What’s Up with the Commanders? The Homer & The Hater

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November 23, 2022

By Paul Francis

I’ve said before that The Hog Sty serves a multi-purpose role for me as one part Washington football chatter, one part general chatter, and one part fan therapy.

On the therapy front, I’m going to fully embrace the duality of my Washington fanhood.  There resides within me a “homer” and a “hater”.  The homer strives to see the Washington team through the lens of my childhood Redskins, believing that every positive play is a hopeful sign of returning to the glory years.  The hater in me languishes through every wasted second spent watching this unholy catastrophe of an organization, as they annually invent new ways to fail at every level.

The homer and the hater engage in robust subconscious debate, and my logical brain typically tries to average out the balance of the two views.  But I’m bringing it all out today and giving you the uncut version of what’s going on in my mind as we sit at 6-5 in a pivotal moment of the season.  So, if you are a long-time fan like me, you may be able to relate to the following internal schizo-dialogue.  If not, welcome into the bizarro brain of an average Washington football fan…tread carefully.

The Homer’s Take

Objectively speaking, the Commanders have turned it around.  Simple fact is that this team is 5-1 in its last 6 games, and the 1 lost was due to a 4th quarter give-away.  Furthermore, this team has found a winning identity.  Defend, run the ball, control the clock, and make enough plays in the passing game (where they appear to have plenty enough weapons to do so).  When you have figured out how to win, as this team clearly has, it’s simply a matter of perfecting your way of playing and sticking to your script.  No reason this team can’t do that.

Push aside all the NFL broo-hah and media focus on QB, QB, QB, QB, QB, QB, QB, QB, QB, QB for just a moment.  Defense leads this team, and it’s LEGIT good.  Washington’s defense is currently 6th in the league in yards and 12th in points allowed.  And if you look at their recent stretch of games, they’ve been lights out, as those rankings factor the clunkers the defense laid early in the season.  The defense is not a fluke.  It’s anchored by some bonafide talented studs on the defensive line in Allen, Payne and Sweat.  Behind them, guys like Toohill, Smith-Williams, Obada and Ridgeway are blossoming.  We aren’t even factoring Chase Young into the mix yet.  The best is yet to come.  Jamin Davis has turned the corner; and Kamren Curl, Cole Holcomb, Benjamin St-Juste and Darrick Forrest are balling.  This, my friends, is a textbook draft-n-develop-homegrown Top 10 NFL defense.  And it’s ours.

The offense has the goods to stay on script as a run-first ball control team.  Brian Robinson and Antonio Gibson are finding their stride as a 1-2 punch, and there’s every reason to believe that chemistry will grow.  Robinson has only been available for 7 games (5-2 in that stretch).  Much like a pitching rotation that needs the right guys slotted into the right roles, these guys are finding their niche, and it’s elevating the team.  There are certain universal truths about winning football games, and one of them is “control the line of scrimmage”.  Between the defensive line and the way the run game is developing, the team has shown it can do just that.

Speaking of elevating the team, let’s talk quarterback for a moment.  There’s no doubt that Heinicke brings out the best in his guys.  We live in an advanced-stat-fantasy-football era that glorifies numbers and metrics, but at the end of the day, football is a physical guts-n-glory-leave-your-heart-on-the-field-fight.  These guys are not stat-crunching bean counters like the rest of us.  They put on armor, and they go into a melee every Sunday.  In that kind of atmosphere, intangible things like “heart”, and “fight”, and “togetherness” can make the difference between wins and losses on any given Sunday.  Fact is Heinicke can do a lot of things, even if great deep passes is not one of them.  He activates the team’s most dangerous weapon in Terry McLaurin, who loves playing with him.  But more importantly, the worst part of his game – bad downfield throws leading to turnovers – is entirely correctable.  Just play within yourself, Taylor.

