Washington Football Team Defense: 2018 vs. 2020
By Jonathan Eig
I’m supposed to be writing about the Washington Football Team’s defense and how it stacks up against the 2018 version. And I will. But first, I have to just mention this.
When you do a Google search for former Washington Football Team First Wingman Vinnie Cerrato, you will get a page that identifies his occupation as “Film Actor.” This restores my faith in the entire internet. Because even though Vinnie’s one acting credit is in the 1994 classic Kindergarten Ninja (which Down Among the Z Movies declared as being “worse than you’d expect from a movie with that title”), that truly amateurish film was significantly more successful than Vinnie’s attempts at being a football guy.
It is somehow easier to think of Mr. Cerrato as merely a run-of-the-mill bad actor, instead of the apocalyptically-bad football executive who helped virtually destroy the once-proud Washington franchise.
Okay – I kid because I don’t have much hair left to tear out. On to the defense.
Fifteen defensive players from the 2018 Washington Football Team remain on the roster as we head into 2020, but that number is misleading. Two of them — Caleb Brantley and Josh Harvey-Clemons — have opted out of the 2020 season, meaning a maximum of thirteen holdovers could remain.
Several of the remaining thirteen are not likely to make the opening day roster. Six of the thirteen are defensive backs, and among them, Danny Johnson, Jeremy Reaves, and Deshazor Everett are in iffy propositions. So we are likely looking at ten players remaining from two years ago.
As we will do with the offense, we are looking at the defensive players who are likely to play a fair amount this season, and comparing them to players who were on the field for at least twenty percent of the defensive snaps in 2018.