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Week 14 - Studs, Duds, and Hat Tips

Canadian Hog

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Dallas Week. When you come out on top in a meaningful contest vs. the Cowboys, as a fan, you feel like you are on top of the world. When you lose, it's a gut punch like no other. Unfortunately for the Burgundy and Gold faithful, on Sunday afternoon, we took several early gut punches that were just too much to overcome. A quick 18-0 hole and a 24 point halftime deficit was the worst possible way for our team to come out against Dallas. As has been proven in several contests early in the year for the WFT, it's a recipe for disaster. While you give the team some credit for showing up in the second half and amazingly having an opportunity to tie the game late in the 4th quarter, the Burgundy and Gold gave us too much of the same mediocre play we have seen in big moments over the years on Sunday. On a positive note, everything is still out there in front of them for the WFT to qualify for the playoffs. The question becomes if the injuries will be too much to overcome at this point, despite the tenacity and fight the team has shown since November...only time will tell. Let's get right to our studs, duds, and hat tips for the week.

Studs:

1. Cole Holcomb: #55 has been a pretty solid player over the course of the year and has steadily improved during his tenure in Washington. He's the type of hard-nosed player you could envision sticking around for the long-term and being a valuable contributor for years to come. His interception return for a touchdown in the 4th quarter was the first defensive score for the team in 2021. It brought the WFT within 7 points of the Cowboys and made for an interesting finish in a game that looked like it was going to be a blowout for much of the day.

Duds:

1. Offensive Line: John Matsko has worked wonders all season long with a group of linemen that has used numerous combinations of starters all season long. Parts have changed, but we had been able to maintain a solid level of success. The line played a huge role in the team's turnaround and has undoubtedly been our most consistent unit on the team throughout the season. Unfortunately on Sunday, we had an awful day at the office up front. Dallas' aggressive front bullied us all day, we couldn't establish the run game, and Taylor Heinicke was under plenty of pressure. It essentially spelled disaster for our team. Do we have enough healthy bodies up front to hold up for at least another four weeks? That's going to be something to keep an eye on at this stage in the season, where physicality up front becomes an even bigger difference maker.

2. Taylor Heinicke: Washington/Dallas in a meaningful game with major playoff implications is huge for the fans and the players feel the magnitude of the moment as well. The moment seemed to get the best of Taylor Heinicke on Sunday. He didn't have it, plain and simple. Give the Cowboys credit - they did not allow Antonio Gibson to become a factor on Sunday and challenged Heinicke to be the catalyst for our offense on Sunday. He couldn't muster up an answer and fell into the trap of trying to press too much, a trait we saw early in the year that would often get him into trouble. If he truly is going to be a long-term starter for Washington, he needs to especially be able to produce against the NFC East opponents and cause fits in the division. We need far better from Heinicke in Philadelphia next Sunday.

3. Antonio Gibson/Terry McLaurin: You want your best players to be your best players in the biggest of moments and on the grandest of stages. Washington/Dallas in December is indeed the grandest of stages and both of these guys had a stinker on Sunday. While Gibson wasn't helped by the offensive line play, after the team gained a bit of momentum in the 3rd quarter and closed the gap to 24-8, Gibson fell into the bad habit of fumbling again. It's absolutely unacceptable to fumble so consistently in the most inopportune of situations. At some point, #24 needs to decide if he wants to be a great player in this league, or just another guy. As for Terry, it pains me to say it, but he has now had less than 60 yards receiving in 5 of his last 6 games. Obviously, he left with an injury today, but he was shut out completely in the stat category on the day. We needed him to come up with an answer on a day where the Cowboys were going to force us to do damage through the air and it just wasn't there today.

4. Coaching Staff: the coaches deserve a TON of credit for the team's turnaround this season. It's amazing that they have managed to get this group to stick together, stand tall, and continue fighting. That being said, they too were off on Sunday. Scott Turner seemed to have absolutely no answer for the consistent pressure Dallas was applying to Heinicke. We repeatedly used empty sets on 3rd and long early in the game and repeatedly got ourselves into trouble doing that. As for Ron Rivera, I thought he too deserved some criticism for going for it early in the game on 4th and 3 down 11-0. Obviously, that decision turned out to be disastrous with the Cowboys intercepting Heinicke and returning it all the way for a TD. The game went sideways for a while after that and made any sort of comeback highly unlikely. It felt like a desperate panic move too early in the game. The team was rattled at that juncture in the game, and Rivera seemed to be as well. At a time when we likely would have been better served showing composure and patience, we unraveled, and that started with Rivera.

