ASHBURN, Va. — As tough losses go, the Washington Commanders went through one of the tougher ones this Sunday in a 28-27 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Moving on from it is always important, but with the Commanders visiting the Philadelphia Eagles this Thursday night, it’s even more critical this team moves forward quickly.
“You wanna see how your team (is) gonna respond,” Washington head coach Dan Quinn told WUSA9’s Chick Hernandez in their weekly sit-down following the game. The two spoke about quickly processing the Week 10 loss ahead of Week 11. “I first saw [that] probably out on the field - they lift one another up… and you have to turn fast and you have to learn the lessons that are meant for you.”
There are plenty of lessons to lean on from the Steelers game heading into the Eagles’ contest this Thursday. And there’s not a phase of the game where at least one player doesn’t have something to take away from it.
The good news from Quinn’s perspective is that this roster is highly self-aware and fully capable of digesting all of the information needed while discarding the hard feelings associated with the tough loss.
“Most of the time, they know. Because you’ve already probably spoken about it on the field,” says Quinn. “But you do have to correct it. It doesn’t mean that you act like a jerk to do it, but you have to say it. You can’t just blow by it and there are no sacred cows.”
Any player could be the one to make the next big play to help Washington win a big game. On the flip side, any can be the subject of a mistake, and both deserve to be treated well and coached up equally. That’s the point Quinn has made several times during his first season at the helm, and it’s one that has trickled down to the players who visibly rally around each other when it’s the unfortunate time for one of their brothers to need their support.
After receiver Olamide Zaccheaus fumbled his second punt of the game, this time recovered by the Pittsburgh special teams unit, Hernandez couldn’t help but notice that no fewer than 30 of his Commanders teammates came over to lift him up.
“They love ‘O.Z.’, he has raised their level of competing by the way he goes after it, and some teammates have said that about the way that he goes to work, that he puts in,” Quinn said about that display of camaraderie. “So all the work that’s done behind the scenes, people recognize that, so I’m not surprised that many went over to speak to him.”
Washington is confident it can rebound from this stumbling block, just as it did following each of its last two losses, each one preceding a victory the next week.
And a win this week would give the Commanders back control of the NFC East Division.