Thursday night loss to Bears proves Commanders fans both right and wrong

Survey results!!

With a Thursday game, we get the rare opportunity to evaluate the results of the weekly Reacts fan poll in light of the game outcome. If you are a Washington football fan, you might want to take your blood pressure medication before reading further.

What were fans right about?

This week’s Reacts survey was published after the overtime loss to the Eagles and before Thursday night’s shellacking by the Bears.

Our first question in that survey asked what fans had found most disappointing about the loss in Philly.

The top three results focused on defense and coaching, with 1 in 3 respondents focused on secondary play as the biggest area of concern.

Prior to Thursday night, the defense had looked less than stellar, but Weeks 3 & 4 had been against two of the NFL’s top offenses — the Eagles and the Bills are ranked 5th & 6th in total offense (and even the Cardinals and Broncos are ranked in the top half of the league at 12th & 15th).

In Weeks 2, 3, and 4 the Commanders had given up an average of 400 yards of offense and nearly 35 points per game.

The Bears, who were on a 14-game losing streak and had gone 0-4 this season while scoring over 20 points just one time, were supposed to be a “get right” game for the Commanders, especially for the defense.

Instead, the Bears went over the season averages, scoring 40 points, amassing 451 total yards and 273 passing yards in a game where they jumped out to a 27-3 lead by halftime.

WR D.J. Moore, in particular, had a career night. He caught 8 passes on 10 targets for 238 yards and 3 touchdowns. Only a half-inch of sideline chalk kept him from having another 30 yards and a 4th touchdown on a pass play in 3rd quarter that went for 32 yards.

Hogs Haven readers had correctly put their metaphorical finger on the key issues — defense and coaching — in addressing the areas of concern raised by the Philadelphia loss. Both reared their ugly heads on Thursday night, and the Bears took full advantage to end their losing streak at 14 games in front of a national prime time audience.

Washington’s defense, which most NFL pundits had projected to be a top-5 unit before the season started, now ranks 31st in points per game allowed by the defense, and is in the bottom-third of the league in most other measures of defensive effectiveness.

What were Washington fans wrong about?

There were very few people outside the Bears locker room or team headquarters who thought that Chicago had much of a chance in this week’s game. The Commanders had looked like a team on a mission in Philadelphia on Sunday. The burgundy & gold were at home with a chance to move up in the division standings with Dallas visiting the 49ers on Sunday. Chicago’s season seemed to be circling the drain.

Most of us looked at the 3-week stretch of games against the 0-4 Bears, 2-2 Falcons, and 1-3 Giants and thought it looked like an opportunity to put together a 3-game winning streak before hosting the rematch against the Eagles in Week 8.

Thursday night’s fiasco proved us wrong.

Getting 63% of fans to agree on the outcome of a 4-game stretch (which offers 5 possible outcomes from 0-4 to 4-0) is quite a significant number. Some fans will get to their prediction by predicting each game individually, identifying a specific week in which they expect the loss; others will simply feel that the odds are that the team will win 3 of the 4 games. Whichever way fans arrived at their predictions, I doubt whether many, if any, fans would have circled this week’s game against the Bears as the one that the Commanders were likely to lose.

The Commanders have now fallen a game below .500, marking the 4th time in the 4 years of Ron Rivera’s tenure that Washington has had a losing record after 5 games. After an entire offseason in which the coaches talked about two priorities — ‘starting fast’ and creating defensive turnovers — neither has come to fruition.

The Commanders are off to a slow start again in 2023. They have a losing record; four consecutive opponents have scored at least 33 points.

With respect to turnovers, eleven teams have more takeaways than the Commanders do, while 13 have fewer, putting Washington right in the middle of the pack. Unfortunately, only one NFL team (Vikings, 11) has more offensive giveaways than the Commanders, who have lost the ball 10 times in 5 games. Of course Washington has played one more game than everyone except the Bears. If you subtract the lost fumble and the interception from Thursday night, then the Commanders’ 8 turnovers tie them for 4th worst in the league.

What did NFL fans nationally get wrong?

SB Nation sends out surveys to NFL fans of all 32 teams on a weekly basis during the season. Fans are asked several questions, and are always asked to predict game outcomes for the coming week.

