Commanders Fans- We Are In A Good Spot And There Is No Reason To Overreact To Yesterday's Loss

Patrick Smith. Getty Images.

Commanders fans are melting down while the rest of the NFL-fandom universe is calling us "frauds" after yesterday's very ugly loss to the very bad Dallas Cowboys. But I'm fairly calm and realistic about the entire thing. Yes, it was a gross, gross loss. The entire game was ugly and the Cowboys are dog shit terrible. But at the same time, this Commanders team, despite now losing 3 straight, is still 7-5. And that matters A LOT to me. If you told me at the beginning of the season we would be 7-2 at one point, but also 7-5 at one point, I would have signed up for that all day every day. Yeah, losing to the Cowboys at home yesterday was disgusting. But we HAVE to remember that this is literally year ONE of a rebuild. That this roster is not strong. That most of the positions have very little depth. So we need to take a pause and think about what the true reality of this team is:

The fact we got to 7-2 was unbelievably awesome. It was some of the most fun I've ever had watching football. But we were also watching a pumpkin that eventually was going to transform, in some way, back into a pumpkin. The reality is we came into this season with a rookie starting QB, very little depth on the Oline, a terrible WR corp, Zach Ertz for some reason starting at TE, and a very bad secondary. And all those aforementioned positions overachieved tremendously in the first half of the season. I said it every week on BMitch and Finlay, that we have 65 overall guys in Madden starting at multiple positions and playing well above expectation. And that's a great way to win games, no doubt. But as the season drags on, guys get beat up, opposing teams coordinators get better, and your 65 overall guys start looking more and more like 65 overall guys. And that's pretty much where we're at now. The true depth of the team, which is completely Ron Rivera's fault, is being shown. And it sucks, obviously, because these guys are playing their asses off. But eventually the lack of talent was going to catch up to us, and it has.

The most egregiously bad position has to be WR. Noah Brown was the Texans number 4 and he is our number 2 and it just shows how badly we need an upgrade there. Dyami Brown has not improved at all, and Luke McCaffrey can't seem to get on the field for any snaps at all. Meanwhile the corpse of Zach Ertz shows some flashes here and there, but he's obviously not even close to his prime anymore. So take the bad WR room and combine them with an OLine who can't give Jayden any time in the pocket and you have a recipe for disaster. The WRs can't get open + and OLine that can't protect Jayden = Nightmare.

Ron Rivera did a terrible job drafting for 4 years. Something like 90% of his picks aren't on the team anymore. We basically had to start over from scratch. Luckily we got Jayden Daniels who can cut multiple years off a rebuild by making everyone around him better, but he can only do so much. He can't play corner, and he can't catch passes. The drops are adding up for this Washington team and it's infuriating to watch. 

So I see the big picture with this team. I'd like to offer some perspective. This team is not built to win right now. But this team has exceeded expectations and shown us they will be competing sooner than later. So let's all take a breath and remember this is just year 1. We go into the offseason with $100 million in cap space and will get a new draft class to develop. Rome wasn't built in a year and either are Super Bowl teams. Let's appreciate how awesome the season started and remember they are building this team for the long term, not for the immediate. Losing to the Cowboys sucked, but I figure we will hand them beatings on the regular for years to come. HTTC.