The games against the mediocre Cardinals and the injured and eliminated Panthers show this team is still pretty far away from being a real contender.
The Cardinals were 4-5-1 when we played them. A good team would have finished these guys off. Arizona peaked a couple of years ago and has been on the downside in 2016.
Tough defense? Perhaps, but the Saints dropped 48 points on them this past weekend.
Against the Panthers the Redskins offense again failed to lead the way with a poor outing.
Yes, the defense is a liability. Has been all season. It won't be fixed before 2017.
But what a lot of us are waiting for is this offense to take the next step and see Cousins translate a 300 yard passing effort into an outcome that yields 3 or 4 touchdown passes.
Unfortunately, that almost never seems to happen.
Tonight the Panthers were playing on defense without Kuechly, without Charles Johnson and with rookie corners due to the departure of Josh Norman.
But even with that one hand tied behind their backs Carolina managed to stiff the Redskins offense on key drives.
Kirk finished with decent yardage but 0 touchdowns and 1 pick doesn't really cut the mustard when you need to post a win and the other team is playing for pride and for next season.
If the passing game is not going to consistently produce scores, like NE or New Orleans then we have to get more than 19 yards rushing.
That effort was pretty feeble.
It will be interesting to see what kind of effort these guys come back with over the final two games.
8-7-1 is possible but so is 7-8-1.
Chicago played Green Bay to the wire last week and that game is not a gimme.
You can never really predict division games, so the finale against NY is anyone's guess.
I think the takeaway from this season is that with the mediocrity in the NFL, a flawed team like the Redskins could stay in the race this long.
And like the Giants we could have probably put up a 10-11 win campaign if we had looked to improve our defense significantly in the 2016 offseason.
We didn't shore up the defensive line with any selections in the first couple of rounds of the draft or make any $$ moves in free agency.
We didn't add any strong playmakers at safety or at middle linebacker.
No one could have predicted the Panthers were going to drop the franchise tag on Josh Norman, so his acquisition was unexpected even by the team.
So, in truth we were at that point preparing to go into the 2016 season with the defense you see sans the one pro bowl caliber talent that was added very late.
There is no telling how historically bad that unit would have been.
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