3 unsung plays that were essential to Week 13 win over Raiders

In any NFL game, there are plenty of sung plays. Scoring plays or turnovers. Big defensive stops. In the latest Washington Football Team victory over the Las Vegas Raiders, you could point to Logan Thomas’ sky-scraping touchdown grab or key pass defenses on potential touchdowns by Kendall Fuller, Bobby McCain, and William Jackson III.

Of course, you’d mention Brian Johnson’s “welcome to town” game-winning field goal.

But I’m not here to talk about the sing plays. I want to talk about the unsung plays. Here are three crucial plays that went a long way toward helping the Washington Football Team grab their fourth straight victory.

Antonio Gibson’s best run: Q1, 10:21, 3rd & 1 at the Las Vegas 8

Antonio Gibson had a lot of hard, productive runs on the day, but none was better than this one-yarder on the opening, touchdown-scoring drive. On 3rd and one, Gibson took a pitch left. Raiders edge defender Yannick Ngakoue blew the play up and was closing in on Gibson seven yards behind the line. Gibson made an abrupt cut inside of Ngakoue, then put his his down and plunged forward through two other Raiders to reach the seven yard line and a crucial first down.

On the next play, Taylor Heinicke threw a touchdown to Logan Thomas.

The Washington Football Team has had success running left a good part of the season, but there have been too many key short yardage situations where Ereck Flowers and Charles Leno Jr. have gotten overloaded and Washington has not converted.

For a team that has run the ball very well in key moments, there have also been a lot of negative plays. On Sunday, out of 30 running plays, Washington was stopped for no gain or lost yards on six of them (not counting the kneel down at the end of the first half.) If Mr. Daly taught me my math right, that’s 20% of the plays.

And it looked like it was going to happen again on Sunday. Had Gibson gotten back to the line of scrimmage, there’s every reason to believe the Washington Football Team would eschewed the field goal and gone for it on fourth down. But Gibson was trapped back by the 15. Had Ngakoue or one of his teammates tackled Gibson back there, Washington would have kicked the field goal and another opening drive would have failed to reach the end zone. The early complexion of the game would have been different.

That’s when Gibson, who’s now fifth in the NFL in rushing yards, stopped on a dime, put his head down and refused to be denied.