Anatomy of a disaster: A deep dive into Washington Commanders' defensive collapse

When it's 2nd-and-6 in a scoreless game, just about anything can happen. On Thursday night against the Green Bay Packers, the Washington Commanders' defense, which included giving up a 57-yard catch and run to tight end Tucker Kraft, set the tone for how the evening was going to play out.

"The big plays were really the story of the game," Commanders head coach Dan Quinn would go on to say after the game. "Down the field plays were the big difference."

Washington gave up several explosive passes downfield, many to Tucker, who set a single-game career high before halftime, but that one play, the first of its kind in Week 2, really got it all started.

"I'm expecting big things from Tuck this year," Packers quarterback Jordan Love said after the game. And while he and his squad certainly deserve plenty of credit, there were fundamental flaws in the Commanders' approach that opened the door for the tight end to have his career night.

The Play That Told the Story

Take that first play, for example. On it, Green Bay comes out in a '13 personnel' look, with one running back and three tight ends in the formation. Two of the tight ends are on the offense's right side and one is on the left, all of them are inline meaning they are attached to the offensive line and down in three-point stances because of it.

The one receiver is in motion at the snap, moving left to right, giving Love three immediate options to the defense's left side. When the running back enters the flat to that same side, while Washington is in zone coverage, it becomes clear pretty early that they just don't have enough men to match up with what the Packers are doing.

At the snap, defensive end Deatrich Wise Jr., seeing the running back escaping to the flat, takes a looping approach to his pass rush halfway between trying to prevent a quick pass to the back before eventually turning upfield to try and get pressure on Love. Because of this, Wise is never truly a threat to Love, or the success of the play.

As the two tight ends aligned to the right head up field they both get past the middle section of the Washington zone, putting safety Quan Martin in a no-win situation where he has to keep the lid on both. He follows the first man through the zone, tight end Luke Musgrave, leaving Kraft to run in the open field as linebacker Bobby Wagner points to him telling a safety who is no longer there to pick him up.

Watching Love's progression, if Martin anticipates Kraft coming free up the seam and stays home to pick him up, the quarterback simply would have dropped the ball in to Musgrave who would have had a similarly big play.

The Green Bay Packers against the Washington Commanders. | Wm. Glasheen/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

A Flaw in the Scheme

The flaw, it would seem, comes in the form of how the Commanders approached matching with the Packers' attack, known for challenging teams vertically using plenty of weapons to do so.

Dropping three men into the deep part of the field as part of their Cover-3 defense while Green Bay sent four downfield doomed Washington to surrendering the explosive play, no matter what decision the players made, and it happened time and time again. It didn't look the same every time, but too many times the Commanders simply didn't have a defense to cover what their opponent threw at them.

Love also said after the game that he attacked based on the looks the Commanders gave him, "trying to take advantage when we get a favorable coverage or matchup." It's what every offense aims to do, honestly, but on this night, Washington gave him so many to take advantage of it looked too easy for most of the contest. He continued by saying they had "opportunities to run by them and take some big shots," based on "some of the coverages they were running."

On the outside looking in, it's a simple math problem. If the opponent has four receivers downfield and you have three defenders, then there's going to be a guy wide open. In operation, while planning your defense, it is never that simple. And it isn't just that Green Bay defeated the Commanders' Cover-3 looks. They also struck big against Cover-1, man coverage, and others.

A Self-Inflicted Defeat?

Sometimes you just get beat, that is the unfortunate truth inside any competitive arena. But sometimes your defeats are self-prescribed, and when there exist no contingency plans to identify what to do should your weaknesses be exposed, the experience can be significant and traumatizing. When you realize that Love actually missed several other deep opportunities, and even had one explosive touchdown overturned by a non-impactful penalty, things could have gone much worse for Washington on Thursday night.

They can also go much better for the Commanders next Sunday, and the next time they see the Packers, if the lessons are carried forward, and the mistakes not repeated in the future.

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