Overreaction Monday: Could Washington compete for No. 2 spot in NFC East?

After the NFC East standings were stood on their head in Week 1, is it possible that Washington is better than we think?

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Welcome to Overreaction Monday! After a weekend full of live NFL football, we plan to look into the latest happenings in Washington and try to find a major takeaway that could either be completely legitimate or a bit of an overreaction. Often, the sentiment is going to fall somewhere in between, but that’s for you to decide. Let’s get it started with our first Monday of the regular season. 

Washington could compete for No. 2 spot in NFC East

Woah! We’re only a week into the 2020 season, and a single victory in Washington already has us penciling the team in for 7-9 wins?

Not quite. While Sunday’s upset victory over the Philadelphia Eagles was thrilling, we aren’t going to pretend like that first half full of mishaps didn’t happen. However, we are willing to raise the question of Washington’s place in the NFC East hierarchy, especially after seeing the showing that the Dallas Cowboys put on during their Sunday Night Football loss to the LA Rams. As always, there are some solid arguments for and against this claim; let’s get into it.

The Argument

It wasn’t for the full game, but at times on Washington, the team looked to have one of the best defenses in the entire NFL, while possessing an offense that can get the job done. Washington ended up totaling eight sacks on Carson Wentz, and they were also able to come down with two interceptions, picking up 14 points off of turnovers. The offensive stats are nothing special, but second-year QB Dwayne Haskins orchestrated a couple of solid drives in the second half, finding a way to put points on the board and eventually go out ahead of their division rivals. As it stands now, with both the Eagles and Cowboys losing on Sunday, Washington will at the very least be in a tie for first place in the division, depending on what the NY Giants do on Monday night. Again, there’s only been one game played, but you take what you can get when you root for the Burgundy & Gold.

Of course, Washington’s performance alone isn’t enough for us to bring this overreaction to the table. What also contributes to the notion is the fact that we saw a banged-up Eagles team look less than stellar on Sunday, and the Cowboys were lackluster in the night game, with a couple of brutal injuries coming their way as well. It was reported after the game that LB Leighton Vander Esch broke his collar bone during the game, while TE Blake Jarwin suffered a knee injury and is feared to have torn his ACL.

It’s not like Dak Prescott or Ezekiel Elliott went down with an injury, but those two pieces are massive parts of what the Cowboys do week in and week out, and every game without them on the field will be a big loss.

We’re doing what we can to not drink too much of the kool-aid in Washington after one victory, but watching the defense play up to their potential, and seeing the offense get the job done on a day when they seemed to play closer to their floor than their ceiling was encouraging. This isn’t an article calling for Washington to make the playoffs, but it may be time to stop predicting that they’ll hold onto the No. 1 or No. 2 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft.

Devil’s Advocate

It’s Week 1. That’s pretty much all that needs to be said, in reality. After an offseason that went off-script in more ways than one, it’s not a shock to see a number of teams across the NFL come into their first game of the season and play outside of their expectations. It just so happens that two of those teams were in the NFC East, and Washington was able to take advantage of it. After falling behind 17-0 in the first half, you could have simulated the rest of that game 100 different times and the Eagles likely come out on top at least 95 percent of the time. On Sunday, Washington got some breaks, players made some big plays, and the Burgundy & Gold came out on top. It’s not going to happen that way every week.

The Verdict

This is a classic overreaction, but one that we’re okay bringing to the table. The truth is that Washington looked a bit better than expected, and the Eagles and Cowboys looked worse than expected on Sunday. We’ll see how the Giants look on Monday, but it likely won’t do much to detract from our sentiment. Washington is still going to have a long and tough road ahead of them, and wins could likely be hard to find. They’re trying to tell us that they aren’t one of the worst teams in the league, though. We might want to start listening to that.

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