Finlay: Hard to see bright spots in dreadful Washington game originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
The Washington Football Team played its final preseason game Saturday night. Kinda.
The actual gameplay was terrible and virtually none of the team’s most important players took the field. Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chase Young, Terry McLaurin, Montez Sweat. None of them played. Neither did Antonio Gibson or Brandon Scherff or Landon Collins or Logan Thomas.
Considering all the players sitting out of this contest, the baseline for this game was low. And still, Washington underperformed.
Listen, it’s the preseason and Washington did not play their best players. The recipe was ripe for an ugly result, and this contest will have no bearing on the regular season kickoff in two weeks. But man it was ugly.
Stock Up
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Literally Nobody
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No major injuries – Washington did not play its most important players and got shellacked by Baltimore. The flip side, however, is that Ravens RB J.K. Dobbins went down with a knee injury in the first quarter and looks like he could miss extended time. That’s the worst-case scenario.
Stock Down
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Peyton Barber – Washington’s short yardage specialist did not look like a capable feature back. He got the start and the early work against Baltimore and the results did little to spoil the idea of Barber’s ineffectiveness. He rushed four times for 12 yards.
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Jaret Patterson – The best story of training camp took a step back Saturday night as he ran twice for -1 yard. More concerning were the drops for Patterson in the pass game. He was targeted six times and only made three grabs.
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Kyle Allen – He completed fewer than 50% of his passes and had some ugly throws.
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Torry McTyer – Went down with a concussion in the first half and it’s unclear how that will impact his roster status with roster cuts looming on Tuesday. Most importantly, you hope he’s okay.
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Almost everyone that played on defense – For the vast majority of this game the Ravens did whatever they wanted offensively. At halftime Baltimore had more than 110 rush yards and the Ravens held a 23-3 lead. Baltimore finished with 492 total yards. Washington couldn’t get stops, at all. Seriously, look at this:
Listen, this game was awful. It means nothing when Washington takes on the Chargers on Sept. 12. Try to erase this from your memory.