ASHBURN, Va. — A win is a win, and the Washington Commanders got a valuable one this weekend by defeating the New Orleans Saints by a final score of 20-19.
That’s the good news. But the bad news for the Commanders is the second half near collapse that came from being outscored 19-6 after entering the half up by 14 points on the home Saints squad.
However, Washington head coach Dan Quinn says there’s an upside to playing through - and winning - a game like that.
“If you want to break it down, the first half is definitely what you want. But the second half is what you need,” coach Quinn told WUSA9’s Chick Hernandez in their weekly sitdown following the team’s ninth win of the season. “Going through the ups and downs, the good plays, the bad plays, to go and fight…that’s where most of the growth will take place.”
Quinn emphasized that even with how much success the Commanders have had this season after being projected by many to win fewer than seven games all year long, this is still a team that is developing and growing through every experience.
“To have those games that are tough and you get the win, you learn along the way,” Quinn also said.
Learning how to win when not playing your best game isn’t the only lesson here. It’s certainly not a way for Quinn or anyone else to escape the fact that several on-field mistakes led to a much closer outcome than it probably should have been in New Orleans.
But every team in the NFL has to overcome adversity to eventually hoist the Lombardi Trophy, which is what this Washington team wants to do, preferably in the near future.
When that day comes, any player who went through this weekend’s near-disastrous letdown will look back at experiences like this Week 15 win and know that the downs that come with the ups helped them reach even higher peaks than before it.
And that’s quite the silver lining for a team to take along with its ninth win of the season, drawing ever closer to the Commanders’ first playoff berth since 2020 and already securing the franchise’s first nine-win season since 2015.