No love for Ol' DC

Jason Whitlock still believes in the Skins (he started believing last season). This is from his Page 2 article:

5. I still have high expectations for Al Saunders and the Redskins' offense.

A lot of people are jumping off the Redskins bandwagon because Washington's first-team offense didn't score a point in the preseason. I'm not jumping.

Saunders, Washington's new offensive coordinator, is a glory hound, and I didn't like the way he exited Kansas City. He basically accused Lamar Hunt of reneging on a pledge to name him successor to Dick Vermeil. I don't believe Hunt or general manager Carl Peterson ever made that pledge.

Having said all of that, Saunders knows how to coordinate an offense. The Redskins will score points with or without Clinton Portis. Washington has a capable backup running back in Ladell Betts, a talented receiving corps, a solid offensive line and an experienced quarterback.

I'll be shocked if the Redskins don't score 30 points on "Monday Night Football."

here's the link
ESPN.com: Page 2 : Regrets, Favre's had a few (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=whitlock/060907)

Gil Brandt, who I really respect a lot, but some really gruesome statistics on preseason out there. He said while the score and outcome don't matter, the way you play the game really does. Execution is key, having some sort of momentum moving into the system is also really nice. Players know it's preseason, but they still start questioning.

The Super Bowl champs over the last 13ish seasons are 39-13 in the preseason. It was about a week or week and a half ago, don't remember everything. While preseason "means" nothing, you should never overlook just complete lack of production like the Redskins saw. I'm sorry, we were Vanilla, but so was everyone else. They had no problems scoring. Simple throws, etc.

Hopefully our offense can turn it on with a switch, but I doubt it. This division top to bottom will be seperated by no more than 3 games. If you told me the Redskins won it at 10-6 or 11-5 (doubt any team in our div goes 11-5) or lost it at 8-8 or 7-9. I wouldn't be the least bit suprised either way.

here's a little fact about preseason...the last time a joe gibbs coached team started 0-4 in the preseason...well as a redskins fan you should know well the rest is history. I think that year we won our first 12 games. the preseason means absolutely nothing. remember spurrier's first year here i think we were like 3-1 or maybe 4-0 in the preseason and that didnt matter one bit once the season started. i think we finished 7-9 that year i am speaking of with the 'ol ball coach.

38-17 washington over minn...and 17 is me being a nice guy........big MW, ST, AND AA are going to run over people all game long......

artmonkdrillz...i think he is the lone crusader

The preseason didn't seem to matter much to Pittsburgh last night.

There's one way for sure to put an end to all the negative publicity, and that is to win games.

I wouldn't say the pre-season means 'absolutely nothing'...I think that's taking things to the other extreme as well. Just like putting all your stock in preseason isn't good either. I think I'd prefer somewhere in the middle. Preseason is an evalutation time. Talent, execution, skill, as well as attitude.

Brunell did come around some toward the end, but I'm a little nervous.

All the people bemoaning our offensive play are looking past some things. I will grant that the lack of production COULD be a concern. In fact if our offense had been vanilla I would be concerned. But our offense wasn't even vanilla in pre-season. It wasn't even a system really. According to coaches they actually treated the games like practice. Essentially putting guys in positions and situations to see what they can do. Doing so with little regard for game situation et al. If we had gone out and tried to run a system in those games I would be very worried. Even a vanilla system. As it is we did not. We went out and worked on plays. We'd a run a play one direction then run the other direction on the next play. One game we didn't max protect but like 2 or 3 times to whole game. We left the o-line all on islands just to work on that aspect. We didn't run any system so why should we me worried when the O looked like poo?

When Joe Gibbs comes out to a post game conference like after the Patriots game and looks like absolutely nothing happened that should tell you something. Either the old man is crazy or he knows that what happened wasn't a real indication of anything.

sean salisbury gave us some love when I was watching ESPN the other day...I think he said we would win the division or at least make the playoffs