The Washington Football Team has a golden opportunity ahead of them. Left for dead two weeks ago, they upset the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Carolina Panthers in consecutive weeks to jump from 2-6 to 4-6 and get back into sniffing distance of a playoff berth. This week’s challenge is the 3-7 Seattle Seahawks on Monday Night Football. The last time the WFT was on MNF? It was December 3, 2018. After a long absence, they are back.
Head coach Ron Rivera is trying to keep his team in the right mindset. Don’t get cocky just because Seattle is 3-7. Seahawk’s QB Russell Wilson is a game-changer all by himself. When Wilson injured the middle finger on his throwing hand in Seattle’s Week 5 game against the Rams, he had to work his way back. He has had to adjust since returning from his injury, and the Washington defense has to make life miserable for him if the WFT wants to win this game.
Speaking of injuries, it looks like the WFT will get two weapons back today in Curtis Samuel and Logan Thomas. On Saturday, Rivera said both would be on a “pitch count” which means they will be somewhat limited in this game.
Seattle needs a win tonight just to get back to a level of respectability and Washington could be in a Wild Card position with a win. Like most games, it feels like a “must win” for the WFT.
At Saturday’s media session, head coach Ron River was asked about the challenges players face with social media heckling:
“They hear it. As much as they don’t want to hear it, they’ll hear it. Somebody they know will read something or say something or hear something, and it’ll get back to the player inevitably. And that’s unfortunate. It’s unfair. Nobody really understands what it’s like. You know? And it takes me back to a saying that I’ve said before, and I’ve told you guys this before, don’t draw me a map, unless you’ve been there, unless you have been in my shoes, it’s very difficult for people to tell you what it’s like.”
One positive development has been the WFT defense has stepped up and especially in third down defense where they were the worst through the seventh game of the season, and still the worst overall. The previous three games they have shown a marked improvement as the 19th best team the last three games. They had allowed 57.78% on 3rd down conversions through the first seven games and overall at 52.99% now which is still the worst by a large margin. At this point, it is one game at a time to improve to get that under 50%.
So here we are under the Monday Night lights.
GAME TIME: 8:15 p.m. ET
LOCATION: FedEx Field, Landover, Maryland
TV: ESPN
RADIO: The Team 980, WMAL 105.9
Vegas odds: Seahawks -1 (-110), Over/Under 46.5
