Kevin Sheehan started Monday's show with a simple fact about the Washington Commanders' 20-16 win over the Arizona Cardinals: "Feels good to win! It's better than the alternative, you know no matter what it looked like yesterday and it was not pretty, especially on offense."
He continued: Anybody describing the game yesterday to somebody not watching the game coulda done it by saying, 'Ugly win, defense was good, offense wasn't.' That pretty much sums it up. Now there's a lot of detail behind that very simple description."
To get into those details, Sheehan, who was in attendance on Sunday and liked the atmosphere at FedEx, had this to say in his Commanders Week 1 Game Take from Washington's win with this caveat: "It's too early to have conclusions about anything" long-term, Sheehaan said, prefacing that this game take is only about what happened on Sunday and not about what will happen the rest of the way.
Here are the things Kevin liked from Week 1's win: "the defense as a whole."
"They held Arizona to six points – there was a defensive touchdown for the Cardinals and one of their field goals wasn't an offensive drive it was set up by an interception," he said. "They held the Cardinals to 201 yards. They held the Cardinals to 3.6 yards per play. The Cardinals were four-of-14 on third down, 0-for-1 on fourth down. The defense in the second half got two crucial takeaways."
And here is the huge stat for Sheehan: Of the 58 snaps for the Cardinals' offense, the Commanders' defense created 15 plays that ended in negative yardage.
"Twenty-six percent of their offensive plays were stopped behind the line of scrimmage for negative yardage!" Sheehan said. "There were three sacks and 12 tackles for loss. 12!"
Of course, Arizona's Josh Dobbs is not the caliber of quarterback the Commandes will face down the road, and this was a defensive performance against a very limited offense with not a great quarterback, but "with that understood it was still dominance for the defense."
The star performers were the defensive line and the No. 1 reason Washington won the game.
"Daron Payne was an absolute monster for much of the game. Montez Sweat terrorized Arizona for much of the game, Jonathan Allen... was great," Sheehan said. "But Payne and Sweat in particular really stood out. Payne was in the backfield the entire first half, blowing up runs like the 2nd-and-7 on Arizona's third drive of the game for minus-2. That was right after the interception and was the first of three plays where Arizona had one total yard and had to kick the field goal... he disrupted a bubble screen. Good god, is he athletic."
Sheehan: "Daron Payne was an A, maybe an A+ in that game."
Next week in Denver and two weeks against Buffalo will be bigger tests, Sheehan said, but overall it was a great day for the defense and the number one reason they won the game was the d-line in particular."
On the offensive side of the ball, the one thing Sheehan really liked was that the Commanders' "wide receivers just get open."
"It was a strength of the team last year, it will be a strength of the team this year, they get open," he said. "Sam Howell is gonna have plays that result in very, very good yardage, positive yardage because this receiver group will be open.
"Jahan Dotson gets open and stays open. Terry [McLaurin] gets open – he was only targeted twice in the game, I don't know if it was because of the toe or because of the pressure. Dyami Brown gets open – I think Sam missed him deep on one particular play early in the game. Curtis Samuel has the ability to get open. Logan Thomas is still open today! The offense did not have a good day... but there are going to be games this year that will be much better offensively because they have a group of wide receivers that are hard to cover."
Another thing Sheehan liked was Tress Way for good punting and good holding on a bad snap from Camaron Cheeseman and Joey Slye made his kicks.
But, overall, it is important to get that first win.
"That was a big takeaway from yesterday: it was a win!" Sheehan said, referencing former Wizards coach Eddie Jordan's immortal line about early season wins: 'You gotta harvest your nuts.'
And harvest one on Sunday, they did. "This team's got one in their pouch so to speak," Sheehan said. "It counts now, it will count big time later in the season if – if – they're one of those teams playing for something.
