When you look at the calendar today and it reads July 28, take a second to cherish that feeling. We’ve finally made it to training camp in an unprecedented NFL offseason.
With actual football getting set to take place, it’s important for every team in the league to set up some expectations for the season, whether low or high, and do what they can to achieve them. For the Washington Football Team, there is no harm in saying that expectations are low, but knowing that there are things more important than wins is the real key for fans of the team.
Wins are likely not going to be plentiful in the 2020 season, but that doesn’t mean that Washington won’t grow. For Ron Rivera, who is getting set to coach his first practices in Washington, there’s an understanding that the start of the season might be a bit of a slog, with a tough schedule and several players who are working to adapt to his way of doing things. He said as much when sitting down for an exclusive interview with The Athletic‘s Ben Standig on Monday:
I’m not worried about a good start. What I’m worried about is a good way of playing. In other words, I want to see us play hard, play physical. The winning will take care of itself if you do things right. If you take care of the little things, and you’re better at the little things than anybody else, you give yourself what you want. I am concerned with setting the tone, setting the tempo as to who we are. That will help us take care of the winning portion of it. We want to focus in on it.
The question that prompted that answer was about what Rivera would do if it became clear that playing Adrian Peterson over Derrius Guice early on would lead to more success, or if Kyle Allen presented a better opportunity for wins than Dwayne Haskins. Rivera doesn’t seem to care about measuring success by wins early on, but rather by hard work and doing things the right way.
If that sounds like a breath of fresh air in Washington to you, you’re not alone. In the coming weeks, we are going to finally see what the hype surrounding Rivera as a coach is all about, and it’s bound to be inspiring.
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