5 Commanders reality checks for must-win Week 16 game at San Francisco
By Tim Payne
2. The Reality Is, this season looks a lot like last season.
The Commanders started 2021 2-6, before rallying back to 6-6 and getting into the playoff conversation, only to stumble down the stretch, end up 7-10, and miss the postseason badly. The 2022 Commanders are taking an eerily similar path.
After a 1-4 start, they rallied back to 7-5 before two ugly games against New York have them sitting at 7-6-1 and in danger of the same kind of tumble out of contention if they can’t somehow manage to right the ship in the unlikeliest of spots this Christmas Eve afternoon in San Fransisco.
The fortitude shown to dig out of that initial hole is commendable. But if this team is to make the true progress from “competitive” to “winner”, they have to find a way to close out this season with two or three wins in the last three weeks. Two may very well not even be enough, if the Lions remain hot or the Seahawks regain their form.
Washington still, amazingly, controls their own destiny, but the only way that continues is with a win over San Fransisco. This game is an opportunity to prove something is different than last season…that they’ve grown out of the December swoon…that their mid-season resurrection wasn’t just a dead cat bounce. It’ll be fascinating to see what kind of performance they manage against all odds.