The score was close, but the Redskins remain the far lesser team

The game on Saturday night could have gone either way (well, duh, it’s preseason). But one team was noticeably better all around. And it wasn’t the Redskins.

The Redskins fared better on Saturday night than they did the previous week. But that isn’t saying much. The offense was stagnant for much of the first half, performing poorly against the Packers’ first-team defense. The team started to gain steam against lower competition, but still couldn’t find a way to win.

The score was close. The Redskins lost against the Packers 21-17. If one were to look at that score and no other information, they would assume that it was a hard fought battle, between two very evenly matched teams.

They would be wrong. The Redskins still have quite a bit of work to do, and that was evident on Saturday night. The absurdly optimistic offseason has given way to a painfully sobering start to the 2017 season. The first-team offense, the team’s shining trophy, couldn’t move the football to save their lives against a young, depleted Packers’ defense. And in the closing stages, when depth mattered most, the Redskins failed to rise up to the occasion once again.

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The Redskins can be a very good team this season. But the last two weeks have shown what else they can be. Success is not a guarantee, despite the seemingly brilliant offseason moves the team executed earlier this year. The Redskins remain on the cusp. A team middling between contention and irrelevance. The Packers are already at the top of the mountain. They have been for a while, and while preseason is never the best indicator for these types of things, it was easy to see on Saturday.

The Redskins can’t just put up pretty stats and perform at practice. Results need to be generated, and soon. This preseason, although a poor indicator of regular season success, has been a mess, for the most part. There are several players to be happy with, such as Phil Taylor, Zach Brown, and Fabian Moreau. But aside from that, it has been a very undesirable start to August.

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The Redskins lost in a close fight to the Packers on the scoreboard. But on the field, they pleaded no contest. The Packers were clearly the better team on Saturday night. In the coming weeks, the Redskins need to prove that they are what they think they are. That they can compete with the top players on every team. Because on Saturday, they proved something different.