The Commanders fell to 1-4-1 when the clock ran out on Monday night, but wide receiver Stefon Diggs chose to accentuate the positive in the locker room after the game.
Diggs's third quarter touchdown catch was part of a 14-point run that pared down a 20-point 49ers lead and gave the Commanders a chance to move ahead late in the fourth quarter. A long drive ended on fourth down in the red zone and the 49ers moved to 6-0 with a 23-17 lead, but Diggs said that the effort the Commanders showed and the fact that the 49ers are an outlier when it comes to their record are reasons to hold onto hope heading into their bye week.
"It’s still wide open," Diggs said, via Marshall Kramsky of WUSA. "Where we are and where the league is, it’s kinda interesting. A weird spot right now. Nobody’s kinda made it clear — that team we just played is a helluva football team. That’s one of those guys that’s gonna be in the running. . . . We played a decent game, we could’ve played a lot better. We were still in it, just like all these games we’ve been in the past couple weeks. We’ve been in it, we just gotta find a way to pull ‘em out."
Diggs isn't wrong about things being open in the NFC East. No team in the division has won a game since Week 4 and two of the other three teams in the division have lost their starting quarterbacks for the season, so the prospect of someone running away with things feels remote. That said, the Commanders have consistently fallen short in the biggest moments of games and that provides little reason to think they're going to suddenly go on a run of their own.
The door is open for Diggs and company to prove otherwise, however, and that's about all you can ask for after winning once in six weeks.