Washington Football Team: Reality Checks for Week 2 vs Giants

3. The Reality Is, the coordinators have to call better games.

Washington’s play callers got out-coached on Sunday. Their gameplans were vanilla and didn’t include enough adjustment to the flow of the game. The discrepancies between Los Angeles’ gameplan and Washington’s were stark.

The Football Team couldn’t get pressure on Herbert. Chargers defenders were constantly hitting Fitzpatrick and Heinicke. Washington couldn’t get the quick passing game going or feed Terry McLaurin and Logan Thomas most of the day.

Los Angeles fed Keenan Allen and Mike Williams all day long and got the ball out of Herbert’s hands so quickly that Washington’s pass rush was largely ineffective. Del Rio swapped which side Montez Sweat and Chase Young were rushing from, and otherwise made no noticeable adjustments during a game in which his defense gave up 14-of-19 third downs…a record-setting level of third-down futility for a defense who believe they could be elite. Can we just shelve that moniker until they have a game where they hold an opponent under 50% on 3rd downs? Is that too much to ask?

Turner, meanwhile, called no bootlegs or jet sweeps, barely used play-action, gave his tackles no help, made no meaningful effort to get Terry McLaurin or Logan Thomas the ball until the 3rd quarter, didn’t change tempo at all in a first half where his offense was not moving the ball sufficiently, and generally presided over a pathetic offensive showing.

Ultimately, the players have to play better, but the offensive and defensive play-calling was noticeably sub-par against the Chargers and didn’t give the players much of a chance to succeed.

Prediction: Ron Rivera will demand a much more creative plan from both Del Rio and Turner for week 2 against the Giants. Look for more misdirection and pocket movement for the offense and more man coverage and unbalanced rushes against the Giants.