On a drizzly and gloomy night, the weather matched the emotions of the embarrassed Washington Commanders players at the conclusion of the Monday Night Football debacle against the Chicago Bears. Washington had a chance to flex their muscles at home with the national spotlight on them. Instead, the Commies stumbled around the field with Yakety Sax playing in the background at several points in the game.
My general overview of this game is that we are beginning to see what kind of team the 2025 Washington Commanders are going to be this season. With six games in the bank, we now have a large enough sample size to get a proper feel for this football club. The sing-song pattern of this season as the team alternates wins and losses reflects what I thought about this team as we kicked off the 2025. That the Commies are an average team capable of something between 7 to 9 wins. It would not surprise me if the trend of alternating wins and losses continues for the remainder of the season.
All right, let’s dive into the keys of the game.
Slow Start
Once again, the Commies started dead cold against the Bears. This is a recurring pattern. Against the Packers, the Commies fell behind 14-0 by the 2nd quarter. Against the Falcons, the Commies fell behind 10-0 by the end of the 1st quarter. Against the Chargers, the Commies fell behind 10-0 by the end of the 1st quarter.
Last night, against the Bears, the Commies kept that trend going by falling behind 13-0 by the 2nd quarter. You can explain away this happening once or twice as a mere aberration. However, it has now happened in four of the six games in 2025. This is no mirage. This is who the 2025 Washington Commanders are to this point.
This is a combination of poor coaching and poor focus by the players. The coaches have obviously failed to properly prepare and motivate the players to fix this chronic problem and to start games strong. The players have failed to start games with more focus and effort. There is plenty of blame to spread around to all parties involved.
It is incumbent upon Dan Quinn, and to a lesser degree, Kliff Kingsbury and Joe Whitt, Jr., to figure out how to correctly prepare the Commies to start faster in the upcoming games. Quinn needs to figure out how to motivate his players and communicate to them the necessity of starting comes with more alacrity than what we have seen to this point.
The players owe the coaches more effort and attention to detail when it comes to executing the game plans. The offense cannot keep rolling out onto the field in a lackadaisical manner and sputter to get drives moving. The defense cannot continue to take the field and have communication issues and stumble over each other like toddlers at snack time.
Turnovers
Turnovers are always the biggest influence on which team wins a game in the NFL. Monday night was no exception. The Commies seemingly bathed in baby oil prior to the game as they could not hold onto the ball at all. The Commies’ offense coughed up three turnovers.
The biggest surprise is that it was Superman himself who came up small in the spotlight as Jayden Daniels had two fumbles and one interception. Daniels was lucky that one of his fumbles bounced right back up into his hands as he was running forward. Commies fans had grown used to seeing Daniels be Mr. Clutch swooping in to save the day over and over. However, on a dreary Monday night, Daniels was the antithesis of clutch as he gagged away the victory. 2025 continues to be unkind to Daniels.
To make matters worse, Jacory “Bill” Croskey-Merritt lost a fumble for a second consecutive game. There is absolutely one way that Bill can ensure that he never becomes the lead back for Washington. And that would be for him to get tagged with the dreaded label as a fumbler. That is the fastest way to see your way out of a starting job.
To compound matters, while the Commies were busy giving the ball away on offense, the defense was unable to generate any turnovers. Again. This continues to be a massive problem for Washington’s defense. If a defense is going to be pathetic against the run and the pass then it has to at least be excellent at forcing turnovers.
After six games, the Commies are 27th in the NFL in interceptions with just two. The Commies are 30th in the NFL in fumbles recovered, with just one. The Commies are 30th in the NFL with just three turnovers.
This is not sustainable. The Commies are such a bad defense that they must begin to get turnovers or else there is going to be little hope for this franchise to make a playoff run in 2025. This is a trend that Joe Whitt, Jr. will need to rectify in short order or he may be looking for a new job come the end of the season.
Running Game
Coming into the Monday night clash, the main narrative was that the Bears defense was horrendous against the run and that the Commies’ had the top rushing attack in the NFL. This looked like an obvious mismatch that would lead Washington to beating up the Bears. On the flipside, the Bears offense could not run the ball at all this year and Washington’s defense had done much better against the run than they did in 2024. Well, the NFL continues to zig when you think it is going to zag.
