Washington Football Team: 5 negatives for WFT vs Bills

The Washington Football Team was back in action on Sunday afternoon against the Buffalo Bills.  The visitors to Orchard Park were seeking an opportunity to post a second straight victory, but a harsh reality awaited.

On the Monday following the Giants game, yours truly appeared on a popular Washington Football Team podcast, and the first question centered on the defense.  Was it time to push the panic button or be greatly concerned about the defensive unit?

That was brutal, but after a fortunate victory over the Giants, the concerns about the defense seemed overblown.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  While it is not time to push a panic button, it is certainly time to be concerned.  However, the panic button is close at hand.

Welcome to our weekly analysis of the previous game and our focus is obviously the Bills game on Sunday.  It was not pretty and the game was out of reach within minutes, but Washington did mount a brief comeback.  It didn’t matter as the Burgundy and Gold failed to sustain that smallish momentum.

Make no mistake about it, the negatives, grades, and evaluations this week should be harsh, but fair.  However, fans and analysts need to realize that this team is still in rebuild mode and they are not close to being a perennial playoff contender.  With that in mind, let’s get right to the ugly, but interesting details for this week.

1. The team is still learning

Sugarcoating any negative situation is counter-productive to the success of any endeavor, especially football.  The Washington Football Team is young and the myriad problems need to have solutions, but they will improve with patience and solid coaching.  What are the problems that continue to plague Washington early in the 2021 season?  Inexperience, a culture of losing, and many coaching changes over the years is still ingrained with this team to a certain degree.  It will take time to change the mindset of players, but the regime that was hired early last year is more than capable to accomplish such a goal.

Setting Realistic Goals and Objectives

Keep in mind that the Washington Football Team was 7-9 last season and should’ve lost the season finale, but Philadelphia’s head coach at the time made a decision to bench his starting quarterback for the entire fourth quarter.  Realistically, that makes Washington a 6-10 team in 2020 and we are in the second year now of a multi-year rebuild.  Fully abstracted, that is the honest assessment of the Rivera regime in year two.

Washington has seen many head coaching changes over the last twenty years and this team still lacks continuity.  That is why you see a team that is still trying to find their identity and swagger.  This organization is not a playoff team at this time and is probably two years away from winning consistently.  The first “negative” for the team is learning to trust the process and strive to play mistake-free football.