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The Washington Football Team's defense was its main strength last season. While the defense was lauded by many for its stability, the team relied too heavily on them to get results.
Coming into the 2021 season, Washington's defense was tipped to be in the top five in the NFL. However, they have looked anything but that. Sitting with a 1-2 record and having just given up 43 points to Josh Allen and the Bills, the defense was torn apart.
Reasons why Washington's defense was overhyped
#3 Their 2020 schedule
While Washington's defense was good, looking at the opponents they came up against, the stats can be a little misleading.
First up came the Cowboys, who were just awful once Dak Prescott was injured. They came up against the Eagles and Giants twice, who are teams in a rebuilding phase.
Against the better teams they struggled. Arizona, Baltimore, Cleveland, LA Rams and the Seahawks all handed them losses. So out of their seven wins last year, four of them came against their division rivals and that is nothing to brag home.
Didnt get enough sacks
While the defense was hyped up by the NFL community, Washington did not get that many sacks on the year. Montez Sweat led the team in sacks with just ten and that ranked 12th in the league.
Chase Young, while getting a heap of quarterback pressures, only had 7.5 sacks as the team's second-best pass rusher. So while they were decent, being labeled a top-five defense was a bit of a stretch.
Their 7-9 record doesn't spell top quality defense. We have seen this year the team has given up 30 or more points in two of the three games played.
Did not get enough turnovers
This is the defense's bread and butter, and in 2020, the Washington Football Team only ranked seventh in takeaways with two other teams also on 23 turnovers.
Furthermore, there were only two takeaways that separated Washington from Atlanta in the 20th position. So they did not take the ball away as much as the other top defenses in the league.
Ron Rivera has a good defense at his disposal, but it was overhyped just a little with the franchise beating bad teams in its division and coming up short against the better teams in the league.
