Instead of merely showcasing the group, the “Thursday Night Football” broadcast assigned some airtime to ESPN’s deep dive into proprietor Daniel Snyder and his precarious standing amongst his friends within the league. As reported beforehand in The Washington Post, this newest piece detailed the rising willingness of group house owners to vote Snyder from their ranks.
The headlines would have spiraled every other franchise into disaster mode. In Washington, nonetheless, it’s simply referred to as Thursday.
This group simply can’t get proper. It retains discovering itself in nationwide headlines and on a community’s scrolling ticker for all of the mistaken causes. As far as anybody can inform, the Commanders make use of the one defensive coordinator within the NFL who has publicly portrayed himself as a Jan. 6 apologist. And this week, their coach, introduced right here particularly to be the grownup within the room and lend credibility to this frivolous franchise, generated an pointless distraction along with his pithy remark (“Quarterback.”) that led some to call into question Ron Rivera’s religion in Carson Wentz.
They can rebrand the nickname into something they think aligns with leadership and respect (although “Commanders” only conjures up the image of G.I. Joe’s main enemy.) And boast of surging sponsorship deals and ticket sales. But any kernels of progress never take root. The folly runs so deep.
With dysfunction still dripping from the floorboards of the owners’ suite, even surviving the winnable games will matter little to nothing. If Snyder remains in control, the Commanders are doomed into a purgatory of bad PR.
In 2020, The Post revealed damning allegations of the team’s toxic work environment and specific allegations lobbed at Snyder. By 2021, members of Congress asked the NFL for documents relating to its investigation into the sexual harassment and verbal abuse within the franchise. And this year, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform detailed allegations of Snyder’s financial impropriety to the Federal Trade Commission.
Then, the morning of their matchup with the Bears, when talk about the Commanders should have been about football, the discussion centered on Snyder and his habit of dispatching private investigators to dig up dirt on fellow owners and even Commissioner Roger Goodell.
Even this sports column should have been about something straightforward, such as football. Former player Tony Gonzalez, an analyst paid by Amazon Prime to say nice things about the games, described this as a meeting between the two “ JV teams of the NFL.” By halftime, Gonzalez had to provide a correction.
“This might be the freshman team,” Gonzalez said. “This is not good football.”
Wentz played through a shoulder injury, and near the end of the second quarter, he appeared to hurt his throwing hand when Bears defensive tackle Justin Jones made contact with it. The Commanders’ offense looked as pained as the quarterback: Wentz absorbed three sacks on third-down plays, wide receiver Curtis Samuel dropped a pass that should have been a touchdown, and the unit finally scored with 7:21 remaining in the game when rookie running back Brian Robinson Jr. punched it in from the 1-yard line.
But for the record: No, it’s not the “Quarterback.” The one-word answer Rivera initially shared while staring down a reporter during his Monday news conference does not explain why the Commanders have fallen behind the rest of the NFC East. The team’s progress does not rest on Wentz’s growth and comfort in the system.
Washington will remain an afterthought in the NFL, with the fifth-lowest winning percentage over the past decade, as long as Snyder plays the ringleader in this clown show.
And because this team can’t go a full hour without another soap opera, before kickoff a report indicated that cornerback William Jackson III and the Commanders are seeking a mutual separation.
Is Jackson too injured to play? Or just can’t play in defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio’s scheme? Whatever the case, Washington devoted $13.8 million this season to a player whose bulging disk in his back may or may not have led to his benching Sunday. Against the Tennessee Titans, Jackson couldn’t last through the first quarter and did not make the trip to Chicago. According to the NFL Network, Jackson wants to be traded.
Days such as Thursday are the kind of moments the single-minded players in the locker room have been trying to avoid.
“When you show that, it lets everybody know [that] y’all got something going on and it’s deeper than just out there on the field losing. You keep it inside. You don’t let the outside in,” running back Antonio Gibson said this week when he addressed the importance of players not publicizing their frustrations over the 1-4 start.
Frustration, however, happens. And the losses get to players. Defensive end Montez Sweat needed the calming vocals of Teddy Pendergrass to relax him after last weekend’s close loss against the Titans. (“I’m old school,” he explained.) And because the loss had soured his mood, Gibson temporarily spent Sunday night in the doghouse.
“I kind of had an attitude with my girlfriend and I could realize I was doing it,” Gibson said. “I had to calm myself down. I was like: ‘I’m sorry.’ I told her I love her and I appreciate you asking about me. But sometimes it’s tough to kind of like chill out.”
On this night, however, Sweat rebounded well with that dominant defensive front, collecting one of the unit’s four sacks. Washington’s defense held strong against the Bears at the goal line on the game-deciding sequence.
And though Gibson wasn’t the featured back — Robinson scripted another feel-good moment in his amazing comeback story and showed the Commanders what they have been missing in the running game — the three-year veteran produced the team’s longest gain of the night at 18 yards.
After the game, Rivera showed his fiery side while fielding a few questions about the story of the day. The football coach desperately wants the focus on football.
“The truth of the matter is, [the Snyder controversy] is unimportant to me. What’s important to me is the guys in the room, and that’s been something that I’ve been trying to establish,” Rivera said. “I’m trying to get beyond all this stuff that’s on the outside. It’s noise as far as I’m concerned. What I’m focusing on is developing this football team. There’s a group of young men in there that deserve better, okay? In terms of they should be acknowledged for what they’ve done, what they’re doing.”
But the Commanders are still the same cluster bomb owned by Snyder. Nothing changes that. Not a win against the JV Bears, the kind of win that a team needs to build momentum and beat back the din of drama building around it. The noise will linger as it always has.
So apologies to any of the beleaguered fans of professional football in Washington, the smattering of die-hards who thought they could focus on the field for one day. Nope. The football was trash. Everything else was worse. It was just another Thursday for the Commanders.