The Washington Football Team head into their bye week on a four-game losing streak after falling to the Denver Broncos on the road 17-10.
During this losing streak, Washington has played some pretty good teams, including losses to the Packers, Saints, and the Chiefs. When they return after the bye week, Washington hosts the world champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Last season, after eight games, Washington was 2-6, but they finished the season 5-3, including a four-game winning streak, and ultimately, Washington was able to win the NFC East.
Over the years, Ron Rivera-coached teams have done well in the second half of the season, and on Monday, Rivera explained why that is the case.
“Well, just because I’d like to believe that as we progress through the year, through the season, especially my early years as a head coach, a lot of things seem to come together,” Rivera said. “That’s what I kind of feel with last year; things kind of came to go at the right time for us. I like to believe we are on the same path. Just because I think some of the things that we’ve done have helped us to trend in the right direction. I mean, obviously offensively, we’ve outgained the last two teams we’ve played. Unfortunately, we just haven’t outscored them. And that’s important.
“Defensively, we’ve been able to hold certain aspects of our opponents in check. We played against a couple of good running teams, and we’ve held them both under a hundred yards rushing. We played a very dynamic quarterback in Aaron Rodgers and kept him under his numbers. We still haven’t won. But the thing that you can sit there and say is it’s coming together. It’s not where we want to be, obviously, but if we continue to trend in the right way, we have a chance. So that’s really what we’re looking at.”
Health has not been on Washington’s side this season. Key players that Washington was counting on this season like Ryan Fitzpatrick, Curtis Samuel, Brandon Scherff, Logan Thomas, and Sam Cosmi have missed time.
Rivera is hoping to get those key players back on the field at some point this season.
“We haven’t had the guys on the field that we feel could really help us to play better and hopefully win some football games,” Rivera said. “I think it’s going to be huge, being able to get Brandon [Scherff] and Sam [Cosmi] back on the football field. I think it could be very helpful having a healthy Curtis(Samuel) and Logan(Thomas) out there working together with our offensive guys. I think defensively, trying to figure out how we are, where we are. That’s a little bit more of a work in progress. I think some of the things that we’ve done lately have really shown that we have the potential to get it going again, but we just got to keep working on that. But finding who we are got a lot to do with the guys that we haven’t been able to use and play with, So I think coming out of this, we’ll see how we respond to it, especially if we do get those guys back on the football field.”
Fortunately for Washington, the schedule does get a little easier as they play the Eagles twice, Giants, but they still have games against the Cowboys(2X), Panthers, and Las Vegas. So, it should be interesting to see if Washington can turn things around in the second half of the season.
