One day after Washington’s 36-27 loss to the Detroit Lions, head coach Ron Rivera met with the media after reviewing the film.
The first question Rivera received was what did he see after watching the film?
“Well, probably a little bit of the biggest problem more so than anything else was just too many explosive plays,” Rivera said.
Rivera is right. The Commanders allowed far too many explosive plays to the Lions, all of which set up scoring opportunities for Detroit.
Why are there so many explosive plays?
“No, just because it’s an individual, you know what I’m saying,” Rivera answered. “It’s not a group. It’s not schematics. It is failure to put ourselves in position to force things to happen.”
These issues date back to last year. Remember all of the explosive plays Washington allowed in 2021? For the most part, the team improved throughout the course of the season after an ugly start. The theme of this past offseason was how much better the communication was amongst the secondary.
The Commanders still seemed confused far too often on the back end. And with veterans like Kendall Fuller, William Jackson III and Bobby McCain, that’s inexcusable.
Washington’s back seven is often the culprit in allowing explosive plays. Rivera referenced the D’Andre Swift touchdown reception from Sunday as one example of his team missing assignments.
He gave a thorough answer:
“Well, when you talk about it is, we had a blitz call on one of the touchdowns, the one where Swift falls down,” he said.
“Could we have called a coverage? Yeah, but we are kind of hoping maybe we can get him and knock them out of a field goal range or make it a little bit longer field goal. When you watch the tape, like we do, we had a guy that didn’t cover his guy. If our guy goes and hugs up on Swift, but the way that ball was thrown like he should have, there’s a chance we could have intercepted it, knocked it down, or made the tackle immediately, and they’ll have to try and kick a field goal anyway. So, it’s, like I said, we could have sit there and played a safe coverage, a zone coverage underneath, or we could have been aggressive, tried to knock him back a little bit further, which we did, and unfortunately, we had one guy who did not do his job.”
The logic is correct. When Washington is aggressive, someone misses an assignment, and it looks bad for the entire unit, and the coaches get the blame.
How can this still be happening in year three of this regime? Is it the players? Is it the coaches? Regardless, the message isn’t being received.
