Jonathan Allen’s NSFW quote sums up defense’s performance vs Eagles

If there’s one thing we’ve learned during the course of the 2021 regular season, it’s that Jonathan Allen is the voice of the Washington Football Team’s locker room, in addition to the most consistent performer of the group.

In a true first this season, Allen, much like the rest of Washington’s defense, was nowhere to be found in Tuesday’s loss to the Eagles.

Yes, he provided maybe the highlight of the weekend with a one-arm sack of Jalen Hurts while fending off a Philly offensive lineman late in the third quarter, but the play meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Given how decimated Washington’s roster was, it would’ve been easy for Allen to rattle off excuses at the podium. However, that’s what not winners do.

Rather than applaud his teammates (and himself) for merely overcoming a hellacious week caused by a COVID-19 outbreak, Allen laid into himself and his teammates while addressing the media following the loss.

Washington Football Team star Jonathan Allen was not happy with the defense’s performance on Tuesday.

"“That’s what we’re not going to do today (is) make excuses,” Allen said. “They just played better than us. There’s really not much else to say. I don’t think we did anything well today when you give up however many yards we did today on the ground. We got our a– kicked. They were just the better team today.”“I’ve got to play better. If I play better, I give our team a better chance to win. If the defensive line plays better, we give our team a better chance to win. This game is on the D-line.”"

That quote pretty much sums up the night, folks. Though Washington was down a couple of important players in the secondary, they had plenty of bodies up front — including Allen, Montez Sweat, Daron Payne, Matt Ioannidis, Daniel Wise, Shaka Toney and Casey Toohill — to offer resistance against the Eagles’ run game.

Everybody in the stadium (or the country, for that matter), knew Philly wanted to run the football. And yet, Washington could do nothing about it. When all was said and done, the defense conceded 519 total yards, 238 of the rushing variety (!), and allowed the Eagles to go 7-for-13 on third downs.

Take it away, Allen:

"“In the NFL, you get paid to handle adversity. It is what it is. We can [expletive] and moan about COVID, nobody cares. It really doesn’t matter. If we do our job, we win the game today. We didn’t do our job and we got embarrassed.”"

We get fans are still reeling from the loss, but they can definitely find a silver lining in these quotes from Allen. You want your best players to be pissed off after your defensive line got manhandled. You want your best players to hold other players, not just themselves, accountable after getting “embarrassed.”

As long as Allen is in the Burgundy and Gold, there won’t be any excuses coming out of that locker room. That’s called developing a winning culture; the one Ron Rivera vowed to instill when he was hired as head coach.

It’s definitely tough to look at the positive side of things after a loss that dropped Washington out of the NFC playoff picture, but it’s the little things like Allen swearing in front of reporters that make theses losses easier to stomach.

With all that said, these quotes better resonate inside the locker room, because Washington will be staring down the barrel of another double-digit loss if the defensive line doesn’t get its act together before Sunday’s game in Dallas.