Hat Tips:

1. The Defense: if somebody would have told me before the game started that we were going to hold Dak to 211 passing yards, intercept him twice, hold Elliott to 45 rushing yards, hold Cooper/Lamb to 111 combined receiving yards, and have a defensive touchdown, I would have said that we were beating Dallas 8 days a week. The Cowboys' 27 points were a combination of 1 defensive score on their part, 1 offensive touchdown, and 4 field goals. Our defensive group did more than their share to make this a winnable game against one of the top offensive units in the league. In some regards, it was a missed opportunity. Complimentary football was missing in action in such a critical point in the season today. Unfortunately, like we experienced, that usually means you will find yourself in the loss column on Sunday. Is it fair to expect our defense to contain the Cowboys' offense again two weeks from now? Let's hope that's the case.

2. Ron Rivera: I mentioned Rivera in the "duds" section, I am also going to give him a tip of the hat for the team's ability to fight until the very end of the contest. A 27-20 final score line with a unit decimated with 2nd half injuries was a feat in and of itself. This team has a lot of pride and refuses to go down without a fight. That starts with Rivera.

3. Cam Sims: a really nice job was done by Sims going up to make a difficult catch on our first touchdown of the day. He now has 2 TDs on the season. Can he step up and be a meaningful contributor in the final four games? With McLaurin's status unknown for next week, we sure could use Sims' contributions more consistently.

That's it for this week. While this was extremely difficult to write today, I hold out hope that we can show up in these final four division games. I truly do believe that any combination of winning 3 of our final 4 games gets us into the postseason. That said, next week at Philadelphia in many regards is the season. A loss leaves absolutely no margin for error the rest of the way and I am not sure you want to put yourself in that spot considering we travel to Dallas the week after. Do you agree with this week's list? Disagree? Who did we miss?

Keep throwing stones.
 
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Love these threads, CH!

You know, I honestly feel like the worst part of this game by far was the OC / playcalling aspect. There was a time where we threw 6 straight times, I think early in the third quarter. There were other times where it was far too predictable when we ran and when we threw. Gibson finishing with 10 total carries is just ridiculous in my opinion. Early this season, I felt the defensive and offensive coaches were making some big mistakes. Notably on defense, there were egregious personnel issues (Kam Curl not being out there). They have resolved those pretty well since the bye. Also since the bye, the playcalling had been improved. The one game this year I felt the team lost due to the players almost exclusively may have been GB. Many mental errors you could attribute to players there. Other than that, I thought many games featured multiple head-scratching decisions. As fans we may disagree with some decisions, but when there are seemingly obvious mistakes being made multiple times in games, I really have a problem with it. The last few Ws, the playcalling had been improved to the point that I wondered whether it was Scotty calling plays anymore. Today was a classic Scotty game though.

This was definitely not a good day for Taylor; no doubt. However, I think it's going to be sad that Ron will likely lay more blame on Taylor instead of seeing that this game was not called the same as the other wins; instead, it reflected a lot of the year's losses in tendencies.
 
Hard to argue with much of that. The only thing I'll disagree with is the call to go for it on 4th and 3. On 4th and short across midfield, I don't think you should ever punt unless it's a late game, pin them deep situation. The problem is that when you go for it there, you have a to call a play that will scheme someone open and if they are not open, then Heinicke needs to just take off and run. You can't hold the ball in that situation or what happened today happens. But overall, I'd rather see coaches go for it in that spot than punt.

I'd also add that the whole team fighting back after being down big showed a lot. I still play sports competitively and it's easy to pack it in when you are getting destroyed in a game. Especially when they were just getting dominated in the 1st half. They could have just been looking toward to next week and 24-0 could have turned into 38-0 pretty quickly. But they fought and fought and thanks to an interesting play call by dallas and a terrible throw by Prescott and all of the sudden you are right in a game that you have no business being in. I always look at how teams getting destroyed in a game respond. The Football Team today responded by fighting back and that's all I can ever ask as a fan.
 
I can only make this observation from watching on tv but based on that I would give a huge dud to the local fans and by extension Dan Snyder, who has destroyed the fan base.

It sounded like an away game once again in Landover. For the fucking Cowboys.
 
I can only make this observation from watching on tv but based on that I would give a huge dud to the local fans and by extension Dan Snyder, who has destroyed the fan base.

