In other sports, it's often said that a playoff series doesn't really begin until somebody loses a game at home.
That's when you find out who you are: whether you're a team that thrives on adversity or one that crumbles from it. You'll figure out if a team is built to silence the doubters or to vindicate them.
With the entire NFL regular season consisting of only 17 games, it could be said that a team's season doesn't start until after it takes its first bad loss of any kind.
For the Washington Commanders, the season begins this weekend.