WASHINGTON — You’ve heard it from Redskins players — most notably from defensive lineman Chris Baker — all season: These Redskins are a different team from years past.

The results, which has them atop the NFC East by a tiebreaker with a chance to take a full-game lead with a win over Dallas Monday night, would agree. Mediocre division or not, Washington is doing a better job of competing each week.

Last year’s 4-12 Redskins ended their season with a negative-137 point differential — that’s a minus-8.6 points per-game average. This year, Washington, like the Eagles and Cowboys, have a negative point differential again. In the negative by 26 points through 11 games, the Redskins are battling an average deficit of 2.4 points per game. Still good for first in the division. For now.

But what brought on such a dynamic change in the Redskins’ performance this season?

According to right tackle Morgan Moses, the turning point in Washington’s season came before it even began.

“Collectively, you have seen us on the field be able to bond, and off the field, be able to bond. The team looks different,” he told 106.7 The Fan’s Grant Paulsen and Danny Rouhier. “A lot of people say you take what happened in training camp against the Texans, and that was the breaking point for the team to gel, and it really was. Ever since then, it showed that, hey, man, we’ve got each other’s back.”

In August, the Redskins hosted the Houston Texans for joint training camp practices in Richmond. What was supposed to be three days of two NFL teams competing was cut down to two after the initial practices were marred by multiple fights.

Instead of a full day of work against another NFL opponent, the two teams were relegated to separate fields about halfway through the week’s third and final practice on a rain-soaked morning in Richmond before a camp-high 19,450 fans.

“We kind of killed the practice, but at the end of the day we gelled,” Moses said. “It showed the guys on the team like, ‘Look man, this is what we are. This is a family.’ You’re not going to let somebody come into your house and mess with your brother or anything like that. And it just showed that like, look, ‘This is a bond. This is what we are. We’re the Washington Redskins. This is who we are as a team and we’ve got each other’s backs.’ And you can see it on Sundays. We go out there and you can see us playing for each other, playing for more than ourselves.”

“The only thing that matters is the people that’s in this locker room,” he said. “And we’ve kind of just implemented that every week, day in and day out, and, you know, football, it’s not only fun but it’s more enjoyable when you’ve got a band of brothers out there on the same page as you and go out there and fight for what’s yours.”

Moses went on to say: “We can’t dwell on the past. We’re a different team than we were before. We’re home and we’re playing the Cowboys. We’ve got to protect our house, man. We know what’s at stake for us. We have a chance to bust this thing wide open. We know what we have to do as players, and the coaches know what they have to do, and we just got to go out there and execute the plan.”

The Redskins are 5-1 at home. Their most recent seasons with five home wins prior to this year? 2012 and 2007 — both playoff years.

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