably bad team, Washington can aspire to be so awful. Conventional wisdom screams that the TBDs still look like mere mathematical contenders, but they’re in a division that will leave no team behind — not even the New York Giants, who are 1-6 and still haunted by Daniel Jones’s turf monster.
Of course, those are the same Giants who beat Washington, 20-19, after Coach Ron Rivera decided to go for an ill-fated two-point conversion at the end of their Week 6 matchup. In the first year of heavy construction, Rivera and the boys won’t pretend they are coming together in some magnificent way. But they’re moving forward. They’re showing their professionalism and determination to improve. They are focusing on their culture and their standards, and the progress they have made is encouraging.
[Washington earns convincing win over Cowboys, 25-3, to snap five-game losing streak]
The reward is that, after a bye next week, they will play a month of meaningful football games against teams near or below their level: Round 2 vs. the Giants, at Detroit, Cincinnati and at Dallas. By Thanksgiving night, you should know whether this team is tolerably or irredeemably bad. Even if it is the latter, it figures to remain in mathematical contention into December, when the slate appears tougher.
It’s an ideal situation for a developing team, as long as Rivera doesn’t sacrifice long-term growth for instant gratification. As he has vacillated in news conferences and used poor messaging to justify his decisions, his mixed motives have been a concern. But Kyle Allen is proving to be the best quarterback option, for now, and the players are exhibiting the kind of toughness and fight that Rivera has been hoping to inspire while he pushes buttons and employs unusual strategy to provoke an aggressive, attacking mentality.
“I think it’s just toughness,” Allen said of what Rivera is creating in coaching — and coaching with creativity while inviting scrutiny — despite battling cancer. “It’s grit.”
[Four takeaways from Washington’s win]
Wide receiver Terry McLaurin, who caught seven passes for 90 yards and burned Dallas cornerback Trevon Diggs for a 52-yard touchdown, considered the game to be Washington’s most complete performance of the season. Considering the team entered Sunday on a five-game losing streak, that’s not exactly a headline-grabbing revelation. But he’s right. The TBDs controlled the game from the start, outgaining Dallas 397-142. They ran for 208 yards, with rookie Antonio Gibson rushing for 128 in the first triple-digit effort of his career. The defense, which has yet to play up to the talent on its defensive line, destroyed a Dallas team trying to reinvent itself without Dak Prescott and with an injured offensive line.
The Cowboys managed just 2.6 yards per play. Washington finished with six sacks. Quarterback Andy Dalton left the game early with a concussion after taking a vicious, undisciplined hit from linebacker Jon Bostic. With a defense trending toward being one of the worst in NFL history, the Cowboys can only win with an explosive offense. In two full games without Prescott, the Cowboys have managed 13 points.
They are embarrassingly bad right now. But at 2-5, they have the same record as Washington. In the NFC East, no team can do bad all by itself. Every loss, no matter the team, seems to lead to fear that things are getting worse. And every victory is tempered by the lousy state of the opponent.
“I feel like we have to compartmentalize this,” McLaurin said of the win.
There’s seldom reason to feel overconfident, but for this team, that is a good thing. This season is not about the NFC East anyway. It is about growth — sustainable growth. If a back door opens to win the feeble division, then run through it. But it matters most to focus on incremental improvement and honest evaluation of the team’s deficiencies.
For such a limited Washington team, the NFC East crown really isn’t up for grabs, but the players would happily take a gift if it’s shoved into their hands. Their best chance hinges on how poorly the other teams perform. Right now, every team is doing its part, with the four franchises combining for a 7-20-1 record. That’s a .268 winning percentage, a pace more than worthy of all the “worst division ever” insults.
Since the NFL went to a 16-game season, no team has won a division and made it to the playoffs with fewer than seven victories. The possibility of a six-win NFC East champion — and playoff host, if that even matters in this fan-deprived season — isn’t hyperbole. In a year in which the phrase “flatten the curve” has become eerily popular, you can use it this time in reference not to the novel coronavirus but the low grading scale for a weak division.
Still, Washington must expect that remaining competitive will require elevation. If it takes seven or more victories to clinch this division, it would have to dominate November and show a gear it hasn’t revealed. But if six wins is the bar, well, that’s possible, especially since the TBDs already have beaten Philadelphia and Dallas, which are supposed to be the best of the bad.
[Analysis: Washington’s defense is good enough to win it some games — and maybe even the NFC East]
In the wrong hands, this could easily be a 4-12 team. With Rivera leading the way, 6-10 doesn’t look outlandish. Everything depends on Allen continuing to be a stabilizer. In three starts, he has completed 68.8 percent of his passes, thrown four touchdowns and committed just two turnovers (one interception, one fumble). He has been efficient. His productivity making plays down the field is improving. After the way Allen declined last season in Carolina, you must worry that there still is an expiration date on his effectiveness. But, presumably, he’s a better quarterback after learning from his collapse last season.
“It’s hard,” McLaurin said. “We know we won’t be stealing anything if we are in position to win this division. We have to earn it each and every week. We kind of set the bar really high for ourselves. . . . The complementary football that we played this week can’t be overstated.”
Enjoy it. Then compartmentalize it. At 2-5 and full of holes, Washington is a long way from being a good football team, but strangely, it is not that far from the playoffs. And it figures to hang close all season.
Who knew you could get extra credit for purposeful rebuilding?
