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Akh’s Thoughts: Week 13
Ten thoughts from the Skins’ heartbreaking loss against the Saints:
1-While Suisham deserves a lot of ire for his blown chipshot FG(it was a bad snap, but he should be cut anyways for another clutch miss imo), what really was a killer was the insistence on playing a very soft and loose prevent defense that the Saints carved up without much trouble. They even played this defense in overtime after Sellers’ fumble(which is beyond any reason or logic). Memo to the skins: your defensive backs can’t fecking cover, so playing them back doesn’t do anything to help with everyone biting on the double moves. Coach them to play the deep ball if you want to stop that play. Now, the offense with two killer turnovers and the special teams are to blame to some extent for this debacle, but there is simply zero excuse for the defense to give up late scoring drives week in and week out. This was another game with total systemic failure.
1a-But at the end of the day, the old saying still holds true: good teams find a way to win, bad teams find a way to lose. Simple as that.
2-The brightest spot for the skins was that they finally found a real deep threat/X WR who looks like he gives a crap, and his name is Devin Thomas. He came into this season with nothing but question marks, and every week he seems to be answering more and more of those question marks along with making himself more and more an answer to the skins’ offensive problems. And as a WR, he’s everything Moss isn’t: runs the tough routes, shows good concentration and does well inside the red zone. His potential is still unfolding, and he looks like part of the skins’ future for several years.
2a-I stand by my Berrian/Chris Chambers comparison for him. He plays bigger than his size and he has deadly speed/quickness.
3-Another bright spot was the play of Jason Campbell against a good defense. He had arguably his best game of his career, and all anyone will remember is the late INT to Vilma. Campbell’s also responded very well to the playcalling of Sherman Lewis(especially using the quick drops and bootlegs). Whenever Sherman ends up(and I think someone will hire him when the skins’ staff is flushed), Campbell should follow him there. Another aspect of his game that I found impressive was how quickly he was cycling through his progressions.
4-The run defense looks night and day with and without Albert Haynesworth. With him in there, the entire dline looks effective against the run and gets a nice push because the opponents are scared poopless of what Haynesworth does to there Oline. When he’s not in there, teams are pushing the rest of the Dline around like rag dolls. If you wanted to see the tangible effective of all that cash the skins handed #92, it doesn’t get any clearer than that. Despite all the negatives in this nightmare season for the skins, Haynesworth has earned in his money and looks like part of the future for the team.
5-As a mentioned previously the offense is really starting to click under Sherman Lewis. While Zorn refused to make many adjustments to try and conceal the offensive issues talent-wise, Lewis has done a good job limiting the passing game to quicker drops2 so that the Oline liabilities won’t be as apparent. The running game still the responsibility of another Sherman, but the difference in Campbell—and in guys like Fred Davis, Malcolm Kelly and Devin Thomas—has been very noticeable since Lewis took over the play calling.
6-Another disturbing trend, that I know I’ve mentioned several times in the past is the piss poor level of play from the team in the clutch. No matter which side of the ball, no matter whether at home or on the road, no matter what: this edition of the Washington Redskins will fail to make a play late to win a game and/or let the other team make a clutch play to put them in a position to win. This just comes down to heart and coaching, and the Redskins have neither.
7-A couple stats for you sports fans: The Saints, before this game, averaged 275ish passing yards a game. The skins—supposedly the #1 or 2 passing yardage defense—gave up over 400. I’ve lost count of how many times the Cbs just watch the ball into the WRs’ hands(its like the Dbs are basically voyeurs or tourists) or how many times LaRon “The Clap” Landry has bitten on a double move giving up a deep TD pass. In short: this pass defense is a major problem despite the stats ranking.
8-Wow, what a non-story Gregg Williams’ return was. Despite all the talk that Williams knew the Skins backwards and forwards, and would bring the house(which he never really did, not even scratching his CB blitz fetish inch), the Saints defense looked rather pedestrian. I don’t think it was missing Jabari Greer or Scott Fujita, I think that their defense is a product of their offense: when they’re up big or rocking the opponent with quick scores on offense, they can pin their ears back and cause turnovers/sacks.
8a-And while Snyder sent Mike Nolan a tub of vanilla ice cream, it looks like Gregg Williams ate it *rimshot*
9-The difference between the Skins/Saints in the first 50 minutes of game time and the skins/Saints in the final 10 minutes(plus overtime) basically came down to one thing: stupid mistakes/penalties. The Saints were shooting themselves in the foot with costly mistakes and bad penalties which gave the skins extra chances, while the skins had good discipline and didn’t do anything stupid. In the final 10 minutes, the script was flipped and the Saints took advantage of their opportunities while the skins really didn’t. It is good to see the skins at least not have a ton of errors like this throughout the game, the problem is still the demon in the night: they’re liable to make these errors, especially when it matters most.
10-The bottom line of this game is that this was the worst loss of the Zorn “era.” They had a good team down, but both sides of the ball(and the special teams) couldn’t put the dagger in them and it was next to inevitable that the Saints would rally back to tie and win. Watching this team play is almost like watching a performance of Hamlet: you know what the end result will be, but its just a question of how the director stages it.
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 6 flat. Nice long catch early, MIA afterwards.
TE: Fred Davis 7.2. Solid game by the young player.
LT: Levi Jones 7.55. Bad holding late, but a really solid game
LG: Derrick Dockery 6.97. Getting better in pass pro
OC: Casey Rabach 7.4. Called a good game, kept Ellis in check.
RG: Mike Williams 6 flat. Decent in run blocking, didn’t embarrass himself in pass pro.
RT: Stephon Heyer 6.1. Improved since he doesn’t have to block for more than 4-5 seconds.
Y WR: Devin Thomas 8.15. Really emerging as a weapon.
QB Jason Campbell 8.4. Great game.
FB: Mike Sellers 5.5. Meh run blocking.
RB: Rock Cartwright 5.1. A couple nice runs, but generally ineffective. Why did he come in for Ganther on the goal line?
PK: Shaun Suisham No score. Nothing else needs to be said.
DE: Andre Carter 6.7. Some nice run support plays.
DT: Kedric Golston 6.4. Some good, some bad.
DT: Albert Haynesworth 9.1. Dominating performance.
DE: Philip Daniels 4.7. A couple nice run tackles.
SLB Brian Orapko 3.1. OTs know to just let him run himself out of the play now.
MLB London Fletcher 7.2. Solid, but didn’t have as much of an impact as usual.
WLB Rocky McIntosh 4.3. MIA.
CB Carlos Rogers 4 flat. Snap his face on a milk carton, because he was missing.
FS LaRon “The Clap” Landry 2. How many TDs does he have to give up before Blache holds him to the same standards he held Horton to?
SS Reed Doughty 2.5. Better in run support, terrible in pass coverage.
CB Fred Smoot 4.4. Ugly performance.
P Hunter Smith 7.1. Only 1 punt, but it was a good one.
Coaching grades:
Offense: B+
Defense: D+
Special teams: C
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