Week 17 Reality Checks: Washington vs Eagles

The Washington Football Team wasn’t as good as fans wanted to believe when they rattled off four straight wins in the middle of the season, and they aren’t as bad as fans want to believe coming off three straight NFC East losses filled with embarrassing stats. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

And as I’ve been doing for several seasons now, I’m here to lay down some Reality about the Washington Football Team. Heading into the final two games of this tumultuous second season of Ron Rivera’s tenure as the Grand Poobah of all things Washington Football, there are certainly a lot of data points to consider when seeking to assess the status of the WFT. And while many of those data points are actually coming from off-the-field, I’ll hold commentary about those matters until the season is completed. Rivera thinks he knows what the loss to Dallas was:

Washington Football Team Week 17 Reality Checks

The Reality Is, one game almost never tells all you need to discern an overall direction, but if ever a game COULD, a 56-14 loss on national television to your hated rival certainly would be a candidate.

This, by no means, is a good, contending team. But it might be on the right path…or it could be headed back to another stop along the bottomless abyss Daniel Snyder has been constructing since 1999.

Frankly, the next two games, to me, will tell more about the “direction” Ron has this team going. Two ugly losses, and it will be difficult to derive meaningful positives about the changes Rivera has implemented. Two wins and it wouldn’t be hard to make the argument that the team is trending, albeit slowly, in the direction fans should be excited about.

For now, heading into a fascinating matchup at home against Philadelphia on Sunday, let’s just take a look at the reality of the Burgundy and Gold football team as it currently stands and some keys to watch for on Sunday as it relates to this season and the overall direction of the team.