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I could be mistaken, but I think this marks the first time this season that the fans incorrectly predicted the outcome of the Thursday night game.

My not-so-bold prediction

Following the hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful game against the Eagles, fan confidence spiked upwards.

Having dropped from 95% to 66% following the loss to the Bills, it jumped back up to 92% after the Eagles game.

I see another dramatic drop in the near future. It was bad to see Washington get embarrassed by Buffalo, but getting drubbed by the Bears on prime time Thursday Night Football takes the embarrassment to an entirely new level. I have no doubt that next week’s confidence graph is going to look a lot like an advertisement for erectile dysfunction medication.

The NFC East

I had been looking forward to being able to post this section today with optimism. I had thought that Washington would have a 3-2 record, with the Giants on the road at Miami, the Eagles on the road at the Rams, and the Cowboys on the road at San Francisco for Sunday Night Football. I was ready to talk about the possibilities for a Week 8 showdown against Philly for the division lead. I’d been mentally composing the prose ahead of Thursday’s game.

That has all been thrown out the window in light of Thursday’s result.

Optimists will still talk about a pair of upcoming ‘must win’ road games against the Falcons and Giants to get back above .500 before the rematch with the Eagles.

Many more people are likely to see the Thursday night carnage as the ‘break glass in case of emergency’ red flare that signals the end to any illusions about the 2023 Commanders or coaching staff.

The calls for Ron Rivera, Jack Del Rio, or both to be fired started before the final whistle blew on Thursday. The lopsided loss to the Bears seems to answer any doubts that had remained after the Commanders managed a pair of come-from-behind victories against Arizona and Denver, a pair of 1-3 teams, the mauling by a Buffalo in Week 3, and a gutty performance in an overtime loss against the defending NFC champion Eagles that might’ve been avoided if the head coach had opted to attempt a 2-point conversion with no time on the clock.

I saw a lot of people repeating the adage that ‘good teams win the games they’re supposed to win’ recently as people contemplated the three-games against the Bears, Falcons and Giants.

The opposite is just as true: bad teams lose the games they’re supposed to win, and Washington was ‘supposed’ to win on Thursday night.

The multitude of red flags raised by this game simply can’t be ignored.

The first real test for the new owners

I also saw a lot of Washington fans on Twitter who weren’t happy to see shots of a smiling Josh Harris being broadcast to a national TV audience as his team was being abused by the winless Bears:

Magic Johnson’s post-game tweet seemed to be much more in-tune with the fan feelings:

That tweet by Johnson along with the video broadcast during the game of him apparently seething, in sharp contrast to the images of Josh Harris, indicate that at least one person in the ownership group might be motivated to step in and take action at this early point in the season.

Prior to Thursday night, the Bears head coach Matt Eberflus was, according to most oddsmakers, the NFL head coach most likely to be fired first. I have to think that Ron Rivera muscled him out of the poll position with his team’s performance this week.

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It will be interesting to see what approach the ownership group takes in the wake of this embarrassment. They have a long week, with 9 days between games, and a popular candidate to take over with Eric Bieniemy as the Assistant Head Coach and Offensive Coordinator. If the owners want to take quick and decisive action, this would seem like the time to do it.

Of course, the Commanders offense didn’t sparkle and shine against the Bears either. Consider this assessment from Mark Tyler:

Eric Bieniemy and the offense sputtered during the evening and were only able to put up 20 points against one of the worst defenses in the league at home. It was inexcusable to come out this flat and perform the way they did (minus a few bright spots). Charles Leno, Saahdiq Charles and Nick Gates had rough evening along the offensive line.

The owners might, of course, prefer to demonstrate patience and a ‘wait and see’ attitude. A lot may depend on whether the owners feel that Riverboat Ron has lost the locker room or retains the support of his players.

A number of people will want the owners to hang in there until January so that Josh Harris et al can restructure the front office and let the incoming ‘football people’ select the new head coach. I’m not sure that any of that would be precluded by dumping Ron now and giving Eric Bieniemy the ‘interim’ title. Of course, it may be that no one on the ownership team sees EB as an upgrade to Ron, which would be an argument to just wait out the season.

Whatever happens, it’s going to be a long week between now and the kickoff in Atlanta.