The Takeaways, Week 3: Washington dominates the Raiders
September 23, 2025
by Steve Thomas
Welcome to the Takeaways for week 3 of the 2025 season. The game went substantially better than last week’s loss to the Packers, with Washington essentially dominating all phases of this game against the Raiders. It was a pleasure to see everything go right for once, and to see the team once again involved in a game that was never in doubt, literally from the first moment. I fully recognize that the Raiders were traveling across the country for the game, and aren’t exactly the ’85 Bears right now anyway, but whatever Washington did in this game needs to be duplicated for the remainder of the season. Obviously that’s easier said than done. Here are The Takeaways for this week.
The run game dominated
It was pretty clear from the start of this game that the offensive plan put together by Dan Quinn and Cliff Kingsbury was to rely heavily on a ground attack. For once, this worked, with Washington gaining a total of 201 yards on 32 carries, which equates to 6.3 yards per carry, and three touchdowns. Jeremy McNichols led the team with 78 yards on 4 carries, including a long touchdown run of 60 yards. Mariota went 6 for 40 yards, which is 6.7 yards per carry, and Deebo Samuel contributed with 3 carries for 18 yards. The only downside was that neither Chris Rodriguez or Jacory Croskey-Merrit ever really got going, with both averaging 3.5 and 3.3 yards per carry, respectively. 201 yards is great for the game, and the fact that the team had 32 total carries worked in this game; however, that having been said, Washington still needs to figure out how to get sustained performance out of its primary running backs. The results from Rodriguez and Croskey-Merritt weren’t good enough.
Marcus Mariota was outstanding as the fill-in
Mariota did his job very well overall, with just a couple of minor busts, including one pass that should have been intercepted. He’s just about the perfect backup for Jayden Daniels, because the two players are so similar, and that showed against the Raiders. In fact, I suspect that Mariota could easily still start in the NFL if he was placed in the right offense. Washington is lucky to have him. My one request to him is similar to our pleas to Daniels here at The Hog Sty: please, please, please don’t risk your health on these runs. It’s okay to just slide instead of taking big hits and trying to jump over defenders. Leave that to the running backs and wide receivers. The point is, though, that no one should worry about the offense’s ability to function with Mariota at the helm.
The was the best special teams game I can remember
Holy cow, was the special teams good. They absolutely dominated in both returns and return defense throughout the game. Off the top of my head, I can’t remember a better special teams performance by Washington in recent years. Both Jaylin Lane and Deebo Samuel had huge returns, was Lane getting the first special teams touchdown of his career. On the defense side, they mostly stifled the Raiders, with the longest kickoff return going for just 27 yards. The only downside was Matt Gay’s missed short field goal, but he made up for it with a kick of 56 yards. Overall, special teams was a major advantage. It can’t possibly be like this every week, but hopefully it is a sign of good things to come.
The defense front four made life difficult for the Raiders
Washington’s defensive line did a great job in this game, putting quarterback Geno Smith under pressure throughout the game and sacking him 5 times. More than that, though, they almost stifled the Raiders’ running game, only allowing an average of 3.3 yards per carry as a team and talented rookie running back Ashton Jeanty gaining just 63 yards in 17 carries for an average of 3.7 yards per carry. Once again, I don’t expect this sort of performance every week, particularly against the better teams, but it was great to see once. Kudos especially go out to one of the guys in the middle, Daron Payne, who caused havoc the entire day even though his stats only show 6 tackles.
Signs of life from Terry McLaurin
Prior to this game, Terry McLaurin has been lousy this season. That changed somewhat against the Raiders, with McLaurin leading the team with 74 receiving yards on 3 receptions, including his big 56 yard touchdown. If I’m being honest, he didn’t have a huge impact on this game beyond the touchdown, but it was good to see signs of life from Washington’s very highly paid Pro Bowl receiver. More of this please, and less of the nothing we saw in weeks one and two. I’m still a little hesitant to predict that he’s back to his old self without seeing a full game of quality production, but this was a start.
That’s it for this week. I’ll be back next week for another edition after Washington game against the Falcons in Atlanta.