Washington fan confidence has hit a new low point this season according to the results of this week’s Hogs Haven Reacts poll.
It seems like a good way to put Washington fan confidence into context is to compare
it to that of Dallas fans, who were treated to the spectacle of the Cowboys curb-stomping Washington by a score of 44-22 in Dallas last Sunday.
Washington fan confidence at the start of the season was sky-high, at 97% and 98% in our first two fan surveys. It took some hits, moving down and back up with the team alternating losses and wins from Week 1 to Week 6. The Week 7 embarrassment against the Cowboys seems to have broken the dam open, with confidence, as measured in our survey, plummeting to 27%. It appears as if about a quarter of our survey respondents are focused on the positive aspects of the team’s long-term trend, while three-quarters or so are completely dispirited by back-to-back losses and what those losses seem to indicate about the team’s 2025 outlook.
Cowboys fans began the season with the shocking news of the Micah Parsons trade. By Week 4, they were 1-2-1 and fan confidence measured just 7%. After a bit of a bounceback over the following two weeks, a loss to the Panthers in Week 6 of the season pushed Cowboys fan confidence back down to 11%, with most Dallas fans dreading a home loss to the Commanders in Week 7 would drive a nail into their team’s coffin. The huge Dallas win last Sunday night reversed that trend, pushing confidence back up to 64% — just short of where it had been after Week 2 when the ‘Boys had beaten the Giants a week after giving the Eagles a tough game.
Monday Night Football in Kansas City
It seems certain that Washington fan confidence will either plummet to a new season low approaching single-digits if the Commanders get embarrassed again on Monday night in Kansas City, or rebound sharply — as the Cowboys fan confidence did this week — if the burgundy & gold come out of Arrowhead Stadium with a prime-time upset win.
Do something!
The lack of confidence in the team’s direction is causing fans to call for something to be done — especially on the defensive side of the ball.
The shouts for the sacrifice of defensive coordinator Joe Whitt have grown louder each week. His unit is ranked 27th in yards per game surrendered and 21st in points given up.
While there isn’t really a designated backup coordinator ready to put on his headset and take over for Whitt, there are backups on the roster for players at every position. Defensively, the two healthy starters who seem to have faced the most criticism for (1) being old, and (2) under-performing are middle linebacker Bobby Wagner and cornerback Marshon Lattimore. Many fans have been vocal in calling for these veterans to be benched in facor of younger players.
A few fans expect better performance from the replacements, but the more common sentiment seems to be along the lines of: the younger players can’t be much worse so we might as well give them valuable playing time to help them develop.
Largely, fans seem to be shouting for the decision-makers to DO SOMETHING…just about anything…to change the current direction.
In an effort to understand whether this shouting was simply a loud minority or a genuine representation of the larger fan base, we asked this week — in two separate questions — whether Wagner and Lattimore should be benched.
The results speak pretty loudly and clearly.
Eight out of ten respondents want to bench Lattimore, while nearly 7 out of 10 respondents want to bench Bobby Wagner in favor of 2nd-year linebacker Jordan Magee, underlining how deeply the disillusionment with the defense and the roster actually runs within the fan base at the moment.
Of course, none of these sentiments is universally shared. Some fans aren’t quite ready to start burning it all down yet.
If the Chiefs score 30+ points on Monday night, Joe Whitt may need to change his name and start applying for jobs as a high school PE teacher. Commanders fans are deeply unhappy.
Of course, all is likely to be forgiven if the Commanders can turn in a strong performance against the suddenly-high-flying Kansas City Chiefs in this week’s prime time game.
Game predictions
Of course, not many people outside of the Washington roster and coaching staff expect the Commanders to prevail. FanDuel has the Commanders as 11.5-point underdogs, which may make for an attractive betting option, but which also underlines the widespread belief that Monday’s game will turn into an unwatchable game pretty quickly.
National Poll
Each week, SB Nation polls fans of all 32 fan bases by email; in that survey, NFL fans from across the breadth of the league predict winners and losers.
The fan poll, for the first time in 4 weeks, correctly predicted that the Chargers would win on Thursday night.
Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.
We’ll have to wait until Sunday to assess the accuracy of 11 predictions, and until Monday night to assess the accuracy of the final one.
Fans across the country are, unsurprisingly, expecting the Chiefs to beat the Commanders. They also expect the Eagles to top the Giants (to split the season series 1-1) and the Cowboys to lose to the Broncos on the road.
That combination of outcomes would be a huge problem for Washington.
But a change in the outcome of two games — the Commanders upsetting the Chiefs and the Giants getting their second win over the Eagles — would change the complexion of the NFC East entirely.
Instead of a Washington team that is two games below .500 and three games behind the Eagles with 9 games left to play, under the rosier scenario presented on the right in the graphic above, the Commanders have the potential to finish the week in second place in the division and just a game behind Philly, with the advantage in divisional record — and with 4 divisional games to be played in the final 4 weeks of the season.
This is just a simple exercise in ‘what if’ to demonstrate the issues that can come with giving up on an NFL season in Week 8. Every NFL fan knows that the way teams start is often not the way teams finish. Last season, Washington suffered a bad loss to the Cowboys in Week 12 to extend a losing streak to 3 games. What came next was a 7-game winning streak (including playoffs) in which Washington beat the Eagles, Cowboys, Buccaneers and Lions, among several others.
This past Sunday, Washington suffered a bad loss to the Cowboys to create a 2-game losing streak. While the next three games (at least) appear daunting, the Commanders haven’t played those games yet, and it’s been a season of upsets and changes of fortune. Just think back to the sense of doom that surrounded the Commanders fan base in Week 5 when Washington was coming off a disappointing loss in Atlanta and traveling to Los Angeles to take on the then-3-1 Chargers. No one really expected the Commanders to do anything except get embarrassed. Instead, the Washington defense held the Chargers scoreless for three quarters while the offense scored 27 unanswered points to win the game going away.
Kansas City has one more win than Washington this season and has scored one more touchdown than the Commanders.
Let’s not fire up those mock drafts just yet.
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