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Washington Football Team Opens NFL Season With Two Home Games

Two in a row at home to open the season can be a good thing. If you win. It can also be a very bad thing, for multiple reasons.

Chris Russell

ASHBURN -- The Washington Football Team is set to open the 2021 season with two straight games at FedExField and a super early short week to go along with it.

As CBS announced way too early on Wednesday morning, Washington is hosting Justin Herbert and the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 1 on September 12 with a 1 p.m. ET kick-off.

READ MORE: WFT Opens with a Charge!

It's a matchup of two rookie standouts from a year ago in Herbert and Chase Young, while also going outside the division and conference for both teams, which was surprising, to say the least.

What could be just as surprising is Washington will open up with a second-straight home game for the first time since 2016. Hopefully the results will be better than an 0-2 start like it was then against Pittsburgh and Dallas, respectively. 

The second straight FedExField affair will come up on a short week with the second Thursday Night Football game of the year against division rival, the New York Giants.  Last season, Joe Judge and the N.Y. Giants swept Washington on the way to a 6-10 finish.

Washington will play its shortest week of the year when their bodies are relatively fresh which is always a good thing, resulting from an evil situation.

It also means that WFT very likely won't be participating in a Thanksgiving night Thursday game as was feared.

Washington won't be in Dallas this year for Turkey Day because it's an AFC opponent taking on the Cowboys, a stage that WFT desperately craves.

NFL teams are only required to play one Thursday game on their schedule, so the Week 2 TNF matchup against the Giants would seem to eliminate that scenario.

Perhaps the bigger issue is that Washington opening up with two straight games at home. They likely will be favored to win, which could be a good thing to set up a 2-0 start.

Assuming they win, which is not an overly safe assumption despite a successful offseason and NFL Draft.

It also means that out of their remaining 15 games on the schedule, nine will be on the road.

Nine-out-of-15 is going to end in one of two very likely scenarios: a three-game road trip or the last two games of the season on the road.

Obviously, neither scenario has to be that way but the odds have strongly increased and that could be extremely problematic.

Washington plays nine road games this year under the NFL's new 17-game regular-season schedule.

READ MORE: Our Sure to be WRONG Mock Schedule

Per Nicki Jhabvala of the Washington Post, the team also set to visit the Denver Broncos in Week 8 of the season to end the month of October. 

Washington will reportedly close out the year at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. against the Giants in January.

WashingtonFootballSI will remain up to date with the remainder of the 2021 schedule and continue to update throughout the day.  

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Chris Russell
CHRIS RUSSELL

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