We also need to give credit where it’s due to Ron Rivera.  I know that we are an abused fanbase that inevitably turns on every coaching staff and front office that dares to take Snyder’s money (shoot, people even hate on St. Joseph Gibbs for coming back for Round 2!), but we’ve got to be fair and do more than just emphasize mistakes.  There is a built-in handicap that comes with coaching under Dan Snyder, and despite that Ron Rivera’s teams stick together and play for him.  The team is going into its third consecutive December playing meaningful football hunting for the playoffs.  Think about that.  You all know how it used to be.  December was always the month that we started our draft prognostications and free-agent wish lists.  But we’re playing games that count in December.

Things are not perfect, and there’s still a lot of work to do.  But try, if you can, to suppress the whiny kneejerk-nay-saying for just a moment, and you would see we are heading in the right direction.   The truth of the NFL has been aptly stated thus:  You are what your record says you are.  So, friends and fans, as things stand right now at 6-5 the truth is that the Commanders are winners.  Can we just enjoy that fact?  And when you consider the larger context and big-picture of “Washington-ness” in which our winning is taking place, it’s pretty amazing.

The Hater’s Take

Yes, let’s consider the big-picture context of the Washington Commanders.  Let’s look at the last three seasons and consider what’s happening right now.  In 2020, they started the year with a busted QB situation, struggled early on, then hit a stride towards the end of the season when the defense got its act together.  They eaked into the playoffs with a losing record and the strength of Taylor Heinicke’s heroics.  In 2021, we started the year with a busted QB situation, turned to Heinicke, hit a stride midseason on the strength of the defense coming together before crapping out when it mattered most.  In 2022, they started the year with a busted quarterback situation, turned to Taylor Heinicke, hit a stride midseason when the defense pulled it together…you see what’s happening here?

When you keep “turning corners” you end up going in circles.  And that’s what this team is doing.  We are caught in the same confounded Groundhog Day that we’ve always been in.  Yes, Washington is on a little 5-1 streak right now…after starting out 1-4.  And if you care to look at Ron Rivera’s history as a coach, you could have perfectly predicted that, because this is what he does.  He starts maddeningly slow, then hits a little stride, before coming back down.  Any sustained success that his teams had in his Panthers-days came the same way all success comes in the NFL for every team – on the strength of elite play from an MVP-caliber quarterback.

And when you look at this team as its currently constructed, what position suffers from the biggest talent deficit?  The quarterback.  Now I’m as inspired by a good “Rudy” story as the next guy, but gimme a break.  Anyone who thinks a Taylor Heinicke-led team is capable of anything more than getting rocked in the first round of the playoffs as a 7-seed has had too many Busch Lights.  I hate saying these things about Taylor because I do appreciate what he’s done for our football experience, but every time he drops back to throw, I cringe.  It’s like he lobs the ball in the air and yells “500 alive!”, and if Terry doesn’t make an All-Pro play on it (or the downfield ref doesn’t body check a defender), then God help us.  The team identity is defense, running the ball, and managing the passing game, eh?  OK, sure.  That hasn’t been a winning winning-identity in the NFL for 20 years.

That’s not to say I’m not enjoying our little winning run.  I’ve been watching the games.  And that’s precisely why I remain skeptical.  We housed the 1-win Texans, which was nice to see.  Otherwise, they required a goal line stand to beat the Bears by 1 score.  We beat the Sam Ehlinger’s Colts by a single point.  They beat the zombie-Packers by 2 points in a game they should have been losing by 21 at halftime.  Despite dominating the Eagles, they still needed a fluky call and a last-play stand to walk out with the “W”.  You get my point?  If you are watching the actual football and not just the scoreboard, you know that Washington could just as easily be 1-5 instead of 5-1.

The next set of games will be interesting, and I’m very engaged.  They have three very winnable matchups before us.  So, let me ask an honest question – would you bet your next paycheck that in 4 weeks (with the bye) the Commanders will be 9-5?  I won’t.  I’d like for that to happen as a fan, but as an objective observer of this team, I have a pretty good idea will happen.  I appreciate that this Ron Rivera version of Washington football has an admirable penchant for pulling together when they’re down and everyone is doubting them.  But now that we are winning, and there are expectations, it’s a different game.  They say the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.  So, enjoy the view right now…before we turn the next corner.