As soon as the game ended in the Washington Commanders’ Week 11 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles conversations started shifting toward the long break and how much time the team had before it could get rid of that bad feeling against the Dallas Cowboys.

Now, following another Commanders loss – to the hands of those Cowboys – and even more bad feelings stemming from it, while some are talking about if this team can get right against the Tennessee Titans it’s going to be critical they take their time to fully digest their third-straight loss first.

Washington receiver Terry McLaurin made a point of emphasizing this fact in his postgame conversation with local media following the Week 12 loss.

“I don’t want to look too far to Sunday because Sunday’s going to take care of itself next week,” McLaurin said. “We got to get some things fixed in the film room, so we’re already looking forward to looking at the film and just having ‘Tell the Truth Monday’ like (head coach Dan Quinn) says. I mean we all got to look at ourselves in the mirror and figure out what we can do better.”

To McLaurin’s point, as a team the Commanders have to get better, especially on offense where the unit failed to score on two possessions starting in the Dallas end of the field after defensive and special teams plays set the group up for early success.

Across the organization Sunday night the message of everyone coming together to fix the issues was common. From coaches to players the unit is focused on fixing the unit, but it is going to take some hard-focused individual advancement to do that as well.

“I just want to continue to try to control what I can and keep making sure that we have the right attitude and approach as we come into practice and the games,” McLaurin said. “Trying to make a play when the ball comes to me and just controlling that aspect of my job, and I try to provide a spark when I can. …As an offense, we have to find a better job of staying on the field. I think that was a strength of ours in the first half of the season and it’s not right now. So we got to figure out how to get that back to being a strength of our offense because when we’re tempo, when we’re staying on the field, it allows us to keep the playbook open and continue to put pressure on the defense.”

McLaurin also said nobody is hanging their heads on this team right now. That they still have confidence in what they can do individually and as a team.

While that wasn’t physically true on Sunday after the game – there were plenty of heads hanging in the home locker room after the loss – it is true from a mentality standpoint. Even the multiple guys who put the loss fully on their own shoulders, kicker Austin Seibert and safety Jeremy Reaves just to name a couple, echoed the sentiment that they are and can be better.

So don’t expect this Washington squad to give up on itself even as some start to move it out of the competitive conversations it was in just weeks ago. And if every Commanders player on the roster and coach on the staff takes the same approach McLaurin is conveying here, then there’s another chance to see the old production come back in Week 13 – when the time comes.

Stick with CommanderGameday and the Locked On Commanders podcast for more FREE coverage of the Washington Commanders throughout the 2024 season.

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Israel is potentially days away from a cease-fire deal with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Israeli ambassador to the United States said, following a new round of shuttle diplomacy by a senior envoy for the outgoing Biden administration.

“We are close to a deal,” Michael Herzog told Israel’s Army Radio on Monday. “It could happen within days.”

On a quiet Sunday, here’s a fun one. Denzel Washington is telling The Times that he spent a lot of the ‘90s making movies solely for the paycheck.

After Malcolm X I made some real clunkers. Look them up — I won’t say their names…They are all in the 1990s. But I was earning. I had responsibilities.

So, after “Malcolm X,” which is post-1992 … Denzel doesn’t mention any particular titles, but he does ask us to look them up — don’t mind if I do.

One look at his filmography, and it’s clear to me that the paycheck gigs might have been “The Pelican Brief,” “Virtuosity, “Fallen,” “The Bone Collector,” “The Preacher’s Wife,” and “The Siege.”

It wasn’t all bad. In the middle of all those clunkers, Denzel still managed to star in a few well-reviewed films, including “Philadelphia,” “Devil in A Blue Dress,” “Crimson Tide” and “He Got Game.”

We all know Denzel takes his craft seriously, and I just can’t blame him for doing “paycheck” movies. He evens tells The Times that it’s just part of the business. The reciprocal, unsaid deal that gets made between talent and studio.

In life, you learn, earn and then you return — as in give back. So if your life is 90 years long, up until 30 you learn and from 30 to 60 you earn. So in that era I was earning. With a great agent, my career built into making money and so the earning kicked in and then life also kicked in, with bills, four kids and a house.

While we’re at it, what’s the greatest performance Denzel has graced us with that isn’t called “Malcolm X”? I’ll give you some of the more obvious contenders: “American Gangster,” “Glory,” “Training Day,” “The Hurricane,” “Flight.” His most underrated work might be found in 2017’s “Roman J. Israel.”