Commanders Roll to 4th Straight Win

With 12:50 left in the 4th quarter, a starting quarterback was on the sidelines, his day finished after staking his team to an insurmountable lead. Fans were left to beat the traffic. The ones that remained entertained themselves by doing the wave.

And for the first time in recent memory, it was Washington taking most of the fourth quarter off.

The Commanders (4-1) ran their winning streak to four, beating the Cleveland Browns 34-13 before an announced crowd of 59,030. Washington now leads the NFC East by one and a half games over the idle Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys (at press time) and has the second-best record in the NFC after five weeks.

” I can’t give any regard for the past,” head coach Dan Quinn said after the game. “What I can say is for the group that’s here, we really felt the fan support today and I thought there was a definite home-field advantage created. Defensive, it was loud, it felt like energy, all the things that you want. But more than anything, just seeing the team connected, playing for one another using this complementary football,” he said.

Rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels faced the best defense of his young career. Early on, Cleveland’s tight man-to-man coverage seemed to throw Daniels off his rhythm.

He found it on the Commanders second offensive series. On third down and 13 from his 31-yard line, Daniels hit wide receiver Terry McLaurin on a 65-yard dart as he rolled out of the pocket to escape the pass rush.

The drive stalled on the goal line as Daniels was intercepted by Cleveland linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah.

The reprieve for the Browns was short-lived. Washington’s defense forced a Cleveland punt, and not a very good one. The Commanders took over on the Browns 34-yard line and Daniels directed a six-play drive that ended with Brian Robinson Jr. breaking a tackle to score on a five-yard run to give Washington a 7-0 lead they would never give up.

“That’s just a testament to how we were able to persevere through our adversity and battle through some things,” Daniels said. “Like [WR] Terry [McLaurin] said man we left some stuff out there on the table. A lot. I’m happy to get back and watch some film. It’s better to go back and review stuff after a win, but, you know, we gotta improve.”

For the second week in a row, the defense asserted its dominance as well. Washington sacked Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson seven times. Cleveland gained 212 total yards and didn’t convert a third down until the game was well out of hand.

“I think we executed really well,” defensive tackle Jonathan Allen said. “I think the DB’s aren’t going to get enough credit because of the amount of sacks we got, but whenever you get that video, whenever you get that amount of sacks, the DB’s should get a lot of credit, because they played really well. I mean, they made it tough for him. A lot of his looks on the first reads weren’t there, and it allowed us to get home.”

Washington began to pull away in the second quarter. Leading 10-3, Daniels turned a short roll-out into a 47-yard run to the Browns 6-yard line. Robinson would score two plays later to make the score 17-7.

The backbreaker came just before halftime.

The Browns got the ball back with one minute and 36 seconds left in the second quarter but were unable to pick up a first down and had to punt.

With 36 seconds to go before the break, Daniels hit DYami Brown on a perfect 41-yard pass for a touchdown to make the halftime score 24-3.
Daniels said the play came about because of what he saw on the play before, and because offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury trusted a hunch the quarterback had.

“I ran out of bounds the play before and then kind of saw some of the defense,” he said. “I had seen they were playing man coverage and I was turning back around and I said man, let’s take a shot to [Offensive Coordinator] Kliff [Kingsbury] and he called the play and we did it.”

Jeremy McNichols would score the Commanders final touchdown on a 3-yard run midway through the third quarter.

Washington will face its toughest test of the young season on October 13th as the team makes the short trip to Baltimore to play the Ravens in a game that will be the first true measuring stick of the season.

The Ravens are 3-2 after an overtime win in week 5 in Cincinnati and are considered one of the few teams that could possibly beat Kansas City in the AFC postseason.