Did you realize four plays cost the Commanders last Sunday’s game?
On Thursday, Commanders defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. said that in his opinion, four plays cost the Commanders a win against the Ravens last week.
“I hate to keep coming up here and talking about communication because we’ve been good the last couple weeks, but four plays cost us the game,” Whitt said.
Some penalties on the defense seemed to kill the Commanders’ hopes, but no, Whitt did not see those as the issue.
“I’m not even worried about the third-down penalties that extended drives. They didn’t need any help, but that’s football, okay? Sometimes you’re going to get football plays, and you’re going to get a penalty here and there.”
Whitt then turned the responsibility on himself.
“If we don’t give up those four individual plays, we win that game. And I’ll take responsibility for that because they shouldn’t make those mistakes. Defenses that we know and we didn’t get it executed. So, like I said, we’re working to make sure we minimize those mistakes moving forward, but we can’t keep coming up here. I can’t keep coming up here saying the same thing. Gotta get it corrected.”
Why were there communication breakdowns? Whitt expressed two times the communication sent was correct and one other time it was wrong. All three times it cost the defense.
“So, either case, I gotta do a better job of making sure that it’s sent properly, it’s received, and it’s acknowledged, and we play it the right way. It’s unacceptable.”
The Commanders will be without DT Jonathan Allen and DE Javontae Jean-Baptiste on Sunday. Both were placed on the injured reserve list. In response, the Commanders have already added DTs Sheldon Day and Jalyn Holmes to the 53-man roster.