OPINION:
The Washington senior citizen group arrived in Green Bay for its weekly outing — maybe take in a museum, lunch at Olive Garden and a visit to Lambeau Field to pick up some cheesehead souvenirs and get a little exercise with its young hosts.
The group members left Green Bay like an Atlantic City casino had cleaned them out and then rolled while waiting to get on the bus to head home.
The Green Bay Packers — the youngest team in the NFL — roughed up the oldest team in the league, the Washington Commanders, by a score of 27-18 on Thursday night at Lambeau Field.
The score doesn’t reflect how the Packers dominated the game. I think the Commanders got a senior discount.
It was hard not to think about roster age while watching the Commanders lose, putting them at 1-1 early in the season. Compared to the Packers, the Commanders looked slow and confused.
Maybe they were tired, playing on short rest Thursday night after their 21-6 win over the New York Giants just four days earlier. They had to turn around and travel to Green Bay.
According to AARP, “rest and recovery are critical … to maintain cognitive function, manage health conditions, and support physical well-being.”
Even the Commanders’ fountain of youth, second-year quarterback Jayden Daniels, seemed befuddled, handing in the worst performance of his young NFL career. And if Daniels is confused, all the grand plans to build on last year’s surprising 12-5 record are lost.
Fortunately for Washington, not everyone in the league has a Micah Parsons (we know the Dallas Cowboys don’t).
Parsons led a Green Bay defense that pressured Daniels nearly 50% of the time he dropped back.
Youth didn’t serve Washington’s No. 1 draft pick, rookie right tackle Josh Conerly, well.
Daniels’ options were severely limited not just by the Packers’ pressure, but their coverage.
He completed just 24 of 42 passes for 200 yards. To his credit and one of his signature talents — no interceptions. But his performance was so startling that there has been speculation that Daniels may have been hurt.
Tight end Zach Ertz proved to be a safety valve for Daniels, catching six passes for 64 yards and one touchdown. Terry McLaurin had five catches, but only for 48 yards. He told reporters after the game that Green Bay’s defense was well-coached.
Read between the lines there, and it could be an indictment of Dan Quinn and his coaching staff, who had no answers for the Packers’ game plan.
For the second week in a row, Quinn talked about “identity” after the game. This time, though, it wasn’t positive. “I just want to make sure our attitude, our style of finishing, is right, and that’s what I want to make sure we can get done,” he told reporters. “It just wasn’t to the spot I’d like that to be at.”
Who was responsible for that is up for debate. The Packers may have been most responsible.
Green Bay has a talented roster that has been methodically built by an organization that did not go through the years of dysfunctional upheaval that Washington has suffered. The Packers have had just five losing seasons over the last 30 years, with only three quarterbacks — Hall of Famer Brett Favre, future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers and now Jordan Love, who led them to the playoffs in his first two years as a starter. Before that, Love sat for three years behind Rodgers, who sat for three years behind Favre.
Washington hasn’t had such luxury, with 17 losing seasons and 23 starting quarterbacks over that same 30-year period. So when Quinn and general manager Adam Peters arrived and inherited the years of damage, they were forced to build a roster on speed dial because Daniels’ remarkable rookie season leading to the NFC title game opened up all sorts of possibilities. That led to the roster full of older veterans to try to take advantage of Daniels’ talents early during his rookie contract, before they have to pay him a billion dollars.
For the most part, it has worked. Last week it didn’t, and there was a price to pay for that — the loss of at least two valuable veterans, running back Austin Ekeler and defensive end Deitrich Wise Jr., both out with season-ending injuries.
The reality is that no reasonable person would have looked at this game and seen a Commanders victory, no matter how lofty expectations might have been, with the Packers coming off a strong win over the defending NFC North division champion Detroit Lions, plus the short rest going on the road.
Washington would have been better off staying home and taking in some local dinner theater.
• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.
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