Commanders Overcome Bugaboo

One wag said a win is a win. Another said it was ugly. 

But not many Washington Teams have beaten the New York Giants as of late. 

This one did. Which is big in ways that don't show up in the stats. There is something nefarious and snakebit about going against the Giants. Like a reverse Joe Pisarcik. 

I don't know about you. I heard the Commanders were going to go up-tempo against the Giants which I thought would have been a mistake. Had they done so, Daniel Jones would have been on the field a lot more than he was. Assuming he'd have been as productive with more time, this would have been a definite loss.

But for the first time since Pisarcik, the Giants were the snakebit ones. They lost their kicker. That effectively took them out of the running. And it must have pissed sharp money off no end.

This game recalls Kliff Kingsbury's best days in Arizona. Where the one playoff team he had ran the football pretty well. And it shows how dumb the last regime was not running B-Rob. I don't know that Kingsbury planned to play four corners offense but it worked and it helped limit the defense's exposure to Daniel Jones.

Jones was well on his way to yet another irritating monster game against D.C. He just couldn't get on the field. 

Maybe B-Rob will make Dan Quinn famous the way John Riggins made Joe Gibbs famous.  

I'm not saying the Commanders should play stall ball every game. But it is a proven way to keep a struggling defense from hurting you. It is good they experienced it. It is now in their toolbox.

Another ugly experience could be on tap with the trip to Cincinnati, a team that held the vaunted Kansas City Chiefs under 300 yards offense. They have a brainiac at defensive coordinator.

It is yet another in a series of challenges to Jayden Daniels' intellectual manhood.

Leave it in the Oven a Little Longer

In 1999, the Skins went to New York taking heat about not scoring enough. 

I remember Michael Westbrook saying after the game: "How about 50 points?"

That team had a new QB, a good one, in Brad Johnson. But for the meddling of the Boy Then Owner, Brad Johnson would have loved working with Marty and Joe Gibbs. What a career he might have had here. He soon took a team to the Super Bowl but sadly not our team.

Brad Johnson won a playoff game and lost to a team he would win a Championship with, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The '99 Game was a memorable one as we didn't beat the Giants all that often period and least of all in New York where we lost the '86 NFC Championship Game. 

About the only similarity between '99 and '24 is both teams lost their first games. 

This is a raw Washington team that will take time to gel. The '99 team had a new QB but a lot of the roster were familiar with each other. It was smart of AP to use free agency to collect savvy vets. But even said vets need time under tension to get bigger, stronger, faster, i.e., better than they were before.

I guess one key to this year's opening match-up with the G-Men will be Jayden Daniels' ability to complete passes in the scramble drill. He missed some open receivers in the scramble game. Some critics have noticed in JD5 a penchant for choosing himself over his receivers in the scramble game.

Daniel Jones is said by the cognoscenti to have lost his confidence. He has no reason as of yet to lack confidence in games against Washington. New York fans are out for his head. That usually means a player plays good football. Put more stock in his career performance against Washington. Some of the players he has beaten like a drum still start on defense for the Commanders.

Positives for Washington are Jayden's ability to learn his lessons, Dan Quinn's record defending Daniel Jones, and finally possession of live game tape to better themselves with.

There is a rumor up-tempo is scheduled for Washington. That could leave the shiny new Commander defense on the field too long, exacerbating a familiarity problem by multi-tasking while exhausted. Everybody on defense will have to play. Well-crafted platooning is a must.

Maybe they pull it off. But it doesn't matter.

We're likelier to see this team's best play mid-to-late season. We should hope for a few thefts before that era arrives.