"Good god that was embarrassing." That's about the long and short of it in Kevin Sheehan's words from the Washington Commnaders' 40-20 drubbing at the hands of the previously winless Chicago Bears on Thursday Night Football at FedEx Field.
"Humiliating. And I'm just talking about the defense, the team overall, including the coaching staff, disgraceful performance," Sheehan said. "There have been a lot of these over the years, we've gotten used to 'em, but that was up there last night."
It may not have been the level of the swinging gate game or the Kansas City game in bad weather in which the crowd emptied out or the Monday Night Massacre, which was probably the most humiliating one ever.
"Is there any way I can get a re-do on our 'Level of concern in the defense' segment we did earlier in the week? I would like to revise my 0.5 upward just a bit. May have been a little bit off on that one," Sheehan added about the 40-point drubbing.
On a positive note, Sheehan reminds people that Dan Snyder being gone already makes the season a success and at least one of the new owners, Magic Johnson, showed some personality in a social media post that set a standard that the effort was unacceptable on Thursday night and a shot at the coaching staff and Ron Rivera.
Sheehan believes Josh Harris and the new ownership group will be patient with Rivera and company, but eliminate the possibility that if the Commanders are embarrassed again like they were Thursday "somebody gets rolled, somebody gets sent home."
"What a completely mortifying night it was for the home team last night," he said.
Sheehan added that he is "now alarmed" about the defense and ready to admit that it is a problem. "I'll admit now that something is wrong with the defense... but last night was a special kind of ugly for the defense, for the team it was an embarrassing night. They were outhustled, outplayed, outcoached, they were out-everything," he said.
And Washington's offense wasn't spared criticism because the defense got crushed: "The offense should have been able to DOMINATE the Bears defense. It was a garbage defense coming into the game... and yet in the first half they did nothing: 3 points, 84 yards total and really more than 1/3 of those yards came on that meaningless end-of-first-half drive because they didn't have enough time left cause Ron butchered the timeout situation on defense."
The Bears defense "couldn't stop me before last night" and the Commanders offense "were lucky" to get a field goal that first half.
And yet, with the Bears losing running backs and defensive players "left and right," they got conservative offensively and Washington was back in the game at 30-20 in the fourth quarter until a Commanders' drive stalled and then missed a 46-yard field goal that should have been made.
"Washington is a middling team," Sheehan concluded. "Now are they an upper-middling team or are they a lower-middling team? Well, after last night they look like a lower-middle team. But the next few weeks, maybe they look more like an upper-middle-of-the-pack team.
"Upper middle of the pack at least gets you into contention late into the season like they were last year. But it was still middle of the pack.
"Week-to-week, man. Would not surprise me at all if they go to Atlanta and play well against a team that they should play well against. They're not good either, but [the Falcons] won't view Washington as very good at the same time."
