(Image credit: Brad Mills/USA Today Sports)
Written by: Nicholas Mullick
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-mullick-354076184/
With the Washington Football Team's latest loss against the Philadelphia Eagles 20-16. This was an extremely disappointing season as last season the Washington Football Team entered the playoffs. Heck, they even won the division and did not have a .500 record last season. A lot went wrong with the Washington Football Team and there are a lot of reasons why they missed the playoffs. However, in this article, I will narrow it to three main reasons why the Washington Football Team was eliminated.
1. Covid Outbreak
I hate using this as an excuse as every team has to deal with Covid being a factor. But in this case, I can’t ignore it especially with the outbreak that Washington had. At one point Washington had a total of 21 players that were placed on the covid list. That is 39.6% of the roster that had covid and it resulted in their earlier game against the Philadelphia Eagles being postponed. Any Covid outbreak would derail a team's momentum but this outbreak straight-up killed the Washington Football Team as it was an important game to A) keep them in the hunt for the division and B) keep the trust and passion in the locker room high. This is tough to do and it resulted in the fight in Dallas where Daron Payne got punched by Johnathan Allen. This Covid outbreak came at the absolute worst time and it badly hurt the Washington Football Team.
2. Defense Regression
This season also confirmed to me that the Washington Football Team’s defense has regressed a lot since last season. The Defense was the main reason why last year that the Washington Football Team made the playoffs. The offense was inconsistent due to the rotational door of QB’s especially involving the failure of Dwayne Haskins and the Best Comeback Player of the entire sports history QB Alex Smith. Yes, I call Alex Smith the Best Comeback Player of the entire sport's history as it was insane that he was even able to come back and play football after suffering one of the worst injuries I have ever seen. But that Defense was so great that I carried them to a playoff push. The secondary was abysmal all season due to the insane amount of injuries they had to deal with and the poor moves made during the offseason. Especially in signing CB Willliam Jackson who was awful all season for the Washington Football Team and I will not be shocked if they decided to move on from him. The Defense has not been the same since DE/EDGE rusher Chase Young suffered his season-ending injury. When they lost him for the season I knew their season was in trouble as he was the leader on this team. The defense was a complete mess once he left and it showed that the Washington Football Team needs to improve the depth on this defense during the offseason.
3. Special Teams issues at Kicker
Special Teams can make or break any football team. Look at how a good special teams is helping the Baltimore Ravens win more games than they should be. Look in history with the Chargers having terrible special teams making them lose games that they should be winning. The Washington Football Team has had this issue this season mainly at kicker. They entered the season with Dustin Hopkins who the team decided to move on from during the season. Hopkins later signed with the Los Angeles Chargers who have been solid excluding one game. So now Hopkins was out the Washington Football Team decided to give Chris Blewitt a shot as a kicker. Once the news came out of this many people were creating jokes as his last name was Blewitt. So then came his first performance and well it was not good. He Blewitt with a bunch of his kicks and was later cut due to his poor performances. Next was a good connection to Ron Rivera and a former Carolina Panther Kicker Joey Slye came in but got hurt in the middle of the season and had Brian Johnson kick for them. Both were not bad options but they have been up and down. So in total, the Washington Football Team had 4 different kickers on their roster. Hopefully, Washington can figure this out and have consistency at the kicker position.