At any level of football, the goal is to get off to a fast start. While starting fast and scoring fast doesn’t always mean you’ll win, it definitely increases your odds of winning.
Over the past two seasons under former head coach Ron Rivera, the Washington Commanders were an offensive mess at times. In 2022, Scott Turner was in his third season as offensive coordinator before being fired at the end of that season. Last season, Eric Bieniemy took over as Washington’s offensive play-caller.
The results were similar despite how the Commanders arrived at those results.
Warren Sharp recently revealed the Commanders, along with division rival the New York Giants, were dead last in the number of times they scored first in a game over the past two seasons combined.
teams win 64% of games they score first
…AND lose 36% when allowing opponent to score first over the last 10 yrs
# of games a team scored first last 2 yrs:
23 – BAL, PHI
22 – CLE, SF, DET
21 – DAL
20 – LAC
19 – KC, JAX, LV
18 – CHI, CIN, MIA
17 – BUF, TB, PIT, TEN, DEN
16 -…— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) July 7, 2024
While the Giants were a surprise playoff team in 2022, they’ve been abysmal for several seasons. New York has been consistently worse than Washington in recent years, as the Commanders often hover around the .500 mark before the wheels fell off.
So, out of their last 34 games, Washington scored first in only 11. The Commanders are 12-21-1 during this time. Last season was awful for Washington, which lost its final eight games because it could not get anything going on offense.
Turner and Bieniemy are gone. In are offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury and quarterback Jayden Daniels. The Commanders will be better offensively. How much better? We shall see.
In some good news from Sharp’s statistics: The Cowboys were 10-0 when scoring first last season when Washington head coach Dan Quinn was their defensive coordinator. So, if the Commanders can get a lead, perhaps Quinn can help them keep it.