Who are the Commanders’ boom or bust candidates for the 2022 season?

Bust- Cole Holcomb, LB

This one kills me. Truth be told, I wrote an early draft of this last week, before the second pre-season game. The other three players remained the same. But last week, I had Holcomb’s fellow linebacker Jamin Davis in this spot.

I want to be clear – Holcomb is a good (maybe very good) player and I expect him to have a decent year. But this is the flipside of Antonio Gibson. I fear that so much is being asked of Holcomb at this point that there’s no way he can live up to expectations.

Simply put, Holcomb is the best linebacker on a team with astonishingly weak linebacker play. I continue to marvel at how three NFL linebackers – Ron Rivera, Jack Del Rio and Steve Russ – can preside over such an ineffective unit. The mismanagement of Davis in his rookie year was a big error – one that they are still trying to recover from. But the unwillingness to acquire more linebacking talent is simply bewildering.

Davis is taking baby steps toward becoming a good NFL linebacker. Khaleke Hudson, David Mayo, and newly-acquired Nathan Gerry are limited players. That leaves Holcomb as the do-everything savior.

He is not that.

Holcomb is not especially good in pass coverage, which was OK when he was playing strong-side in a three-backer set. But the Commanders no longer play that very often. Their standard defense now has Holcomb and Davis essentially splitting the field with an extra safety playing a pseudo-weakside role.

Holcomb is being asked to do more and more to make up for Davis’ learning curve and the absence of a genuine weakside backer. And at least early in preseason, the strain is showing. Holcomb is making tackles six yards downfield instead of plugging the hole at the line. He looks tentative to me. This may merely be growing pains, and he may get this licked in a couple of weeks. He has plenty of natural ability.

I hope I am wrong about this, but this is a coaching staff that seems to ask players to do things they are not particularly well-suited to doing – especially on defense. William Jackson was asked to play a lot of zone last season and his play suffered. This pre-season, Danny Johnson has been lining up as a boundary corner. That is not his strength. The Davis-in-the-middle fiasco is still fresh in everyone’s mind.

Holcomb had the best year of his short career in 2020, and it is no coincidence that the Washington Commanders had a legitimate weakside linebacker (Kevin Pierre-Louis) on the field that year. Holcomb is good – maybe very good. But if you ask him to pick up the slack of the otherwise ineffective linebacking play, there will be a point of diminishing returns, and his play will suffer.

Again – I hope I’m right about Gibson and Wise, and really hope I’m wrong about Brown and Holcomb. Who are you expecting big things from this season? And who scares you?