Washington Football Team: Scoring Trends Since Losing Ryan Fitzpatrick

The 2-5 Washington Football Team have had a challenging 2021 season. Since the beginning of the year, they have had their obstacles, considering they lost starting QB Ryan Fitzpatrick in the season’s first game.

BetMGM’s latest NFL odds have Washington at +12500 to win the NFC and +25000 to win the Super Bowl.

Do they have any chance to bounce back and put up some points? First, let’s see what they have done since Fitzpatrick went down.

Taylor Heinicke Stats

When Fitzpatrick suffered a hip injury, the next man up was QB Taylor Heinicke. He is best known around the NFL as the guy that took over for QB Alex Smith last year and went down valiantly in last year’s playoff loss to Tampa Bay.

In that game, Heinicke went 26/44 with 306 passing yards, a touchdown pass, and an interception. He also was Washington’s leading rusher in that game with 46 rushing yards and a rushing touchdown.

This is the first year that he has held the starting QB role in more than one game. With this opportunity, he has a 64.3 completion percentage, 1,658 passing yards, ten touchdown passes, and seven interceptions in six starts.

Those stats put him 22nd in the NFL among quarterbacks in passing yards, and 16th in touchdown passes.

Ryan Fitzpatrick’s Past

To compare Fitzpatrick to Heinicke, you can only go back to Fitzpatrick’s past years since this was the first year that he was playing for Washington.

How does he stack up compared to Heinicke? Well, Fitzpatrick started seven games for the Dolphins in 2020 and played for nine games total.

He had a 68.5 completion percentage in that season, along with a 68.5 completion percentage, 2,091 passing yards, 13 touchdown passes, and eight interceptions. That was good enough to be 30th in the NFL in passing yards, and 27th in touchdown passes.

However, the main difference came in wins. Fitzpatrick went 4-3 last year vs. Heinicke’s 2-4 record this year (Fitzpatrick started Week 1).

Washington Football Team’s Past

Since neither Fitzpatrick nor Heinicke started a regular-season game last year for the Washington Football Team, another critical comparison would be to last year’s starters. During the 2020 season, Washington had quarterbacks Alex Smith, Dwayne Haskins, and Kyle Allen split starts.

Of those three, the one that did the best was Smith just because Washington went 5-1 in his games started. In that stretch, Smith had 1,582 passing yards, six touchdown passes and won the Comeback Player of the Year award.

Overall, the Washington quarterbacks had 3,768 passing yards, 16 touchdown passes, and 16 interceptions.

More Rushing

Since Fitzpatrick went down, there has been a slight uptick in rushing attempts, but those are not turning into touchdowns. Last year, Washington averaged 25 rushing attempts per game, and this year it is 26.

However, last year, Washington had 18 rushing touchdowns to help the passing game, while this year’s team has just five rushing touchdowns through seven games.

Washington averages 19 more rushing yards per game in 2021 than they did in 2020. However, they run the ball on 43% of their plays, so If Washington wants to put more points on the board, they need to figure out a way to have their running backs finish drives so that their quarterbacks aren’t forced to throw the ball into tight coverage inside the red zone.

Will Washington Pick It Up?

These are some of the more notable scoring trends of the Washington Football Team before and after Fitzpatrick went down. Does he need to return, or can Taylor Heinicke produce some wins?

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