Washington is in a bind with an untimely COVID breakout

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Washington is 6-7 following their 27-20 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. The loss to Dallas was unfortunate, although recoverable, but a loss this upcoming week to the Philadelphia Eagles will significantly diminish their hopes of a second-straight playoff berth. Washington currently has 18 players on their reserve covid-19 list, including key contributors such as DT Jonathan Allen, DE Montez Sweat, DT Tim Settle, DT Matt Ioannidis, OT Cornelius Lucas, WR Cam Sims, and CB Kendall Fuller. Though there is a chance that some on the list may play Sunday, the possibility of so many players inactive for Washington makes last week’s game versus Dallas last week that more significant. 

Head Coach Ron Rivera is not sure how the outbreak started. “To be honest with you, it could be a number of things,” Rivera said in his Wednesday’s press conference. “Could have been the fact that we were all the way in traveling from Nevada back here. Everybody was in close proximity on the airplane, could have popped up at any point and then just spread. The way it’s spreading, you almost wonder if it’s the new variant.”

As Rivera continues to prepare for the Philadelphia Eagles, he is not allowing excuses to enter into the atmosphere. “We have guys that are on our practice squad,” Rivera said about practicing with so many players out. “We have guys that we’ve brought in and we started working with them. We were fortunate. We brought a guy back that had been in the system last year with us. We feel pretty good about it. We have another young man we brought in, a guy that we’re familiar with. So we feel pretty good about that as well. We’ll just continue to work and practice and get ourselves ready. We’ll show up on Sunday and see what happens.”

Quarterback Taylor Heinicke had a press conference Wednesday and spoke on the expanding COVID list as well:

“Yeah. It is what it is, you can’t control it. We’ve dealt with adversity all year this year, we’ve had guys go down and step up, it’s just furthermore for this week. We have confidence in all our guys and we coach all our guys up, whether it’s players or coaches. We feel comfortable with who we got. It should be an interesting one on Sunday but we feel good about it.” – Heinicke on how to process the growing COVID list.

Rivera and his coaching staff would be responsible for getting so many new or inexperienced players up to speed; he highlighted meetings and walkthroughs as the key to doing so. 

“Yeah. I mean, other than the meeting time, the walkthrough is probably one of the more important things as well. So, we’ve increased our walkthrough times just to really be able to hone in on what we’re trying to do. I know some of the coaches when they get an opportunity to get them outside because transmission is very low outside, but we’re still masking up. We’ll be able to get them outside and do a few extra things to try and get everybody up to speed.” – Rivera on what they have to do to get the new players up to speed. 

There are no updates on if games will be postponed, as Washington and a few other teams are going through severe outbreaks heading into the weekend. Although Washington is currently in the seventh seed in the NFC playoff race, a loss to the 6-7 Eagles knocks them out of the last wild card spot with a looming rematch with the Dallas Cowboys to follow next week.