Washington Football Team: 10 quick thoughts from Week 6 loss

The Washington Football Team would’ve loved nothing more than to honor Sean Taylor on the afternoon of his jersey retirement ceremony by picking up a win over the Kansas City Chiefs in front of a buoyant FedEx Field crowd.

After a promising start, Washington fell on its face in the second half. The offense was lifeless, to say the least. The defense was ultimately undone by untimely penalties and being unable to get off the field on third down.

Sound familiar?

Since there were no scorching takes to deliver following the loss — it was largely an ordinary defeat — we thought we’d do something different than a postgame and offer 10 quick takeaways from the game. Let’s dive right in.

Washington Football Team: 10 quick thoughts from Week 6

Dustin Hopkins is regaining trust…sort of: Hopkins’ job looked to be in jeopardy after he missed two extra points in Week 4 against the Falcons, a game Washington almost lost by two points before Taylor Heinicke and JD McKissic connected for a go-ahead touchdown in the final minute of regulation to bail him out.

On Sunday, Hopkins was 2-for-3, including makes from 50 and 43 yards in the first half to keep Washington within striking distance. He missed a 42-yarder in the second half, but we largely like what we’re seeing from the 31-year-old.

Taylor Heinicke hype is cooling: We hate coming down on Heinicke as much as the next fan, but man, he really hasn’t covered himself in glory the last two weeks.

We can point to a number of instances on Sunday in which he missed open receivers in the Chiefs secondary. The most glaring of these came in the second quarter when Heinicke led Terry McLaurin, who had a step on his defender, too far outside on what should’ve been a routine pitch and catch touchdown.

This looked more like an errant throw than a miscommunication on a potential back-shoulder play. That’s on Heinicke, who seems to be losing more and more of his mojo as the weeks go by, unfortunately.

Antonio Gibson ball security: Gibson has now committed two costly fumbles this season, the first of which came back in Week 1 vs the Chargers. A former wide receiver in college at Memphis, Gibson might still be learning the ins and outs of ball security, but fans expect better from the second-year running back.

Gibson’s lucky the Chiefs didn’t take advantage of his latest fumble, which came out way too easily for a player of his caliber.

Ricky Seals-Jones is really good: We were admittedly concerned about the tight end position when Logan Thomas was placed on injured reserve with a hamstring injury. How could we not be?

Since then, Ricky-Seals Jones has dumped broken eggs all over our face, because he’s emerged as a bonafide security blanket for Heinicke. His second quarter touchdown was a thing of beauty and he finished the game with four catches for 58 yards on six targets.

It’s not a stretch to say that Seals-Jones is Washington’s second-best receiving threat behind McLaurin right now.