Takeaways from Week 10 win over the Buccaneers

1. Washington’s lack of playmakers will eventually bite them

The Washington Football Team played a great game offensively although they are ultra-limited as an offense. This is beyond the quarterback. It starts with their skill position players like Cam Sims, Dax Milne, John Bates, Dyami Brown, and Adam Humphries. Those five, in particular, must be efficient in their snaps on the field, regardless of whether the ball is fed to them five times or 15 times.

These five may affect the game in other ways, like Bates as a blocker, but you must be some sense of a receiving threat to make defenses account for your versatility when on the field. As of now, these five have been inefficient, ineffective and at times can be missed when on the field.

Every week, defenses bracket coverage to stop Terry McLaurin and he’s been able to produce. But eventually, this team will need two of these five players to step up and make an impact with Logan Thomas and Curtis Samuel on the sideline, because one great WR can work wonders, but eventually, defenses will force you to make those around him beat them.

If it wasn’t for Scott Turner’s marvelous game plan against the second-best defense in the league, we’d be talking about whether or not Washington should’ve involved themselves in the OBJ conversation. Luckily for them, though, they executed their game plan as perfectly as they could have.

2. No Montez Sweat, No Chase Young, who will emerge?

We’ll discuss Casey Toohill, likely later on in this piece. But for now, James Smith-Williams, Shaka Toney, Olubunmi Rotimi all forced zero pressures on Sunday afternoon. Between the three, 55 snaps were played yet none of them posted a grade from Pro Football Focus of higher than 54 on the day.

For lack of a better phrase, that will flat-out not cut it going forward. If between the four of them, including Toohill, they can find a way to be efficient and effective, Washington can live with the results. But if they’re giving you zeros across the board when it comes to rushing the passer, Washington likely has a steep downfall ahead of them, returning to the days of poor defense that mired this unit early on in the year.

The Football Team needs something from these four. The strength of this line is on the interior, but they’ll need the ends to do their job and rush as one if they’re looking to make up some of the loss left behind with Montez Sweat and Chase Young gone for a significant amount of time.