Evaluating Washington’s defense: play-calling issues?

Taking a closer look at some of Washington’s defensive play-calling in key situations.

Washington’s defense had a lot of issues to dive into from the loss to the Bills. I’ve already looked at a fundamental flaw with players failing to communicate and get on the same page, but this piece will look at some of the issues I had with a few of the plays called and the situations they were called in. When the entire team has issues getting on the same page, the coaching staff obviously plays a part in that as well, but this piece focuses more on calls and situations specifically.

I’ll caveat this post at the start by saying it’s tough to be overly critical of defensive play-calling because so many coverages can look like other coverages and it can be impossible to know everything about a coverage without knowing the call and how it’s taught. With that being said, I’ll try my best to explain the criticisms of what I think the calls were for each clip I show.

The main situation I had a big issue with defensive play-calling was in the two-minute drill at the end of the first half. …