It’s likely best for the future of the Commanders for them to finish 4-13, losing the final four games to get a better draft pick – but if you ask Santana Moss, like BMitch & Doc did on Thursday, it’s going to be a tough pill for the players to swallow if tanking is the mission.
“My guys at Unique Cuts, they’re all die-hard Washingtonians and fans and have seen a lot of football and a lot of crap – but they still wanna see us win, man,” Moss said. “And I said to them, look, as much as people would rather see them not win these last few games, every player’s mentality on that team is to go out there and play as hard as they can to win. I understand what we might have coming as an organization if we don’t, but the mindset is to win every time you get out there on the field.”
Tyreek Hill embarrassed the Commanders’ secondary Sunday on paper and even in the eye test at times, but when taking a deeper look, he did see a different defense overall with Ron Rivera at the helm.
“When I went home and watched tape, I saw the defense play a little faster; Logan (Paulsen) pointed some things out to us about how it used to be much more difficult for these guys to match situations, but we saw a different spend and rhythm,” Moss said. “I wanna see how these guys pick up that new scheme, just allowing them to play a little more freely and not have to think so much. It's hard to judge our defense against the team like the Dolphins knowing what they come in with, but going forward, I want to see how the defense plays being able to play a little more freely.”
Oh, and on the ‘playing for nothing’ tip, BMitch has said that the final four games are a proving ground for everyone, and Moss agreed, saying, “I think everybody has to play for their jobs.”
Sunday was NOT a great example of that, and Moss went into how the coverage on Hill specifically, something that has been criticized all week, was indeed pretty poorly conceived, and used his own skill-set (which as you remember was similar in ways to Hill’s) to illustrate why – and BMitch once again pointed out the Chiefs game where Kansas City jammed Hill to neutralize his speed.
And that’s when Moss invoked some wisdom from an old teammate who knows a thing or two about it.
“I've listened to Fred (Smoot) tell me things about it, and I’ve asked coaches why they’re designing these guys to be off when they're in certain coverages? And Fred basically said no, it's up to them however they feel comfortable,” Moss said. “I know when you’re playing with those guys, you're not really knowing what's going on. You're so in tune with what you gotta do and when you come off the field, you're not really sitting there watching them, you're kind of going over what happened that last series. So Fred would tell me that if I'm playing against you, I'm letting it be known I'm gonna have help over the top and I'm gonna press you, because I feel like that's my advantage. My advantage is to put my hands on you, disrupt you enough as I can, so by the time I get off you, that safety over the top has you and the quarterback is going elsewhere.”
That’s all well and good, too, but in this case, it was also probably not to the Commanders’ advantage that they traded their two first-round edge rushers a month ago, either.
“Earlier this year with the guys here, I was more pushing for that, because now you allow those guys to really have time to get to the quarterback if you do this, and we weren't doing it,” Moss said. “That’s why those guys wouldn't get to the quarterback half the time, because the quarterback had free range to just throw the ball to his open guy. I would like to see a change in that, but if that’s not something they’re comfortable doing or you’re emphasizing that week, you won’t put that on tape.”