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Akh’s Thoughts: Week 10
Ten Thoughts on the Skins’ upset win over the Broncos:
1-The story of the game, at least for the skins, was the play Levi Jones replacing Heyer at left tackle. It was a night and day difference with a competent player manning the most important line position. The skins still had Heyer being a liability on the right, and the Denver exploited it all game long, but having Jones in place at LT allowed the skins to do what they’ve been dependent on for the last few season: tight runs behind the left hand side of the offense. Campbell still got battered in the pass rush, but the improved run game allowed the skins to move the ball with some consistency.
1a-No matter what happens with Chris Samuels, Levi Jones probably has a couple good years left in him. He’s part of the solution with this team. He’s better than any FA olineman available next season and he would solidify one part of the line.
2-The turning point and other big story of the game was Kyle Orton’s injury. When he was in for Broncos, the Redskins were effectively powerless to stop them from moving the ball(even when the Broncos fumbled in the first quarter, they were in the middle of a long drive). Orton had a massive QB rating(134) and was on pace for almost 400 yards passing(and the Broncos were on pace for over 500 yards of offense). After he went down because of an ankle injury suffered towards the end of the first half, the league found out why no one has seemed to want to sign Chris Simms since his spleen surgery.
3-The defense—especially the pass defense–was pretty bad. The 269 yards given up in the first half speaks for itself. Chris Simms bailed them out in the 2nd half with an ugly Qbing performance, but there was just no excuse for the 1st half display by this unit. Blache schemes his defense to prevent big plays, especially in the passing game, but the problems with the pass defense are deeper than just scheme: they shouldn’t be biting on every single double move by the outside receivers since that’s why they give them so much cushion. And if they can’t cover the deep ball playing so far off, what exactly can they do right in the passing defense since the deep cushions prevent them from slowing down the short passing game.
3a-On top of the passing problems, Knowshon Moreno basically was able to move the ball at will on them thanks to a lot of poor tackling. A lot of this falls on the back of Haynesworth, who was generally ineffective against the experienced Broncos’ line.
3b-Landry followed up his awful game against the Falcons with another poor game where his freelancing left the deep middle uncovered far too much.
3c-The tackling was awful again, and even guys like London Fletcher and Haynesworth were guilty of it.
4-Campbell had his usual up and down game. He looked shaky early, especially forcing passes in the middle of the field, but then calmed down and had an efficient game without creating major mistakes. He’s still not getting great time, even with Levi Jones on the left hand side of the line, but he’s reacting incrementally better to the pressure he’s seeing and the calls in the passing game are slowly getting better. What I find encouraging is that Campbell’s YPA stat is staying at career highs for him. That is telling me that he’s being very efficient with his passing.
4a-Campbell did get away with a fumble in the 3rd quarter when Andra Davis sacked him and the Ref misremembered when he blew the whistle on the play.
5-Ladell Betts was the biggest beneficiary of the improved oline with Levi Jones anchoring the left. Running primarily behind him, he was able to rack up 114 yards, and Rock Cartwright was able to get over 40 yards in only 9 carries. This bodes well for Portis’ return if these two rbs, who have generally been ineffective behind the same line that Portis was able to produce at a 4.0 ypc clip behind. The skins need to ride Levi Jones in the rushing attack(obviously not by having him run the ball lol), because the Rinehart/Heyer right side is still a wasteland.
6-The WRs really didn’t contribute a whole lot to this win. Thomas had a nice catch late in the game to move the ball deep into Denver territory, and ARE burned Champ for a nice third down conversion, but Moss was invisible(again). At what point does Zorn care enough(and side note, is there a coach who shows less emotion now than Zorn?) to make dramatic changes? I don’t know if Marko Mitchell and the 2nd round WRs are the answer, but they certainly can’t be worse than the starters, right?
7-Obviously when your special teams makes some a game changing play as a long td pass by the punter on a fake, they’re doing something right. And Rock’s kick returns were fairly decent, but this is balanced out by some poor kickoffs and poor punt returns again. Dierdorf made me chuckle with his quote from Zorn that the reason for the poor punt returns was the total focus on blocking punts. It does concern me that Danny Smith seems to be more interested in being Zorn’s Cardinal Richelieu on the sidelines, than focusing on coaching up his unit.
