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Before I get to my main topic, a word about Jaxson Dart and the New York Giants
Before last night, I had seen some highlights of the Giants games over the past two weeks, but the game against Philly on Thursday Night Football was the first time I watched Jaxson Dart play a football game from beginning to end.
I was seriously impressed. This kid looked like the same kind of nightmare for defenses that Jayden Daniels is. I’m not looking forward to having him in the division for the next decade.
The young man certainly has a lot to learn, starting with the idea that, in the NFL, he can’t play his position as though he were a fullback, but he appears to have the full package of arm strength, accuracy, mobility, coolness, and processing required to succeed at this level.
It looks to me as if the competition in the NFC East just leveled up.
Some stray thoughts about the defensive performance against the Chargers on Sunday
I watched a podcast this week in which the podcaster stated rather unequivocally that the Commanders offense was dominated by the LA Chargers offense in the first third of Sunday’s game.
His view was not unique. I’ve read lots of criticism of Washington’s defensive unit based on the early 10-0 score and the fact that, barring a penalty for roughing the kicker, Washington would have fallen behind by a score of 17-0.
I’d like to offer an alternate view of what took place in that game.
I think the Commanders defense, while not perfect, did a pretty good job from the outset of Sunday’s game to the final whistle. The offense (literally) stumbled early before finding its footing (pun intended), and the critical errors in the first half were made by special teams — a unit that I spent a lot of time praising yesterday.
Let me state my case.
The Commanders defense got stops on every Chargers offensive drive of the game
I hear the shouts of indignation already — “The Chargers scored a touchdown on the opening drive!!”
It’s true that LA did put up a touchdown, but only AFTER Washington’s defense had stalled the drive by forcing an incomplete pass on 3rd & 5 at the Washington 11-yard line. Coach Harbaugh sent on his field goal unit to kick the field goal — a kick that was actually successful, but which was taken off the board when Mike Sainristil was flagged for an offside penalty on he kick, setting up the Chargers with 1st & goal at the Washington 6 yard line.
The gaffe was committed by the special teams, not by the defense. In fact, without this penalty, the Commanders would have held Justin Herbert and the Chargers offense to just 6 points for the entire game.
- Yes, I understand that Sainristil is a defensive player, but his penalty came on a special teams play, not a defensive play
- Yes, I understand the “butterfly effect” and that the game won’t play out exactly the same way if the penalty never happened and the Chargers had taken a 3-0 lead instead of the 7-0 lead, but that’s a rabbit hole that’s not worth the effort.
Even the nullified Chargers touchdown on the roughing penalty that otherwise would have given the Chargers a 17-point lead was — again — a special teams play. The defense was not on the field.
If we erase the Sainristil penalty and ignore the ‘butterfly effect’, keeping all else the same, here are the results of the nine times that the Commanders defense took the field:
- Field goal (remember — erasing the Sainristil penalty)
- Field goal
- Fumble (recovered by Washington)
- Punt
- End of half (kneeldown)
- Punt
- Turnover on downs
- Interception
- End of game
That’s not the resume of a defense that was getting “dominated” by the Chargers offense. In fact, that looks like an offense that is getting dominated by the opposing defense.
It seems to me that people watching the game focused on the scoreboard, which at one point went from 10-0 to 17-0 on the nullified punt return and interpreted it as “bad defense.” I think this is losing track of what happened at the more granular level of the game flow.
Special Teams
For all the praise that I heaped on special teams yesterday, it was the ST units that should bear the brunt of the criticism for Washington’s first half problems on Sunday in Los Angeles.
- The offsides penalty on Sainristil was a ST play and an inexcusable error that cost Washington 4 points (giving up a touchdown instead of a field goal).
- The negated punt return for a touchdown was, again, a special teams breakdown. Sure, we can point to an injured Tress Way as the final tackler between the return man and he goal line, but the coverage failures were real even if they didn’t end up costing the Commanders in the end.
- A third sub-par play came with 1:45 left in the half and put the offense in the hole that led to Tress Way punting from the back of his own end zone. On the punt at the end of the Chargers’ 4th offensive drive, Jaylin Lane didn’t field the punt, allowing a Chargers player named St-Juste to down the ball at the Washington 7-yard line — horrible field position that almost turned into a disaster.
Offense
I also think the Washington offense got off to a faster start than most people think they did — or they would have if Jayden wasn’t trying to raise awareness of cancer by wearing pink cleats.
There’s no getting around the fact that Washington’s first offensive drive was a failure on its own merits. After gaining 7 yards on 1st down, either Kliff made a bad call or Jayden made a bad read, losing 2 yards on 2nd down, leading to a 3 & out.
The second offensive drive, however, would have continued if Jayden hadn’t slipped and fallen while trying to cut to his right on a QB scramble on 3rd & 9. His fall killed the drive and Washington punted.
He did get sacked on the next drive, leading to the play on which Tress Way was roughed, but from that play (roughing the kicker) onward, the offense barely faltered aside from the one massive mistake when Bill Croskey-Merritt fumbled the ball away.
Washington’s offensive drives — after the roughing call on the punt — were:
- Touchdown
- Field goal
- Touchdown
- Field goal
- Fumble! (major mistake)
- Touchdown
In short, Washington’s slow offensive start was real on the first drive of the game, but appeared to be a product of the wrong cleats on the next drive.
The only drive-ending (or potential drive-ending) mistakes by the offense from that point forward were the sack given up on Drive 3 and the 4th quarter fumble by JCM.