It sounded like an away game once again in Landover. For the fucking Cowboys.
I think the Fox broadcast (and probably the NFL too) enjoy that picture a lot, of the Cowboys being so popular. It comes from Jerry and his marketing job; he loves talking about how the second most Cowboys fans in the country are in the DC area. That said, the other aspect at play is a lot of STH attempt to make money back on their season tickets by selling that game. That falls SQUARELY on the STH who do that. I never did when I had STH, but I always heard people talking about that. Honestly, though, that ONE may fall more on the fans than Dan then, right? Gotta be fair, even though I lay most of the problems at Dan's feet, I think in a season the WFT have going on, the STH should have showed up. Maybe a large percentage sold this game weeks ago? It was an embarassment.
 
It's not 1990 and I imagine if EVERY season ticket holder shows up, that still leaves a half-empty stadium. It is what it is. But Dan Snyder owns whatever it currently looks like. He has done everything in his power to systematically drive fans away and there's not much about this franchise that is attractive for new potential fans. I don't know how you turn that around, I really don't. Winning big home games consistently might help. Not getting doused with sewage water, or having plywood walls collapse on you during the game might help. Not charging outrageous amounts of money for a crap experience might help. Selling beers for less than $12 a pop might help. It sucks to see our stadium overrun but you know what - I wouldn't road trip up there at this point so I can't begrudge any fan who would rather watch the game from their own couch.
 
Beg for fans to come to a big game.
Then the team doesn't even show up and gets throttled, yeah the score was 27-20 but anybody who watched knows the Team was dominated.
That's been the pattern for 20 years+.

Wouldn't surprise me now if Dan announced to the rest of the league that for a small fee, NFL teams can enjoy his new BYOB(Bring Your Own Bench)policy.......
What a huckster!
 
Beg for fans to come to a big game.
Then the team doesn't even show up and gets throttled, yeah the score was 27-20 but anybody who watched knows the Team was dominated.
That's been the pattern for 20 years+.

Wouldn't surprise me now if Dan announced to the rest of the league that for a small fee, NFL teams can enjoy his new BYOB(Bring Your Own Bench)policy.......
What a huckster!

Oh, I noticed it this week. This team will never pass up an opportunity to milk a situation for money.

A novel idea would be to win FIRST and THEN hype up the team. And no, clawing one's way to .500 twelve games into the season does not count.
 
I still believe we should've brought Allen in for the second half, TH just didn't have it yesterday, even the greatest NHL goalies get pulled sometimes, this was one of those times TH should've been pulled imo. The game plan, I don't know, defense showed up, offense was abysmal. Injuries are not helping the situation, this team is beat the f up. The defense yesterday is definitely a stud, that stat line reads like a win but of course with no offensive cohesion yesterday we fell short. Now onto face one of the most decrepit, nasty, disgusting, foul, almost sub humanoid fan bases in existence in Philthy.
 
I was in and out of chat yesterday, but I said at some point in the first half that Heinicke should sit. He was pressing and when he does, he reverts to trying to do everything right away. He always seems to hold on to the ball a little more than needed. It's a double edged sword with him on that because that's how he often makes big plays, but against that DL, it ends up being more hurtful than helpful. Of course, the OL did not help with that much yesterday either.

From what I've seen on Twitter this morning, he had Samuel open for a first down when he tried on the big play to McLaurin that got him hurt. I suspect the coaches will see more of that in the film since they often comment on how they want him to take what is there.



I don't think he needs to be benched, but felt like he would have benefited from sitting a bit yesterday and watching.
 
One of the things I noted is that he threw the ball late numerous times yesterday. He would make the right read, target would be open, but he'd wait too long to release the ball and by the time it got there the defenders had closed. Saw it multiple times throughout the game. He had gotten better about letting the ball go and letting the WR get to it in previous games, but yesterday he was right back to waiting and then throwing to guys who were well covered. Can't do that in the NFL.
 
Can I add a DUD in for the NFL Schedulers?

I can't argue with much of what's been said (or any really) but I also think this weeks game was the first time we saw our injury attrition rate and the fact we've played a bunch of well-rested teams (while we're been on short turnarounds) finally come back to bite us. Honestly, looking back the four-game win streak looks like a minor miracle. THe odds were ALWAYS against us due to the horrifically unfair scheduling.

Like SO said above, WFT is beaten up. Especially across the O-Line. And more players went down during the game. That and we caught a Dallas finally getting healthy. Recipe for a disaster.

If there's a chance we get some of our players back for the rematch in a couple of weeks' time, I suspect we might see a different result. Especially if we get McKissic back. I think he's a HUGE sparkplug for the Offense and really noticeable when he's not there. I think against the Raiders, having Logan Thomas back (albeit temporarily) helped disguise the fact. But this offense needs a Thomas or a McKissic. Without either we really struggle.
 

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