Survey results!!
When Washington lost to the Bears on Thursday night last week, it triggered a lot of reactions; after all, the Bears came into that game on a 14-game losing streak that stretched back to the middle of last season.
Ron Rivera
Prior to Thursday night, bookies had Matt Eberflus and Josh McDaniels above Ron Rivera in the “most likely to be the first coach fired” sweepstakes. With the ugly 40-20 loss to the Bears, which featured a listless performance by the entire Washington team, but especially the defense, Ron Rivera elbowed his way to the top of the list:
In this week’s Reacts survey, we asked Hogs Haven readers what approach they favored with respect to coaching and/or front office changes. The reponses were pretty evenly distributed.
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The most popular response was to “clean house in January” (25%), but another 21% voted to ‘wait and see’ what happens later in the season before making any decisions. Together, that makes 46% of fans who are not in favor of any immediate coaching changes.
This isn’t really surprising. In an early-September survey, fans were fairly clear about what the threshold should be for Ron Rivera to keep his job after the ‘23 season:
59% of those responding to our survey said that the Commanders needed a winning season or a playoff season to keep his job. 51% said that the team needed to reach the playoffs or win at least one game for Ron to stay on in 2024.
Five games into the season, it’s simply too soon to know what will happen for the Commanders, especially in light of their history of mid-season surges and winning streaks under Ron Rivera.
Still, there are plenty of fans who want to see blood on the floor of the Commanders headquarters, with 23% calling for Ron to be fired immediately and another 17% calling for defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio to be dumped right away.
In the aftermath of the TNF loss to Chicago, Rivera made it clear that he had no plans to make any changes to his staff, and General Partner of the ownership group, Josh Harris indicated that he would not be lopping off Ron Rivera’s head either.
Fan confidence
Still, the season has not been inspiring so far. Washington managed to open up 2-0, but their two opponents in those games — the Cardinals and Broncos — now have a combined record of 2-9. The Week 3 loss to the Bills by a score of 37-3 might have been written off as an abberation, especially after a strong showing in an overtime road loss to the defending NFC Champion Eagles in Week 4. But then came the prime time embarrassment against the Bears, and suddenly, anyone who was trying to figure out if the glass was half-empty or half-full saw it tipped on its side with all the water spilled on the table.
Fan confidence dropped off a cliff this week.
In our Reacts survey, confidence fell from 92% last week to just 19% this week. That 73-point fall was the biggest drop among all NFL fanbases this week, though there was a bit of solace in the fact that Dallas Cowboy fan confidence fell by 72 points to just 8%, tied with New England for the lowest fan confidence in the NFL at the moment.
“Must win”
It’s early in the season to be talking about “must win” games, but, per PFF, Washington has a pretty tough remaining schedule, and, if you look at it, you’ll see that the toughest games come in the latter part of the season when the Commanders face Miami and San Francisco, as well as road trips to play the Seahawks and Rams, not to mention two tough games against the NFC East rival Cowboys.
The hardest remaining schedules pic.twitter.com/bdagnjcUep
— PFF (@PFF) October 12, 2023
Washington needs to build up a bit of a ‘cushion’ in their win-loss record in the first half of the season. The game against the Bears was one that the Commanders were expected to win easily. By taking the “L” in Week 5, the team has fallen below .500 and ratcheted up the pressure to stack up some wins between now and Week 11.
The team’s next 6 games are against the Falcons, Patriots, Eagles, Giants (twice) and Seahawks. While none of those games should be considered ‘easy’, they are all ‘winnable’, and Washington probably needs to come away with at least 4 wins in those 6 weeks to keep the 2023 season in their control.
That starts with tomorrow’s game against the Falcons, which always looked important, but following the loss to the Bears, looks like a ‘must win’ game if the Commanders want to keep the season from unraveling early.
Commanders fans are optimistic (kind of)
We asked Hogs Haven readers this week to pick the winner of the road game in Atlanta. A slight majority (52%) picked the Washington Commanders to secure the upset win.
They don’t agree with fans of the NFL in general, who went with the favored Falcons at hime this week.
National Survey Results
SB Nation sends out surveys to NFL fans of all 32 teams on a weekly basis during the season. Fans are asked several questions, and are always asked to predict game outcomes for the coming week. This week, they have already been proven right by the outcome of the Thursday night game in which the Chiefs secured an 11-point win over the Broncos.
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These fans are picking against Washington this week.
The NFC East
The email survey shows that NFL fans only believe in one NFC East team this week — the Eagles. Fans think they will get a road win against the Jets. However, in two prime time games, fans have picked the Bills at home over the Giants on Sunday night, and the Chargers at home over the Cowboys on Monday night.
Last week, Philly was the only winner in the division, with the Commanders, Cowboys and Giants going 0-3 for the week. Another week with the same results would be disastrous for Washington.
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