Logan Paulsen, a guest on the Kevin Sheehan Show podcast, Monday was asked directly to start the dialog, “Why did they (Commanders) lose last night?”
“Obviously, a question like that is multi-factorial, but I am going to start off with Scott (Turner), and the offensive staff got away from who they wanted to be and what they have been offensively.”
Paulsen felt the staff had watched film of how the Eagles scored big in their easy win over the Giants the previous week and attempted to incorporate that into the Commanders offense Sunday.
“I think it was a travesty in some ways that Brian Robinson only ended up with 17 carries.” Sheehan quickly countered, “12 carries, 12 carries.”
“The running game was being super-efficient, and I feel like they outsmarted themselves… that was one thing that really stuck out to me offensively. Obviously, the two turnovers were gigantic.” Paulsen distinguished between the two fumbles stating the first one was certainly not on Taylor Heinicke, but the last one certainly is.
As a north-south back, Brian Robinson’s leg drive at contact is extremely tough to deal with. Dude can just churn out tough second-level yards.
— Ian Cummings (@IC_Draft) December 19, 2022
“It felt like the offense had regressed back to what they were before Minnesota. A lot of dropbacks, a lot of off-gun runs, as opposed to a down hill attacking style, which they have become so good at the last few weeks, and the offensive line has gotten good at…It surprised me they came out departing from that.”
Paulsen illustrated by pointing to a 3rd & 3 in the red zone in which the call was a toss to Curtis Samuel. “I thought, man, you have one of the most efficient power runners in the NFL; why is he not on the field in this situation?… Give it to your best back, and let him make the play for you.”
“It’s easy for me to be a Monday morning quarterback and I am sure Scott had some good intel on why he wanted to call that in that situation.” But Paulsen continued that he thought that play call hurt more then helped.
“I think Washington is the more talented team, and that is one of the reasons why this is so frustrating. You want this team to make the playoffs, make a push. This is the game they had to win against a team they should have beaten.”
A determining factor right now is Daniel Jones is playing a little better than Taylor Heinicke right now. I think it was schematics and them (Giants) making plays when they needed to make them quite frankly.”
