LOVERRO: A win short on style but long on establishing the team’s hard-hitting identity

OPINION:

Dan Quinn saw it all Sunday in a hard-fought 21-6 win over the Washington Commanders’ NFL East rivals, the New York Giants.

In front of a legitimate sold-out crowd of 64,544 at Northwest Stadium, his team was sloppy, mistake-prone and often failed to execute.

But, according to the Commanders coach, he also saw the most important thing he was looking for — his team’s identity.

Before the season opener, Quinn told reporters that he would be watching Sunday to see how strong one key element of the team’s identity — toughness — had taken root and developed after last season’s surprising 12-5 performance in just his first year with a team that had gone 4-13 the year before.

“As we’re gearing up for the season to begin, my thoughts really have been, they keep coming back to identity and as fun as last year was, I don’t think an identity is fully formed in one year,” Quinn said on Friday.

“And you add players and that fully develops over time. But beginning this Sunday, it’s about how we play, and I like to be bold and aggressive and be strong in these winning time moments that we work but that has to be constant and we need to live it over and over as we’re going through it. And so that’s what I want to see this week, getting that identity together and how we want to get down all the time. And so, I want to, still, this week see it and every week from here after, but that’s the one thought that keeps coming into my mind through camp and into the start of the season. And you just want to see that over and over.”

He saw enough of it against the Giants to feel good about his team moving forward. 

“All week you heard me talk about play style and identity and if we get that part right, the other things can come and that’s what I was looking for first,” Quinn said.

“There’s plenty to clean up (take your pick — how about 12 penalties for 89 yards) but I wanted to make sure identity, toughness, physicality, that is how we get down and that is how we play.”

Sometime,s who you are can be good enough — at least against a Giants team that, with losing records in six of their last seven seasons, has an identity of losing, an identity Washington was very familiar with until quarterback Jayden Daniels arrived last year and became the sun by which all Commanders planets revolve around.

They’ll need more than identity when they travel to Green Bay to play the Packers Thursday night. 

But it was enough to get by Sunday, with a tough improved defense that held the Giants to zero touchdowns and the contributions of newcomer Deebo Samuels and rookie running back Jacory Croskey-Merritt — known as “Bill” to his friends.

Make no mistake — this team’s identity and all that goes with it primarily rests on the shoulders of Daniels, who did enough to keep a good Giants defense from causing damage, running for 68 yards on 11 carries and completing 19 of 30 passes for 233 yards, one touchdown, and, as has become a strong part of his own identity, no turnovers.

He was far from happy, though, with his offense’s play. “We were sloppy,” Daniels said.

But the Commanders walked away with a win thanks to the difference-makers — a defense led by an outstanding line performance by veteran Deron Payne and two newcomers, Javon Kinlaw and Deatrich Wise Jr., and two more new faces on offense, Samuel and Croskey-Merritt.

Washington’s defense limited New York to just 231 total yards of offense — about half of the 432 yards the Commanders rolled up.

Samuel had seven catches for 77 yards, plus one dynamic 19-yard touchdown run. Croskey-Merritt, the seventh-round pick out of Parts Unknown, rushed for 82 yards on 10 carries, including his first regular-season NFL touchdown.

Washington felt so strongly about Croskey-Merritt that they didn’t dress running back Chris Rodriguez for the game. Last week, Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury joked, “It’s a big-hype train for ol’ Bill.”

The train left the station Sunday, pulling a load of identity.

• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.