Lo, Gravity

Weeks 3-5

In one way, it was a strange feeling. For the first time this fall, I was bumming around on a Sunday without the residual guilt of not watching at least some of a Washington Commanders game. Every weekend so far this season, I’d promised myself I’d wake up and get the important things — and here “important” is relative, but let’s say it includes breakfast, the ritual phone call home, some reading by my front window that now pours light in thanks to the city’s recent inexplicable “tree surgery” out front, that kind of thing — out of the way before queueing up an illegal feed bedside or hitting a nearby dive somewhere and hunching over a pint peering up vacantly at a hi-def slog of a sport for four hours; every weekend, I’d mostly failed. It was a relief not to have what’s supposed to be a fun time but almost never is hanging over you as the weekend comes to a close.

In another way, though, it was a familiar feeling. The relief was already processing because the Washington Commanders had suffered their third straight loss three days before.

The team’s first two Ls of the year were contrasting styles in how not to win. Going into Week 3, Washington hadn’t beaten Buffalo since 2015, was 6-10 all-time against the Bills, and the last two times the teams met were hardly classics. As it turned out, recent history held up: In playing a team renamed for a third time in three matchups over the last four years, Buffalo’s 37-3 shellacking of the Comms at FedEx Field was never really in doubt, Joey Slye’s desperate 51-yard field goal with 46 seconds left the lone saving grace from a shutout and a polite reminder that this team still knew how to lose in a comfortably dilapidated way. With the way Buffalo’s Jekyll and Hyde season has gone, though, you couldn’t assume that going into the game; after all, the Comms had stolen a couple of wins to start the season in ways they would’ve previously found them easy to lose.

Instead, the O-line was horrific, allowing nine sacks on Sam Howell and leaking Buffalo defensemen like a sieve so much, Sam ended up adding four interceptions and a paltry 170 yards on 19-for-29 passing good enough for a 41.5 QB rating; he may as well have been guarding himself for all the protection he was given. After the thrillers against Arizona and Denver, the thoroughness of the defeat felt like a reset. It was time to get serious.

Philadelphia was the flip side not just of the Buffalo loss, but also of those first two thrillers — a 34-31 defeat in overtime against what might be the NFL’s best team. Jahan Dotson’s catch amid three Eagles in the last second of the game was a fleeting moment where you thought, wait a minute, this team might actually be as good as we thought and things might actually keep breaking our way and that Buffalo bummer might actually have been an anomaly; who, after all, finally broke Philly’s 8-0 start to 2022? And right up until Howell’s incomplete to Terry McLaurin in OT on 3rd and 5, you still could’ve convincingly believed that (and you definitely could’ve if his feet had stayed in). You could’ve even conceivably believed it on 4th and 1 as the Eagles marched up the other way. And despite how good NFL kickers are, 54 yards wasn’t nothing for Jake Elliott; it could’ve sailed wide right and even looked like it would for a second or two. These are moments you might send a prayer up if you’re inclined to that sort of thing.

That faith, of course, would not be rewarded. It was the kind of groaner you point to after a season is over and say one of two things, depending on how it ends. If it ends well, you say,

“That was the turning point. That’s when I knew they were really gonna come out swinging the next week.”

If it doesn’t, you say,

“That was the turning point. That’s when I knew this team was garbage.”

Which will it be in 2023? I can tell you this much: I don’t know how great I feel about the Washington Commanders after last Thursday night’s performance against the Bears at home. This is what I imagine it was like rooting for Washington in The Before Times: Going up against a winless Chicago squad riding on the crest of Dick Butkus’ angel wings — who, by the way, died 2,000 miles from any place the Bears have considered forcing taxpayers to spend money on a new stadium to replace Soldier Field, which does not need replacing — you’d have thought the Commanders would come out looking for blood to set the record straight and get back on the right side of .500.

Instead, you got a more grotesque version of the Philly game, where they were basically invisible as a team in the first half while Justin Fields, DJ Moore and Khalil Herbert took turns lighting up the defense and looked like they were actually having fun out there. If you’d asked a Bears fan what fun was before Thursday, they’d probably have given you a wistful stare into the distance and some faint, half-recalled memory of Julius Peppers, Jim McMahon or Dick Butkus, age depending. They are a tired and resigned (but still polite in that Midwestern sort of way) people, far more tired and resigned even than Commanders fans, who in the grand scheme of things have only had something real to complain about since the Seattle WTO protests, give or take an RG III. Is it worse to reach one Super Bowl in the last 35 years and your only TD is on the first play of the game, or is it worse to have three Super Bowls to your credit but none in the last 30?

As Kevin Sheehan’s callers definitely weren’t saying Friday morning: It depends.

We’re five games in riding a three-game losing streak. Things could still turn around. There’s a lot of potential here that feels like it’s only being unlocked intermittently, the rhythms of the games varying too wildly to be confirmed by longtime observers. The wins have been similar, the defeats dissimilar. Up next is a Falcons team whose two losses have come against the formidable — and here we should all pause a second to absorb this — Detroit Lions and Jacksonville Jaguars, each division-leading teams. Atlanta’s only convincing win this year was the season opener against Carolina. They could easily be 1-4 instead of 3-2, just as Washington could be 0-5 or 3-2.

You can see the alternate histories taking shape, the boats starting to drift apart parallel to one another, the limbs starting to shear off from the power of the saw. The evolution of the burgundy and gold continues apace. Which way will it drift next? How many branches need be sheared? And what if it felt like we didn’t already know?