The Washington Commanders won their first game of the season Sunday, defeating the New York Giants 21-18 at Northwest Stadium. Amazingly, Washington won the game without scoring a touchdown, while the Giants scored three touchdowns and lost.
It was an ugly win for the Commanders. Washington had 10 penalties, including five procedural penalties in the red zone, which stalled multiple scoring drives.
However, despite the ugly win, there were some encouraging signs from Sunday’s victory.
Let’s look at some of those numbers:
- No turnovers
- Tress Way did not punt one time
- Commanders had 425 total yards
- Averaged 6.2 per offensive play
- Finished with 215 rushing yards
- Averaged 6.1 yards per rushing attempt
- Possessed the ball for over 37 minutes
- Kicker Austin Seibert made all seven field goal attempts
- Jayden Daniels completed over 79% of his attempts
These are the good numbers. Not scoring in the red zone and committing 10 penalties are the ugly numbers. However, these are signs of progress for a new offense with a rookie quarterback. Penalties and red-zone issues are fixable.
The Commanders are trying to build an offensive identity. Sunday’s performance made it clear that this identity centers around the running game, led by quarterback Jayden Daniels and running backs Brian Robinson Jr. and Austin Ekeler.
It’s sometimes easy to focus on the negative, but there were clear signs of encouragement from Sunday’s game.