The Washington Commanders entered Thursday night's game with an opportunity to get back in the win column after back-to-back defeats and right the ship on offense and defense against the winless Chicago Bears after up-and-down play against a pair of elite teams in Buffalo and Philadelphia.
That did not happen.
Instead of having a get-right game against one of the NFL's worst teams, the Commanders got rocked in all three phases of the game making the "moral victory" talk from four days ago seem naive at best and certifiably delusional at worst.
The Commanders' struggling defense was carved up in the first half to the tune of 27 points. The offense did practically nothing with Sam Howell tallying 36 non-garbage time yards in the opening two quarters and producing a grand total of three points. And, when it looked like they somehow might be able to sneak back into the game down 10 in the fourth quarter, Joey Slye missed a make-able 46-yard field goal to seal their fate.
"Oh, boy," Ben Standig said to Kevin Sheehan as they stood over the corpse of Thursday's night 40-20 debacle of a game before making the first incision to start the autopsy.
"Not only did they lose, not only were they getting, sort of, run over throughout the game, but it was against the team that had lost 14 in a row," Standig said about the loss. "It isn't enough for this particular [Washington] defense to be good. For this team to have their hopes of being a legit playoff contender, which everybody over there says they are, the defense has to be imposing, a Top 5, 10 unit at least, really a difference maker. And they were just trucked by a Bears offense that really had done nothing this year."
Standig added that the offense didn't do much either, until the first drive of the second half and it was a "demoralizing loss."
"Fourth year [of Ron Rivera's tenure] this can't keep happening and to do it to that opponent, to just show up that flat, that uninspired and be that, especially in the secondary, be that out of sync among the players again... I really don't know what to say. It's just an incredibly abysmal performance."
Sheehan and Standig then get into all the major talking points from the game: the defense, the offense, Rivera's future, Jack Del Rio's job security, who could possibly take over if Del Rio is fired, if anybody else gets fired, Eric Bieniemy taking charge, Chase Young's play, Emmanuel Forbes' benching, the linebackers, the "lethargic" tackling performance and what comes next for Washington heading into the mini-bye week.
Listen to the full conversation on the audio player above.
