It’s another lost season for the Washington Commanders. After Sunday’s 45-15 loss to the Miami Dolphins, Washington fell to 4-9, guaranteeing that head coach Ron Rivera would not have one winning record in his four seasons as head coach.
There have been a lot of lost seasons for Washington over the years. And in those lost seasons, opposing players often sound off about the simplicity of Washington’s offense or defense.
After Sunday’s loss, Dolphins linebacker David Long Jr. spoke to the media and offered some revealing thoughts about the offense.
“All you really have to do to defend this team is just be disciplined,” Long said via Nicki Jhabvala of The Washington Post. “They kind of struggle with the routine parts. When we watched them play, their best stuff was when [Sam] Howell was scrambling, or they moved the pocket and just let him try to make plays. There’s gonna be rollouts and breaking the pocket, plaster. But if you just stay on your man or find somebody when you don’t have nobody, it’s really easy to defeat stuff like that.”
That quote is pretty damning. Coming from an opposing player, it’s much more detailed than some of the nonsense the Giants said when they beat the Commanders. If Long and the Dolphins saw this, what do other teams see? And what is offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy doing to counteract this?
Howell has been excellent off-schedule. Bieniemy doesn’t move the pocket enough for Howell, often keeping him in shotgun.
Long wasn’t done. He had the following to say about the receivers.
‘They have some good dudes,” he said. “Terry [McLaurin], [Curtis] Samuel is cool, too. But I wouldn’t say that they have a dominant dude that you come in saying, ‘Oh, we gotta make sure to stop bro.’ I say that respectfully, too.’”
Here’s another quote about McLaurin that stood out.
“Terry makes some great plays, but it’s not like they force it to him or go out of their way to get him the ball so he can be contained,” Long said.
He’s not wrong. When you see others saying someone shut down McLaurin, that’s not always the case. Often, it’s Washington shutting down McLaurin. One of the knocks on Bieniemy is that he hasn’t done enough to force the action to McLaurin — Washington’s best offensive player.
The Commanders have a lot of problems, but they are much deeper than Howell.