Commanders have a simple rule for stopping 'game wreckers'

The Washington Commanders and Green Bay Packers will be featured in the season debut of Thursday Night Football, a matchup of two playoff teams from last year, both looking to go 2-0 before the weekend.

For the Commanders, over 200 rushing yards carried them to victory over the New York Giants in Week 1, while the Packers leaned on a physically dominant run defense.

One new member of that defense, edge defender Micah Parsons, contributed to the Green Bay win, and Washington is well aware of his ability as a ‘game wrecker’ regardless of the uniform he’s wearing these days.

'You Don't Let Game Wreckers Wreck the Game'

Asked if Parsons is someone who requires a lot of attention, quarterback Jayden Daniels said, “Yeah, he got paid a lot of money, so I would think for a reason, for sure.”

“You don't let game wreckers wreck the game, and you have to keep an eye on him, and like I said, he got paid a lot of money for a reason. He is a very good player,” Daniels continued.

He also commented on the entire unit, highlighting their speed and ability to fly to and around the ball, saying, “If you saw the last game, man, they're flying around. They're very sound up front.”

Green Bay Packers defensive end Micah Parsons (1). | Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Respect for the Speed

As they tend to be, Daniels and his head coach were in agreement on that fact, with Dan Quinn telling us earlier in the day, “The thing that I was super impressed with was the speed of their defense... adding Micah to that. So, it was the speed of the D-line, linebackers through the safeties, like that battery inside. And when you have that kind of speed on defense, that also can lead to some takeaways.”

The Strategic Balance

While Daniels simplified things, saying you just can’t let game wreckers like Parsons do what they do best, Quinn got a little more detailed about it, saying, “Micah and other great players, you want to know where they are... You want to make sure there's a plan to go into it... when there's just one player that stops and says, ‘okay, this is what we want to do’, that's easier than when there's multiple people in different locations... You want to have enough balance in how you do things to make sure that one player doesn't get too much attention but also enough that they don't wreck the game.”

There’s a trend there with how the Commanders are talking about Parsons, and it’s the reason the Packers traded for him and paid him as much as they did. The hope, however, is that the game wrecker Washington is bringing on offense will get the chance to wreck whatever plans Green Bay has of ruining the team’s visit to historic Lambeau Field on Thursday night.

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