Washington Football Team: Positives and negatives from Week 5

The Washington Football Team fell short against the New Orleans Saints on Sunday afternoon. After another lackadaisical performance, the Football Team had more negative than positive to take away from Week 5.

Week 5 has come and gone, with the Washington Football Team now sitting at 2-3, the Burgundy and Gold have the same issues that they’ve had since Week 1.

Whether it’s making Jameis Winston look like a hyper-efficient quarterback, defensive miscues in the secondary or a flat QB performance from Taylor Heinicke, Washington’s Week 5 loss was the culmination of prior weeks’ blunders.

It was as winnable a loss as can be, but unfortunately, Washington is what their record says they are. With opportunities to win games early that they have fumbled at the end of the game, they find themselves under .500 with three Super Bowl contenders on the horizon as soon as this Sunday.

That’s only the beginning of the negative takeaways from last week’s performance. With Patrick Mahomes on the horizon, Washington has bigger fish to fry at this stage, but still fresh on our minds, here are your positive and negative takeaways from yet another disappointing WFT performance.

Negative Takeaways:

1. The Hail Mary

We will start with the Hail Mary. Everyone has talked about it, so I’ll keep it short and sweet. The Hail Mary play, according to Landon Collins, was something that the Washington defense, the secondary in particular, wasn’t “prepared” for. Based on their press-man alignment for that play, I agree to an extent.

My critique is that the only player who plays for the sideline play, immediately, is William Jackson III. Everyone else starts the play off playing for the deep ball. It isn’t until New Orleans’s wideouts begin traveling past Kendall Fuller, Landon Collins, and others where the secondary actually realizes that they’re planning for the deep shot.

The personnel executed this play as poorly as they possibly could in my opinion, reacting way too late for a play that immediately showed New Orleans’ hand from the moment the ball is snapped. This secondary isn’t moving as one unit and I believe that play alone is all of the evidence that we need to come to that conclusion.