The Washington Commanders’ defense started to snowball with about two minutes left in the first half of the game against the Dallas Cowboys.
Moments after Washington’s offense trekked 75 yards for a score, the Cowboys did the same in only a handful of plays: a quick in-route, a deep crosser, a post route and a bulldozing run up the middle to punch the ball into the end zone.
The Cowboys’ lead expanded to 10 points and went up from there, leaving the Commanders to sift through the wreckage of another blowout loss.
In 12 games this season, Washington’s defense has allowed 98 explosive plays.
Its once-stout pass rush has diminished, and the scheme the team tweaked a year ago appears ill-fitting for its personnel.
So the next morning, Coach Ron Rivera fired defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio and defensive backs coach Brent Vieselmeyer and announced he would take over the play-calling.
Then Rivera again began to tweak the system.
“I think shaking it up now gives us an opportunity to do some things differently and play some guys differently and see what’s going on and see if we can do things to make some things happen, in a positive sense,” Rivera said last Friday.
That day, Rivera spoke with every defensive assistant individually and then again collectively.
He went through a list of items detailing what he thought the defense needed to do to improve and asked the coaches to focus primarily on those things.
By the next morning, when the coaches reconvened, they put together a plan for the defense based on Rivera’s discussions with them.
That plan? Trimming the defense by eliminating some rules that have slowed some players down or forced them to overthink on the field.
“They were all prepared. They had presentations ready to go, all based on what we had talked about,” Rivera said of his assistants.
“ … As we started transitioning on Monday in preparation for Miami, we were really able to go into this, and everybody knew their role.
