A Way Too Early Look at Washington’s 2021 Schedule
April 9, 2021
by Steve Thomas
It’s been a pretty quiet week for the Redskins Washington, so I thought it seemed like a good time to take a look at Washington’s opponents for the upcoming season. We don’t know the specific schedule yet, obviously, but we nonetheless have a pretty good idea about the level of difficulty of what the team will face in the 2022 season.
Beyond the regular NFC East opponents, Washington’s other home games are the New Orleans Saints, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Chargers, and Seattle Seahawks. The non-NFC East away games are the Carolina Panthers, Atlanta Falcons, Las Vegas Raiders, Denver Broncos, Green Bay Packers, and Buffalo Bills (game #17).
My initial thought on this list of opponents is . . . terror. This is a very tough slate of opponents. Washington is facing the Super Bowl champs, the other team in the last year’s Super Bowl, and both of the losing teams in each conference title game. Granted, the Saints are going to be a dramatically different team than last year without future hall of famer Drew Brees at the helm, but New Orleans is still going to be a quality team. In normal years, the Seahawks and the Packers would be bad enough. The only saving grace is that the two best teams, which are the Tom Bradys and the Chiefs, are both home games. Truly, though, the only games that look to be battles which Washington will be expected win are the Chargers, Panthers, Broncos, and maybe the Raiders. Every other game are ones in which Washington will not be favored.
The good news is that despite having to face the AFC West, Washington only has two long trips, one to Las Vegas and one to Denver. Fortunately, both the Chargers and the Seahawks have to make the cross-country trip to Washington. The rest of the team’s away games are easy travel days, with no other game taking place west of the Mississippi except Dallas, and that’s obviously a trip Washington is used to making.
For its part, the NFC East is always very unpredictable. It’s almost guaranteed to be a tougher run than 2020, simply because the division was one of the worst, maybe even the single worst, in NFL history last year. These four teams almost have to do better, by default, simply because being as bad as the division was last season for another year would be a statistical lightning strike. Dallas will get Dak Prescott back and will therefore almost assuredly be better; however, in my view, both the Giants and the Eagles are a mystery. Neither Daniel Jones nor Jalen Hurts have proven much or given hope that they can be big time franchise quarterbacks. The Eagles signed Joe Flacco, which . . . yawn, and didn’t do much else notable in free agency. The Giants definitely made some improvements with the addition of Kenny Golladay, who was probably the #1 receiver on the market, as well as corner Adoree’ Jackson, and a significant number of other defenders. How Washington will do against their NFC East foes is anyone’s guess at this point.
The point is that 2021 looks like it’s going to be tough sledding for Washington, so don’t be surprised if we see a team that plays better in many areas, franchise quarterback or no franchise quarterback, simply because they added talent this offseason and will be another year into Ron Rivera’s program. They may simultaneously tread water at best, if not regress, in terms of win-loss record, despite improvement in terms of performance.
The gamblers in Vegas agree with this analysis: most betting houses have Washington between +5000 and +6000 to win the Super Bowl, which is ranked around 26th or 27th, and ranked in the range of 13th or 14th to win the NFC. For the uninitiated, odds of +5000 or +6000 means that if you bet $100 and you win your bet, you get either $5000 or $6000 – in other words, Vegas sees Washington as a long shot. Time will tell, but the objective observer will probably agree given the sheer brutality of Washington’s schedule.
What do you think? Let me know in the comment section below.