With a 7-2 record at the NFL trade deadline, first-year general manager Adam Peters looked at his Washington Commanders roster and decided to make a deal: Sending three draft picks (a third, fourth, and sixth) to the New Orleans Saints for four-time Pro Bowl cornerback Marshon Lattimore (and a fifth-round pick to sweeten the deal).
"They have a true No. 1 corner on their team," Kevin Sheehan said about the addition of Lattimore to the Washington secondary which has struggled at times, especially on the outside where the new addition will slide in.
"I love the deal," producer Denton Day said. "Because I think you're getting him at the best time, you have matchups with Philadelphia (two of them), you have matchups with Dallas (two of them). And those two teams happen to have really good wide receivers.
"You look at that matchup with Atlanta and you see Drake London, who is having a really good season... you look at these teams that are coming up on your schedule and say all these guys have really good wide receivers and now we have a guy that, if we need to, we can shadow their best receiver and it does excite me the potential of [Mike] Sainristil moving to the inside."
He added: "This team has a legitimate chance to win 12, dare I say, 13, if things go really right, 14 games. I don't think that's out of the realm of possibility here."
The notion of Washington going 7-1 to close the season with a 14-3 record made Sheehan laugh, but not a laugh of disbelief, but the laugh of somebody who is giddy at the possibility of Washington, a great team on offense, that they can compete with anybody.
"But you're not wrong and they should be thinking this way," Sheehan said of the potential for a 14-3 finish. "Because if you are able to go through the rest of this schedule and only lose another two games. Let's say 13-4. You got a really good shot to be, worst-case, the two-seed. You'd be no worse than the two-seed. That means you're playing two home games before the NFC Championship game. And, by the way, you might host that, too, depending on what happens in the second round.
"You have the shot to do something that did not exist in the realm of the same conversation eight weeks ago, not even four weeks ago. And you did something about it."
Sheehan was glad that Washington entered the deadline with an aggressive posture and with the league being week-to-week with opportunities to be great "fleeting," this was a time to go for being great.Springs