Hogs Haven
As measured by our Reacts survey this week, fan confidence has fallen to just 32% among Hogs Haven readers, the lowest point of the season excepting the 27% nadir reached in Week 8.
The clear proximate cause for this loss of confidence is the current 5-game losing streak, which includes losses by a margin of 21 points or more in each of the last four games. But the issues likely go well beyond that losing streak.
The manner of the losses, in which the team’s defense has looked uncompetitive and the team overall has appeared overmatched, simply doesn’t inspire confidence. The week-by-week accretion of injuries that has led to a constant degradation in the roster strength has been insidious and troubling. The apparent inability of the coaching staff to reverse these trends has been possibly the most distressing.
At this point, the ineptness of the Washington defense appears to have no equal in the league aside from the Cincinnati Bengals who offer an AFC analogue of defensive incompetence. Beyond that, the football played by the Commanders over the past several weeks has resulted in the NFL’s longest current losing streak. When it comes to intensity and skill displayed on the field, Washington now belongs in a group of teams that Commanders fans likely would have scoffed at prior to the start of the regular season — the Titans, Jets, Giants, Saints, Raiders and Browns.
The Commanders have a better record than all of those teams, but that is due to Washington’s early-season success when the team won 3 of its first 5 games. In this respect, it is more similar to other 3-win teams like the Bengals and Falcons, who started well before running into difficulties. As we enter Week 11, the Commanders are playing bad football — basically, as bad as any other team in the NFL, regardless of record.
Fan lack of confidence also extends to expectations for tomorrow’s game against the Miami Dolphins, who, like the Commanders, enter this week’s game with a 3-7 record.
More than 7 out of every 10 respondents in our survey picked the Dolphins to win the Madrid game.
This is not surprising despite the two teams having identical overall records. The Dolphins dug an early hole for themselves by losing their first three games to pretty good teams — Philadelphia, New England and Buffalo. They picked up their first win of the season against the Jets in Week 4 before going on another 3-game losing streak.
But Miami’s fortunes have changed somewhat in recent weeks. The Dolphins have won two of their last three games, including a 30-13 thrashing of the Bills last Sunday. With their next three games coming against the struggling Commanders, Saints and Jets, Miami fans have visions of a 6-7 record by the time their favorite team enters the final quarter of the season.
Oddsmakers seem...
