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After a nice win to improve to 2-2 and a tie for the divisional lead, it's time for another look at where the Redskins rank among various power rankings around the league.
Before I get into talking about the Redskins win and what it meant I have to address what is becoming a pretty much weekly occurrence of PFT's trolling. Here's their write-up this week:
22. Washington (2-2; No. 29): Every win delays by roughly a month the possible decision to risk putting RG3 and his $16.1 million injury guarantee on the field.
First if you can't bring yourself to call the Washington Redskins the Redskins, then why use the nicknames for the other 31 teams? Second, the Redskins just had a really nice home win over a division rival and now are in a share for first place, and all you can bring up is how this pushes back the call for RGIII? Making matters worse is the fact that his replacement Kirk Cousins had one of his better games as a pro and had a really nice game winning drive. Why even bring up Griffin in this scenario? I don't even mind that they don't have the Redskins cracking the top 20 or even need to say something positive. I get that the Redskins still are going to have doubters and some of that concern is definitely valid, but come on PFT you can be more professional than that. (end rant)
Alright now that I got that out of my system, lets talk about the Redskins and how they did a really nice job on Sunday. Like I said above there are some concerns still with this team, such as major holes in the secondary and inconsistency in the running game, but honestly the fact that they could get the win despite that is impressive. In the last couple of years the only wins the Redskins really seemed to get is when the other team just didn't show up or they dominated the game from the start. This is not a team that has shown that they can come back from a deficit or come up with big defensive stops to get the ball back for their offense, but that is exactly what we saw.
Even more impressive was the fact that the Redskins had to overcome a number of issues to get this win. First, the rushing attack really struggled in between the big Chris Thompson draw play and some of the runs by Alfred Morris on the final drive. Other than that the Redskins had a lot of carries with practically nothing to show for it. Nobody thought the Redskins had a chance to compete when their running game wasn't fully working, but they over came that. Next they overcame just some back-breaking penalties that really hurt them on both sides of the ball. This has been an issue all year, but this was probably the least disciplined they looked, but they were still able to ensure it didn't sink them this game. Perhaps the most concerning thing they overcame was the major issues they had in their secondary. They got beat for three 2nd half TDs, including two embarrassing deep balls that should have never happened. In years past when the defense played like this and gave up the lead in the 2nd half you could pretty much put an "L" in the books, but they came back and it was impressive.
This was a big win that really helps keep them in the mix for contention this season. The Redskins are now in a 3 way tie for first place with the Giants and Cowboys, but more importantly the Redskins picked up a big win and hopefully some confidence. Washington has back-to-back tough road games vs the red hot Falcons and a pretty good Jets team (who will also be coming off their bye), so a little extra confidence is key if they want take at least one of these games. No matter what though this Redskins team is showing some impressive fight and resiliency this season, which is an improvement over the past couple of years.