The Takeaways, Week 10: Lions destroy Washington

November 11, 2025

by Steve Thomas

Whelp.  That stunk, didn’t it?  It’s pretty amazing how far Washington has fallen since the glory days of a year ago.  It’s not been five straight losses, which is bad enough, but also four straight blowouts by much better teams.  The Detroit Lions manhandled Washington on Sunday, winning by a score of 44 – 22 in a game that in actuality wasn’t even that close.  The defense looked truly awful in nearly every respect.  The offense was bad as well, albeit slightly less terrible than the defense.  It’s too late to turn this season around – it’s over, in case you weren’t aware – so at this point, Washington needs to find out which of these players and coaches deserve to be a part of the future and which ones should be shown the door.  That discussion is for another day, though; today is a day to relive the awfulness that was the Detroit Lions versus Washington.  You’re welcome..  The Takeaways for week 10 are below.

Defensive line disaster

Washington’s defensive front four was an unmitigated disaster in this game, starting with the completely unnecessary and well-deserved ejection and suspension of Daron Payne.  The fact that Payne couldn’t control himself enough to not throw a punch at an opposing player after the play had ended is downright inexcusable.  Javon Kinlaw somehow one-upped Payne, though, by appearing to take a swing at a ref, an act which should hopefully get him suspended as well.  Outside of those two idiotic events, though, their on-field performance was downright embarrassing.  They couldn’t do anything right in this game – essentially zero pass rush and no ability to stop the run.  They showed very little effort or toughness.  It was one of the worst games I’ve seen in a long time from a Washington defensive line.  I recognize that two of four starters are on injured reserve, but this entire unit needs to be blown up in the offseason.

Secondary disaster

Washington’s secondary wasn’t much better.  The Lions’ receiving group was routinely open, and the secondary once again missed a ton of tackles.  In my view, the problem here is less scheme and more the fact that Washington’s remaining corners and safeties stink in coverage.  In this game, like so many others, they routinely either made mistakes that allowed Detroit receivers to be open enough to make a play, or missed tackles.  This is another group to which Washington’s coaches and front office leadership are going to probably make big changes this offseason.  For now, though, it is what it is, particularly with all of the injuries, which now includes Trey Amos.

Is it the coaching, the players, or both?

I fully recognize that most fans are very, very mad at the team’s coaching staff and want to see metaphorical blood flow.  To me, though, most of these mistakes are more properly placed in the laps of the players, not the coaches.  What we saw this week against the Lions was a slew of players who consistently lost one-on-one battles, missed coverages, missed tackles, and missed blocks.  I’m not sure how the coaches are responsible for that.  Certainly, the coaches clearly bear some responsibility, particularly in allowing the poor personal in-game discipline, but at the end of the day, the roster is what it is, which is to say poorly constructed and decimated by injuries.  Benching poor performers means that those players need to be replaced, and some position groups are already down to backups playing in starting roles.  This team’s problem seems to be more of a roster construction problem rather than an outright coaching failure, although neither have been good.

Injuries continue to take their toll

Clearly, this entire season has been ruined by injuries, and now we can add rookie corner Trey Amos to the list.  Off the top of my head, I can’t remember a remotely recent Redskins season that was impacted by injuries as much as this one.  As bad is this game against Detroit was, everyone needs to remember that they are down to second and third string receivers starting, backups on both defensive edges, and backups at corner, plus the obvious at quarterback.  That would be tough for any team to overcome, let alone one that probably outplayed itself last year and is poorly constructed, as is this roster.  We’ll see this week about the status of Amos, but it appears as of now that he’ll be done for the year as well.

Treylon Burks showed some potential

So as to not be totally negative, I thought I’d end on something vaguely positive, and that’s Treylon Burks.  He had 3 receptions for 58 yards in this game, which isn’t necessarily anything to write home about but it is a positive development for a guy who was a midseason practice squad addition.  I don’t necessarily think he’s going to all of a sudden become the next Art Monk, but it seems possible that he might be able to serve as a legitimate contributor in a wide receiver group that has at this point lost nearly all of its starters.  There you go – some uplifting comments.  Feel free to thank me in the comment section.

That’s it for this week.  I’ll be back next week after Washington’s battle with the Miami Dolphins on Sunday morning.