8-While Hall had a nice int in the 2nd half, him and Carlos Rogers were just awful all game long. Rogers got benched for Smoot, but Hall was able to keep his job despite being as bad as Rogers was in the first half(I would have to guess that their respective contract situations probably had something to do with those decisions). With the total struggles of the safeties—especially in deep coverage—Hall and whomever plays the other Cb spot need to step up for the skins to have a chance to slow down the better passing attacks.
8a-And what does it say about Kevin Barnes that he can’t even get active for this defensive backfield.
9-Fred Davis is slowly improving week by week. His blocking, which was very poor to start the season is getting better(still not great), and its good to see how tough a ball carrier he can be, especially when you get him on the flanks against DBs. He, to quote Parcells, looks for contact. And while this has led to some fumbling issues for him in the past, he seems to be over that and now this means he’s always looking for those extra yards. He’s not going to replace Cooley, but he could force his way on the field as a 2nd TE/H-back/FB hybrid.
10-The bottom line about this game is that it’s an example of what Napoleon said about its better to be lucky than good. This was a good win for the skins, but outside of the improvement from Levi Jones at left tackle, the skins really didn’t do anything extra than got them this win. They benefited from a QB who had accumulated a 134 Qb rating in the first half going down via injury and his backup being totally incompetent. This is not to say that the skins can’t build off this win and find positives in it, but they exit this game with almost as many question marks and problems as they had entering this game. They have a pass defense which is a sieve. They have a better run game thanks to Levi Jones, but the passing game—due to protection, receivers and QB—is incapable of doing anything more than short/timing routes. The run defense just can’t stop anyone with a halfway decent Rb. The Skins still have to look for which players are still playing hard(Davis, Jones, Campbell, Thomas, etc) and which could care less(Heyer, Rinehart, Rogers, Hall, Landry, etc) with an eye to 2010.
Player grades:
To make it clearer what the grades mean, I submit to you a legend on how to read the grading:
10: Legendary performance.
9: AP All Pro team caliber performance
8: Pro bowl caliber performance
7: Good, maybe a brain fart here or there.
6: More good than bad.
5: More bad than good
4: I’m looking at NFL.com’s depth chart for who’s behind him
3: Liability
2: Should be starting for the Raiders
1: Opposing fans not only know his name, but openly mock him(and we have creatively snarky nicknames for him)
0: The player must have incriminating photos of his coordinator or position coach(or both)
Pass: the player didn’t play enough to merit a grade.
X WR: Santana Moss 3.45. Invisible
TE: Fred Davis 6.2. Improving every game.
LT: Levi Jones 7.98. Not quite pro bowl level, but one of the best performances by a Skins’ Olineman this year.
LG: Derrick Dockery 6 flat. A couple breakdown in pass pro, but solid run blocking as always.
OC: Casey Rabach 5.4. Called a much better game.
RG: Chad Rinehart 3.4. A waste of a draft pick.
RT: Stephon Heyer 2.77. Blech.
Y WR: Devin Thomas 5.5. Had a big catch late in the game, but generally was invisible. He had a big drop in the first half.
QB Jason Campbell 6 flat. Efficient without being very good.
FB: Mike Sellers 6.3. Good TD catch, so-so blocking.
RB: Ladell Betts 6.4. Good yardage, but Rock’s production tells me this was more Levi Jones than Betts.
PK: Shaun Suisham. 6 flat. A couple chip shot FGs.
DE: Andre Carter 8.1. Great game by the Vet.
DT: Albert Haynesworth 5.99. Pushed around way too much.
DT: Cornie Griffin 4.5. Pushed around also.
DE: Philip Daniels 2 flat. BRAAAAAAAINS
SLB Brian Orapko 7.75. Very good performance at DE, lost at OLB.
MLB London Fletcher 5.2. Invisible.
WLB Rocky McIntosh 5.3. Slightly less invisible.
CB DeAngelo Hall 5 flat. Good Int, but no-one is afraid to throw it on him.
FS LaRon Landry 4.5. Freelances too much.
SS Reed Doughty 5.6. Good getting a fumble, way too many blown coverage’s/tackles.
CB Carlos Rogers 4 flat. Terrible, just terrible
P Hunter Smith 8 flat. Good punts and a TD pass.
Coaching grades:
Offense: B-
Defense: D+
Special teams: B
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