Flying high after reeling off four straight wins to get to .500 on the season, the Washington Football Team hosted the Cowboys in the second week of December and lost a tough game to Dallas 27-20 to fall to 6-7 on the season.
Despite that loss, Washington was a win away from returning to seventh place in the NFC and had a winnable game against the Philadelphia Eagles coming up on the schedule, followed by a rematch against the Cowboys.
Then, as it has far too often over the past two years, COVID-19 reared its ugly head and disrupted everything.
Hit with an Omicron outbreak that affected coaches and players on both sides of the ball, Washington saw its Sunday game against the Eagles rescheduled to Tuesday in an effort to give members of the team more time to test negative. That didn’t happen for starting quarterback Taylor Heinicke or backup Kyle Allen, so Washington had to deploy Garrett Gilbert, who was on New England’s practice squad before being signed by Washington to start for the team.
Predictably, it didn’t go well, and Washington lost to the Eagles 27-17 to fall to 6-8 on year. Washington faced a short week to prep for the Cowboys due to the game with the Eagles being moved to Tuesday, and it showed on Sunday as Dallas dismantled the visitors 56-14 in an absolute beatdown.
Things got so bad during the game that Jonathan Allen, Washington’s Walter Payton Man of the Year award nominee, punched fellow defensive lineman Daron Payne on national TV.
In five days, Washington went from controlling their playoff destiny to having a snowball’s chance in hell of qualifying to the postseason and surrendered 1,016 yards while giving up a combined 83 points to Philadelphia and Dallas in the process.
In Sunday’s 42-point loss to Dallas, Washington surrendered the most points the team has given up since 2010. The defeat was also the most-lopsided loss for either team in a storied rivalry that’s been played 124 times.
“I told them you play this game long enough, you’re going to get beat like this,” Washington coach Ron Rivera said. “How you respond to it, how you bounce back, how you play, that tells more about you than anything else. We’ve got two left to play. Who knows what happens, but we’ll show up, we’ll prepare, we’ll get ready.”
Washington will end its season with divisional matchups against the Eagles at home and against the Giants in New Jersey.
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