Washington Football Team rebounded from a loss in the season-opener with a last-second win over the Giants in Week 2. And in those two games, there have been stretches of solid play followed by breakdowns in scheme. Washington got their first win but hasn’t played a consistent, complete game.
For WFT head coach Ron Rivera there has been plenty to be happy with and plenty to make him unhappy.
“I’ve been pleased with our resilience, the toughness in which with we play with,” Rivera during his weekly appearance on The Team 980’s The Kevin Sheehan Show.
“Some of the things that you see that you feel really good about is you see the development and the cohesiveness, coming together with the offensive line. That’s always one of the concerns coming in is how they’re gonna handle it, they seem to be handling that pretty well,” he said. “At times I like the play of our defensive line; guys getting after the quarterback, guys are shutting the run down, but every now and then we lose our discipline which is probably the thing that’s really kinda concerning me a little bit at times.”
Rivera went on to add how he likes how Washington’s “playmakers have stepped up and made plays on both sides of the ball.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean the head coach is satisfied with where the WFT stands.
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“Are we where we wanna be? No, we are not,” Rivera told The Team 980. “But I believe we can grow into it and get these things corrected and be the team that we think we can.”
Sheehan mentioned to Rivera his previous comments about discipline and maturity were areas of concern. Does Rivera see most of the lack of discipline coming from the defensive line?
“I wouldn’t say defensive line as much as I would say defensive front,” Rivera told Sheehan. “Because I think when you look at what we do as far as our defense is concerned, is we are a gap control defense, which basically means everyone is assigned a responsibility. And when things happen in a game negatively we know, we can figure it out quickly, get it corrected during the game. I think that’s kinda why we were so good last year with our second-half adjustments as a team because of just being a gap-sound team is important to our defense.”
And why is being gap-sound important for making second-half adjustments, Sheehan followed up.
“Because you’ll know exactly where the situation is, what the circumstances are. You can see who is either getting knocked out of his gap or choosing to get out of his gap trying to make a play,” Rivera said. “And you can come back and say, ‘Dude, we gotta stay where we are, you gotta hunker in,’ [or] ‘Hey, they’re doubling here, we’ll I’ll tell you what let’s throw a run blitz through that on 1st-and-10.’ ‘Let’s change up the front, let’s move our tackles, let’s stunt ‘em.’ So we can figure out how we can stop it if a team’s trying to attack us a specific way by the run game.”
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So has the problem in the early part of the season been too much freelancing by players in Washington’s defensive front?
“Yeah, that’s exactly what it is,” Rivera said. “Because what happens is, in terms of freelancing, these aren’t guys doing it willy-nilly, these guys are trying to make plays. That’s why, to a degree, I can get it, I can appreciate it because they’re trying as opposed to not. I mean, they wanna make something happen, they want something positive to happen for us. And so you see them take their best shot. That you can live with to a degree.
“What you can’t live with is it happening by the same guy all the time, which it hasn’t. Every now and then somebody will be here, it might be this guy on the edge here, it might be this guy through that gap there. That, you know, is all correctable, it’s all fixable.”
Rivera said he thinks many players on the defense have played well, but the hard part about it is consistency. However, he did mention a few players who are standing out.
“Jonathan Allen stands out the most right now,” Rivera told Sheehan. “He has had a tremendous start to this year already, been very consistent, which is something that I really do appreciate more so than anything else, that he has played so much consistent football.”
Rivera also pointed out Matt Ioannidis and Daron Payne for being sound at the point of attack and holding the line.
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“I like what we’re getting from the two young ends,” Rivera said referring to Chase Young and Montez Sweat. “Obviously, they’re frustrated, they wanna make a lot more plays, but these guys have to learn to be patient and disciplined and the plays will come to them.”
If Washington is going to upset the Bills on Sunday in Buffalo, Young and Sweat might have to have a productive game as Rivera says pressure on Buffalo QB Josh Allen is a key for the WFT, but the pass rush must be disciplined.
“First and foremost you gotta put pressure on this quarterback because you can’t let him get comfortable in the pocket and then you gotta account for him and his ability to run with the football,” Rivera told The Team 980.
When asked by Sheehan about Josh Allen’s running ability – both in passing situations and on read-option plays – Rivera said it is “a concern, especially if we’re not disciplined.”
“The thing when you watch [Josh Allen] when you watch the things that he does, he runs well with the ball. He has a feel for that,” Rivera said. “They have designed runs, they run the quarterback draw… they have the zone-read, the quarterback keeps, which we’ve struggled with at times. And then they have the designed outside runs for the quarterback sweep. So we basically have to be disciplined and play within the scheme of the things that we have called.”
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