Week 16 Reality Checks – Washington at Dallas

1. The Reality Is, Washington needs to get lucky and show some heart.

There have been glimpses of heart shown in the last two games. Washington came out with some fire against Philly, but it quickly faded, replaced by a pathetic defensive showing. Against Dallas, after an abysmal first half, Washington continued to fight and nearly made things very interesting late in the 4th quarter.  I was out of my seat, for sure.

But in neither game, did they bring the necessary intensity for 4 quarters to succeed against division rivals who have something beyond pride to play for. Washington simply cannot afford any let-downs in intensity on Sunday. They can’t afford dumb mistakes. They can’t afford to get conservative or passive. They have to take the game to Dallas from the first kickoff to the final whistle.

In order to do that effectively, they’re going to need to get some combination of at least 3 of these 5 key missing cogs:

-Kam Curl

-Brandon Scherff

-Cole Holcomb

-Landon Collins

-Kendall Fuller

Debate can be had about which of these players is most valuable or necessary, but it cannot be understated how much they are needed by this team at this moment. If Washington is without 3 or 4 of these players on Sunday, I just don’t give them much of a chance to pull off a miracle. Even with them, I don’t expect a win…but I do expect a cover. Since the odds of getting a quorum of them back are pretty slim, I’m picking Dallas 27, Washington 16.