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Washington Post (paywall)

The Commanders’ big bets on offense have officially gone bust

It’s hard to untangle exactly why the unit has been so bad over the past four games — how much blame to give offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy vs. quarterback Sam Howell vs. the supporting cast — but it’s clear it’s not working. There’s little reason to suspect the unit will meaningfully improve over the final three games against elite defenses.

Even though Coach Ron Rivera said he benched Howell in the fourth quarter Sunday to protect his health and even though Rivera stressed that Howell will remain the starter, the move put an exclamation point on an abysmal month. Before Sunday, there were plausible reasons for the struggles on offense: The Commanders had faced tough pass defenses, and their own defense kept putting them in holes nearly impossible to dig out from.

Washington was only the seventh team in the past decade to win the first-half turnover battle by two or more and still trail by 13 or more points at halftime, according to the website TruMedia.

Last offseason, Rivera sifted through the problems that torpedoed the 2022 offense — quarterback, coordinator, line — and bet on Howell, Bieniemy and a budget line that several analysts said gave the team a “razor-thin” margin for error. At this rate, the 2023 offense probably will not finish much better than any of the five impotent versions that came before it. The unit has not finished in the top 20 in offensive points or expected points added since the departure of Kirk Cousins following the 2017 season.

Five takeaways from Washington’s Week 15 loss to the Rams

3. The offense wasted drives and opportunities.

Despite the game never really swinging out of the Rams’ favor, it’s not as if the Commanders lacked opportunities to make things more competitive. Even on their last offensive possession, which did end in a touchdown, Washington technically had a chance to make things interesting.

They didn’t, however, and it was because Washington’s offense did little to make it so. Four of the Commanders’ six drives in the first half ended in a three-and-out (the fourth was still a turnover on downs because of a botched snap on a punt). There was a brief moment of consistency on their second drive, which saw the Commanders get to the Rams’ 12-yard line, but that was a turnover on downs as well with Howell’s pass to Logan Thomas being batted away.

By the end of the first half, with the score being 13-0, Washington had 87 net yards of offense compared to the Rams’ 242.

It was much of the same in the second half, outside of the two scores with Brissett in at quarterback. Even then, however, problems arose near the goal line, when it took the offense nine tries to get in the end zone. There was just under five minutes left in the fourth quarter after McLaurin’s 49-yard catch at the 1-yard line. There was just under two minutes left when Curtis Samuel finally got open for the score.

Had Washington been able to score earlier, things could have been more interesting. Instead, we were left with Kupp batting Washington’s attempt at an onside kick out of bounds and the Rams bleeding the clock to secure a win.

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