The Bears offensive line came out and slapped around the Washington defense for four quarters. The Bears rushed 27 times for 145 yards and averaged 5.4 yards per carry. D’Andre Swift turned into Gayle Sayers and ran 14 times for 108 yards and averaged a whopping 7.7 yards per carry. What did Swift do in the prior four games this year? He came into the game having rushed the ball 56 times for 187 yards, averaging 3.3 yards per carry.
However, the Washington defense remains the elixir for any offense that has been experiencing struggles. The Commies run defense looked soft as the players go pushed all over the field by the Bears. The final drive by the Bears was the punctuation mark on how little resistance the Washington defense put up in trying to stop the run. It was like the 2024 Washington defense showed up for the game on Monday night.
The Washington defense cannot suddenly revert back to its 2024 form of being a bad rush defense while also sucking at pass defense like they had been in the prior games this season. Washington’s defense is now ranked 26th in the NFL allowing 356.8 yards per game. This defense is going to be the main reason that the Commies are not able to make the playoffs if this keeps up for the remainder of the season.
On the other hand, the vaunted Washington rushing attack? It must have gotten lost on the way to Landover, Maryland. Against the Giants, the Commies rushed 32 times for 220 yards and averaged 6.9 yards per carry. Against the Packers, the Commies rushed 30 times for 135 yards and averaged 4.5 yards per carry. Against the Raiders, the Commies rushed 32 times for 201 yards and averaged 6.3 yards per carry.
And the Bears defense? In the prior games, the Bears’ defense was awful. The Vikings had 26 rushes for 120 yards and averaged 4.6 yards. The Lions rushed 30 times for 177 yards and averaged 5.9 yards per carry. The Cowboys rushed 20 times for 121 yards and averaged 6.1 yards per carry. The lowly Raiders rushed 31 times for 240 yards and averaged 7.7 yards per carry.
However, on Monday night, the Bears limited Washington to 31 rushes for 124 yards, averaging just 4.0 yards per carry. This was a far cry from what the Commies had done in prior games this season. This was also phenomenally better than how the Bears run defense played in their prior games. It looked like one team was far better prepared going into the game than the other team.
In the prior five games this season, Bill had rushed the ball 43 times for 283 yards and 4 TDs for an average of 6.6 yards per carry. Against the Bears and their horrid rush defense? Bill had 17 carries for a paltry 61 yards and averaged a humbling 3.6 yards per carry. Embarrassing.
Commies fans were ready to crown their 7th round draft pick as their new feature back. Radio shows were full of breathless Commies fans comparing Bill to Hall of Fame backs like LaDainian Tomlinson and Adrian Peterson. Let’s slow that roll a bit. At this point, Bill just needs to prove that he can hold onto the ball and be productive enough to have a large role in Washington’s running backs by committee approach.
Penalties
The fact is that if the Bears were the Commies’ best friend on Monday night as they did their best to keep Washington in the game. The Bears should have been beating the Commies by a wider margin if they had not played so sloppy. The Bears had 9 penalties for 84 yards. One of the penalties was not even a penalty that wiped out a Bears touchdown. Imagine how awful Washington’s defense would have looked had the Bears offense not constantly shot itself in the foot.
Luck Runs Dry
In 2024, the Commies were one of the luckiest teams in the NFL. We had the Noah’s Arc Hail Mary win against Chicago last year. Then the defense stood tall to deny the Saints a two-point conversion with time running out in the 4th quarter to escape with a 20-19 win. The Commies scored a touchdown with 6 seconds left in the game to beat the Eagles 36-33. The Commies scoring a touchdown in overtime to beat the Falcons 30-24. The Commies scoring a touchdown with three second left in the game to beat the Cowboys 23-19.
Without those five miraculous and lucky wins in 2024, the Commies would have ended the season 7-10. This is a record closer to what we are looking at in 2025, as the Commies’ amazing good luck in the 4th quarter has evaporated in 2025.
Overall
At 3-3 the Commies look every bit of an average team as their record indicates. It is amazing that Washington’s offense has remained as good as it has been considering Austin Ekeler is out for the season, Terry MacLaurin has been out for three games, Noah Brown has been out for four games, and Jayden Daniels missed two games. The reason that the Commies are slumping to a 3-3 record is due to the defense. And there is no solution in sight for the Washington defense. Getting MacLaurin and Brown back will be nice, but the offense has not been the problem. It would take getting both wide receivers back and Daniel’s putting on a cape and playing at an elite level every game for the Commies to overcome their terrible defense.
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