Short weeks are tough with less time to prepare and less time to get healthy. But when coming off a loss, sometimes there’s nothing better than getting right back out there.
And coming off a 20-16 loss, the Washington Football Team has an opportunity to get the bitter taste of defeat out of their mouth early when hosting the New York Giants on Thursday Night Football.
And you can count WFT’s head coach Ron Rivera among those who are welcoming the quick turnaround.
“It’s a good thing, I believe because we didn’t have time to dwell on it,” Rivera said during his weekly appearance on The Team 980’s The Kevin Sheehan Show. “We were able to get our points across to the guys and now it’s an opportunity for us to move forward.”
“I really like the way we approached it, I like the way the guys are handling this week. I like the way they focused, re-focused, and have now put themselves into position to go out and play a good football game,” Rivera continued.
While Washington’s head coach isn’t dwelling on the opening weekend loss, he admitted the defeat irked him.
“Yeah, it did, because we had a chance to win and we didn’t play well,” Rivera told The Team 980. “I mean that’s a very good football team and we were with them stride for stride until a couple of unfortunate things happened. As you look at it, and you watch the tape, the thing that was really discouraging was just the lack of discipline in some of the things that happened. That is what was disappointing.
“And it was more, I think, Kevin, guys trying to do things that they don’t need to do. They gotta trust their teammates are gonna be where they’re supposed to go, they’ve gotta trust those blocks are gonna be made, they gotta trust that guys are gonna be in their gaps of responsibility. And that’s what really I was disappointed in because we got some really good football players that, again, just have to remember they don’t have to make every play. Just make the plays that are there.”
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Last week, Rivera told Sheehan that how maturity was his biggest concern about his team headed into the season. This week, Sheehan asked if the Washington defense’s failure to play sound situational football on a Los Angeles 3rd-and-16 conversion was a sign of a lack of maturity.
“Yes, that’s part of it,” Rivera said on The Team 980. “That’s part of what you worry about because guys get so hyped up, so fired up and you’ve gotta be able to take a deep breath and then go out and function and execute. And I think we were so hyped early on that it took us a little bit to settle down. Then we settled down and started rolling. And then something would happen and somebody would try to make a play. How you handle, how you respond to things, that’s what to me is important. And we didn’t respond the right way a couple of times. We tried to force it, we tried to make something happen where we didn’t need to.”
Rivera thought of an old saying: “‘They play doesn’t care who makes it.’ The plays will be there to be made if you are where you’re supposed to be.”
One big change for Washington in Week 2 will be Taylor Heinicke coming in for the injured Ryan Fitzpatrick at quarterback. And Sheehan asked Rivera what gives him confidence that Heinicke will have success?
“I think a big part of it is how he connects so well with his teammates, the way they rally around him, I think that’s pretty cool, I really do,” Rivera said on The Team 980.
But what about Heinicke’s game gives WFT’s head coach confidence? Rivera said the way Heinicke “plays the game all-out.”
“He doesn’t like to lose,” Rivera added, “he does everything he can to give himself and his team an opportunity to succeed.”
Follow @BenKrimmel and @Team980 for the latest.
And listen to every Washington Football Team game on The Team 980 and the Audacy app all season long.
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