The 4-1 Commanders’ lone road trip of October is all of about a half-hour up the Beltway, as they’ll be in Baltimore Sunday for a showdown of Lamar vs. Jayden, perhaps the pre-eminent dual threat QB of the current time against the heir apparent.
We’ll have our answer as to how good the offense actually us, but we’ll also have our answer as to how good the defense truly is – and if they can even come close to what they did against Cleveland, recording seven sacks and allowing just 13 points and no third down conversions?
“It's very impressive, man. Everybody is buying in to what Coach Whitt is calling, and that’s the biggest thing: everybody is taking care of their assignment,” Phidarian Mathis, who didn’t have a sack but had three tackles and a pass breakup, told Grant Paulsen. “As long as we keep doing it, the plays are going to keep coming for each and every one of the guys. It’s everybody building off each other; you got to be able to trust the player beside you, and if we keep doing that, next week it might be 10! Just keep buying into the system and keep buying into what Coach Whitt is calling, and we’re gonna be okay.”
The Commanders’ defense was one of the worst in the league in 2023, but indeed, it seems like things have come around – and a lot of it is not listening to the noise, even after rough outings the first two weeks of the season.
“You just can’t listen to the naysayers; everybody’s got their own opinion, but what goes on in this building, it’s between us, and we know what we can do and what we’re capable of,” Mathis said. “We believe in each other, and if we keep doing that, we’ll be just fine. We can’t worry about the outsiders, we just gotta do our job and fight on, do what we do every week.”