Hogs Haven
The Commanders coasted through Week 1 with a win against a struggling Giants team despite not playing their best. Thursday night’s primetime matchup with the Packers provided a reality check.
The Commanders struggled in practically all aspects of their game, against a surging Packers squad. Even so, there were a few bright spots, including punting, returns and coverage on special teams and a few solid individual performances on offense and defense. The Commanders struggles to execute were compounded by injuries to key starters which could have reverberating effects for the rest of the season.
The failure of the run game was baffling and undermined the entire offense. Facing the Packers’ dangerous pass rush, Kliff Kingsbury made the odd choice to abandon the run from the outset. In the first quarter, the Commanders ran just 2 rushing plays. When they did start turning to the run near the end of the second quarter, their two best run blockers had been hobbled by injuries. As a result, the RBs averaged just 0.58 Yards Before Contact/Attempt, compared to 3.0 YBC/Att the previous week against the Giants.
Perhaps the most curious decision was the choice to lean on Austin Ekeler as the lead back on interior runs, rather than using Bill Croskey-Merritt or Jeremy McNichols, who are better suited to running between the tackles. The rushing attack averaged just 2.7 Y/A and did little to take the load off of Jayden Daniels, who took a beating from the pass rush behind a weakened offensive line, to the tune of 4 sacks and 12 QB hits.
Injuries to Daniels, Ekeler, DE Deatrich Wise Jr, TE John Bates, WR Noah Brown, CB Jonathan Jones and LG Brandon Coleman are likely to have a major impact on the Commanders’ upcoming games, and possibly the rest of the season.
The front office and coaching staff have their work cut out for them, patching the team up to face the Raiders, and fixing the vulnerabilities which were exposed by the Packers. But despite the setbacks, the team still has some key strengths to build around, including a few players who stood out on Thursday night. Let’s see who got playing time, who stood out and who took a step back in last week’s 18-27 loss at Lambeau Field.
Jayden Daniels hasn’t looked like himself since the season started. In Thursday’s loss to the Packers, he completed just 57.1% of passes for 200 yds and ran for just 17 yds on 7 attempts (2.4 Y/A), which was good for a 27.8 QBR, the third lowest of his career after last year’s regular season loss to the Eagles (18.8) and the season finale against Dallas (16.7). He was sacked 4 times for 21 total yards, took 6 hits (up from 1 last week) and experienced pressure on somewhere between 25.0% (Pro Football Reference) and 48% (PFF) of dropbacks, according to different stats services’ scoring systems.
Sticking with PFF, the increase in sacks and hits this week coincided with a...
