Who to blame for Washington Football Team’s 20-13 loss to Panthers

Who to blame for the Washington Football Team’s loss to the Panthers.

There’s a simple explanation for the Washington Football Team’s loss on Sunday in what should have been a NFC East Clinching home win. Simply follow the flow of the week and the flow of the game to see where it all went wrong.

Dwayne Haskins. Haskins started off the week with a series of boneheaded decisions. Those decisions put his family, team, friends, and coaches at risk. His decisions weren’t just off-field mistakes. They actively distracted his coaching staff, team, and organization from what should have been a razor-focus on winning a game against a beatable team.

Haskins then went into the game with zero focus, zero accuracy, zero confidence, and zero energy. He literally looked like he was sleep-walking through the game and even looked like he fell asleep on the bench after halftime. The good news? He shut up blind pro-Haskins supporters once and for all, and validated Rivera’s decision to move on from him, which came on Monday afternoon.

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Steven Sims. Sims made three unforgivable decisions in the punt-return game. He muffed a punt in a scoreless game that resulted in a touchdown. He fair-caught a punt on the five-yard line. He let a punt bounce on the 20-yard line instead of fair-catching it, costing the team 10 more yards. He should be removed from that role and ultimately should not make the team in 2021.

Cam Sims. I love the way Sims competes, but he has got to make catches on balls that hit him in the hands. He had three drops on the day, two of which were on massive plays.

Haskins made one of his best throws of the day off a scramble drill that went right through Sims’ hands. Heinicke made his single best pass of the game for what should have been a touchdown that Sims just couldn’t manage to keep in his hands as he hit the ground. Make those two catches, and who knows how the day ends up.

The whistle. Referees were not the sole reason this team lost, but they certainly didn’t help. Their decision to blow the whistle for “stopped forward progress” after the ball was already on the ground and while the runner was falling forward not only went against the league-wide mandate to let 50-50 plays finish out and go to replay, but also directly cost Washington their best chance to get back into the game late.

Red zone playcalling. Scott Turner has done a nice job with limited options this season. But his play calling in the red zone is not good. And his tendency to get extremely vanilla and predictable in short-yardage situations in the red zone is particularly disheartening.

Three different times, Washington had short-yardage opportunities in the red zone, and in all three cases, drop-back passes were called, with no motion or eye-candy, and with no regard for the fact that Antonio Gibson was carrying the ball at a 6.0 ypc clip. That feels like a man over-thinking it, and it cost Washington a chance for a late comeback.

Plenty of other moments were bad. Plenty of other players and coaches contributed to a brutal (but all-too-familiar) loss for the Washington Football Team. But those were the five primary reasons this team lost.

Here’s hoping Haskins’ release helps the team at quarterback, Sims Jr. is replaced as punt returner, Cam Sims finds some stick ’em for his gloves, the refs swallow their whistles, and Scott Turner finds some red zone magic for Week 17.