Hogs Haven
The Dan Quinn era begins 0-1 with a road loss to Tampa Bay
One good thing about a 12-win season is that it offers a lot of good memories — even more when the team goes on to win a pair of playoff games to reach 14 wins for the regular season and postseason combined!
For most of the prior 30 years, most fans preferred to look forward instead of back, since there was seldom much to celebrate.
This past season, 2024, was different. Sure, there was a 3-game drought mid-season and the NFC Championship game ended the season with a blowout loss, but the Commanders found their GM, their coach, their quarterback, and a winning formula.
To help navigate the emptiness of this NFL desert that exists between the end of the draft and the start of training camp in late-July, we thought it might be a bit of fun to re-visit the first 19 of the 20 games that comprised the Commanders 2024 season.
The expectation with this 2024 REWIND series is to re-visit about two games per week between now and mid-July. That means opening up with a loss, but don’t worry! You may recall that the Commanders went on to win 4 games in a row from Week 2 to Week 5. That said, the first half of June will be a bit rough as we re-live the 3-game losing streak to the Steelers, Eagles and Cowboys.
Mostly, though, we hope you’ll enjoy the opportunity to journey back through the most successful season of Washington football since 1991!
Not a lot was expected of either Washington or Tampa Bay in 2024. The Commanders had finished 2023 with just 4 wins. While Tampa Bay had reached the playoffs with a 9-8 record in a weak NFC South, there were expectations that the Bucs might struggle to keep up with a Falcons team that signed Kirk Cousins and drafted Michael Penix and the Saints, who, in 2023 had finished with an identical 9-8 record and had head coach Dennis Allen and QB Derek Carr returning for a 2nd season together.
The over/under on season win totals was 6.5 for Washington and just 7.5 for Tampa Bay.
The obvious story line in Week 1 was Jayden Daniels, the #2 overall pick in the 2024 draft. He’d looked good in the preseason — how would he look against an NFL defense when the game counted?
Tampa Bay, for its part, offered an interesting offensive attack led by Baker Mayfield at QB, with Mike Evans & Chris Godwin as the top receivers and rookie 4th round pick Bucky Irving offering a bit of an unknown challenge at RB. Defensively, the 2023 Bucs had given up a lot of passing yards and total yards, but ranked 7th in points allowed at a stingy 19.1 per game. There was every reason to expect this to be a challenging opening game for Dan Quinn’s Commanders.
Despite heavy rain...
