The Washington Commanders got their first takeaway in their first win of the season.
It came at the hands of the secondary, but not in the way you'd expect it to as Commanders cornerback Benjamin St-Juste forced a fumble that was recovered by safety Jeremy Chinn.
The takeaway was one of what Washington plans on being several in its quest to establish an identity of hunting the ball, and it proved critical as the Giants were driving down the field looking for a score that could have ultimately given their team the Week 2 win.
"Whoever wins the turnover battle usually wins the game. So that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to stack on these turnover, the forced fumble, interception, all that stuff because that switched the momentum to the game and gives a lot of big boost to our offense," St-Juste told Pro Football Talk's Donna Hopkins in the locker room following his team's first win of the season. "And then I feel like our communication was better. It wasn't quite perfect, but it was better than last week. So we were trying to work on the improvement week in, week out, and the energy was there. We was running, we was tackling from first quarter, fourth quarter, and all things that we said that we wanted to improve from week one that we didn't really do. We did it in this week. Now new problems arise and we're going to fix those going to week three, and every week is going to be like, we're going to be stacking good plays and good games on top of each other until we become the defense that we said we want to be."
A new problem arising for Week 3 is Cincinnati Bengals receiver Ja'Marr Chase who may be the most singularly explosive receiver the Commanders will face all season.
Despite bringing in a large amount of receptions in Week 2, New York receiver Malik Nabers wasn't able to take over the game like Chase has at times in his career. So for Washington, this challenge is a new one for the 2024 group of defenders under the guiding hand of coordinator Joe Whitt Jr.
As St-Juste and his teammates continue to hunt for takeaway opportunities into Week 3, improving upon an already improved ability to communicate clearly will become even more important than it has been the past two weeks.
