Jon Allen won't make excuses for Commanders defense to Junkies: 'We just gotta execute better'
The marks on the report card for rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels are very high after a 38-33 win over the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 3 on Monday night, but that is not the case for the Commanders' defense.
"Any time you can get a win, it's obviously a good thing. Now, obviously, defense just has to be flat-out better. There's really no way of putting that," Washington defensive tackle Jon Allen said during his weekly appearance Tuesday with 106.7 The Fan's The Sports Junkies, which is presented exclusively by our partners at MainStreet Bank — Cheer Local. Bank Local. Put Our Team in Your Office. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender.
"We got the win, that's all that matters, but we gotta be better and we're going to be," Allen told the Junkies from Arizona after the team made a late-night jaunt to the west ahead of next Sunday's game against the Cardinals.
When asked about the specific issues with the defense, Allen said there isn't one answer.
"I think we're not executing at a high enough level," the veteran said. "The offense's that we're going against are executing better than we're executing defense. And that's just the short answer. I could come up here and give you a thousand excuses as to why, but at the end of the day, that doesn't mean anything and doesn't change anything. We just have to execute better.
"I could tell you that everybody on this defense is dedicated to getting this fixed and we're gonna get it fixed."
On the night, the Commanders' defense did hold the Bengals to three field goal attempts but Cincinnatti did not punt the ball or turn it over and had a scoring chance on all seven offensive possessions, just missing on a 48-yard field goal attempt in the first half. In fact, Cinci had touchdowns on all three possessions in the second half.
"That's just not a good recipe to win football games," Allen said about the Bengals execution. "Thank goodness our offense came to play, and they played one of the best games I've seen. They were the saving grace for the day, for sure.
"But as a defense we gotta be better."
Allen said the issue is that the defense isn't having 11 guys executing at the same time with enough consistency.
"You can't have 10 guys execute and one guy have a mental lapse here. Or one guy have a mental lapse there," he told the Junks. "Everyone is doing it right, a d-tackle jumps out of his gap, it doesn't matter what everybody else did that's the weak link and teams are finding it.
"It's just getting all guys to be on the same page and execute at the same time. Communicating and playing fast and playing physical."
Allen said that they can say "we're close," but "obviously fans don't wanna hear it and I'm not gonna make excuses, we just gotta execute better."
The veteran is confident that the Commanders have the talent on defense to play better, but that talent level means nothing without the execution.
