After a miraculous 86 yard touchdown pass from Jayden Daniels to Terry McLaurin with 0:33 left on the clock made the score 27-26, and the PAT was all that was remaining to tie the game — and most likely push the game to overtime. The extra-point that would have tied the game for the Washington Commanders was wide left. It wasn’t meant to be, and placekicker Austin Seibert made no excuses after the game including the hip injury that had sidelined him for the prior two games.
“[The injury] didn’t make a difference at all. It’s on me. I felt fine. That’s why I made the decision to play, and here we are.”
— a teary Seibert said in the locker room
“Just want to play better for my teammates. Definitely don’t want to do that. Just wasn’t striking well, but it means a lot to me to be here with these guys, so just want to put my best foot moving forward.”
Arguably, Seibert was having a great season until yesterday with 25-27 in field goals made and 22-of-22 in extra-points. He missed both PATs in Sunday’s game as well as a field goal try. He did convert on two field goals, but it will be that final missed extra-point that turned a potentially tied game into a loss. But don’t pin the loss on Seibert. There were so many poor plays in the game.
After the McLaurin touchdown, Washington attempted an onsides kick that the Cowboys ran back for a touchdown to make the final score 34-26, and a final punch in the gut on the worst special teams game you will ever see. Once again, a heavily favored Washington football team lost to a pathetic Cowboys team. Washington was an 11-point favorite mid-week and 10.5 before kickoff in Landover, Maryland.
Washington fell to 7-5 on the season with three consecutive losses. The Commanders were in full control of their playoff destiny, and just swung and missed — err, kicked and missed. They will now have to pick themselves up off the field, and figure out how and what has gone wrong since that great 7-2 start to their season.
For the Cowboys, this was like winning a playoff game. Their players found something to smile about. CeeDee Lamb, a Cowboys’ wide receiver was a college teammate of Seibert at Oklahoma through 2019 with Kyler Murray.
Normally, you would expect kinder words from a college teammate. Of course the Cowboys were acting like they won something big. This wasn’t a missed kick of Super Bowl proportions like a Scott Norwood shank. But in Washington lore, this might be the costliest missed PAT in the team history. How you pick yourself up from this will say a lot about you as person, teammate, and a team.
Truthfully, the game was put into this situation long before that PAT. While it is easy to look at one play that was pivotal, there were dropped passes, turnovers, missed-tackles, poor coverage on defense, bad penalties and awful special teams play that allowed two touchdowns on kickoffs.
“What I told the team after the game was that this is the most challenged we’ve been in our time together. And I reminded them, it’s not enough to learn the lessons, but we have to apply them.”
— head coach Dan Quinn said after the game
“I remind them it’s never about one play. And so, that execution falls on all of us players and coaches, and I firmly believe that. And so, we’ll get to it tomorrow. We’ll look at the tape and get right to the truth of it all.”
“Yeah, I want to make sure like this confidence is rolling whoever we’re playing. And I don’t want it to go up and down and up and down. So again, I look back at the tape and the best part of this is you get to go dig in and go forward again, man. But from a performance side, is there plenty to clean up on? You bet, and you don’t want to miss an opportunity and when you got a home game and going forward in the division, you want to take advantage of those. And when you miss them, it stings.”
Win next week and put this game away as a learning experience and apply the lessons.
