Heading into Thursday night’s battle between the Washington Commanders and Chicago Bears, few experts gave the Bears a chance to win their first contest of the season. The Commanders were favored by six points and had been coming off two losses in a row. This was a team that had plenty of hunger to taste victory again too.
Just not as much as the Bears, who had lost 14 games in a row dating back to last season. It had been since October 24, 2022, before the Bears had won. That’s nearly a full calendar year.
Once the game got underway, it was obvious who the better team was at least for that night. The Bears promptly marched down the field with a six-play, 75-yard touchdown drive that took just under three minutes.
The Bears didn’t exactly slow down either, running the score up to 27-3 before the Commanders woke up and started playing. After halftime, the Commanders were able to narrow the deficit some but ultimately ended up handing who many regarded as the worst team in the NFL their first win of the season in a crushing 40-20 defeat at home in front of 63,727 fans at FedEx Field.
it didn’t take long for Magic Johnson, part owner of the Commanders, to chime in on his team’s performance on Thursday night. Needless to say, the former athlete was disgusted by what he saw.
“Tonight the Commanders played with no intensity or fire. We didn’t compete in the first half and got down 27-3 heading into halftime. It was too big of a hole to climb out of and that is why we ended up losing 40-20.”
Magic Johnson, part owner of the Washington Commanders on his team’s play
On Friday, with a bit more time to reflect, coach Ron Rivera was asked about whether he was considering any personnel changes, with the Commanders sitting at 2-3, coming off their third consecutive loss and their biggest defeat of the season.
Washington Commanders coach Ron Rivera“No, no. We’ve got 12 left to play. There’s plenty of football left. And we haven’t had an opportunity to finish working on things I talked about last night — we’ve still got several things to go through.”
As Coach Rivera mentioned, it’s a long season, and one game – win or lose- does not define how good or bad of a football team you have. Even if millions of fans just witnessed it in in primetime.
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