The Washington Commanders defense had an opportunity to get a stop and force overtime after Sam Howell led the offense down the field for the game-tying touchdown with 52 seconds remaining on Sunday. But a few big plays down the field allowed Seattle to get down the field and in range to kick the deciding field goal in the Seahawks 29-26 win.
Former Washington head coach Jay Gruden broke down some of the issues with Jack Del Rio's defense with Chris Russell and pointed to a "technique" problem by defensive back Benjamin St-Juste on a catch by DK Metcalf and some "very, very poor tackling and, and actually poor pursuit angles" taken on a long run after the catch on a long touchdown by Seahawks running back Kenneth Walker.
"Well, obviously tackling, that starts in training camp and OTAs, but you can't really on a field, you can't tackle for them. They have to get the guys on the grass," Gruden told Russell about if it is a coach's fault or the players'. "The other thing is like I mentioned, the pursuit angles that has to come from natural instinctual football players. And then effort, that is coached and that has got to be a discipline ingrained in all the players.
"And unfortunately, on that particular play, you could see the effort on about four or five of the players on that play, had it been par or at least above par, they would have got him down inside the 20-yard line where they would have maybe get a stop in the red zone instead of a touchdown. There's a lot of things on, on some of those plays that are issues.
"They did some good things defensively, obviously. They're playing shorthanded a little bit on the defensive line, but, they still managed to get a couple of stops and play pretty well, but some of the big plays, technique-wise and effort-wise were the issue."
Listen to the full conversation – including his thoughts on the offense in general and Sam Howell and if Gruden believed Ron Rivera made the right decision to kick the extra point rather than go for two – on the audio player above!
