Can We Bench Brunell Now

I have been a long time Brunell supporter but the evidence is in. We simply cannot rely on him to be consistently good enough to win games. He is not THE problem on offense but he is A problem on offense and unfortunately he has nowhere to go but down. The guy is 36 and when he plays well gives us a good chance to win that is for sure. The problem is that he only plays well about half the time and with the state of our offense we simply cannot over come his bad play. The other problem is that his incosistently could be huge factor in the lack of development in terms of offense. I am not ready to give up on the season but I just don't think that Brunell really does give us the best chance to win week in and week out. I was at the game. He did several things that he has done at other times this season.

1) he simply missed open guys. on maybe 8-9 plays he went to what I would consider a poor option when there were open guys he should have either seen or not ignored.

2) he is almost incapable of throwing intermediate passes. We have complained all along that he doesn't have the arm to go downfield. That is not the problem. He has plenty enough arm to chuck the ball downfield and let fast WRs get to it. He doesn't NOT have the arm to throw a well time and accurate 20 yard seam route in between 2 defenders. Now that is a hard throw but it is throw a good QB can make. He missed 5-6 intermediate throws today and I'd say that he should be expected to have hit 3 of them. I mean on several of them they weren't even close.

And I don't want to hear about him being hurt. If being hurt really affects his effectiveness this bad then that is a BAD thing. Favre spent a career playing through minor injuries. McNabb is doing the same. Hell McNabb played with the same injury that Springs has missed weeks because of. Lots of QBs have little injuries that wont keep them out of games. It just seems that whenever Brunell gets one it doesn't keep him out either but it keeps him from playing well in any way.

sorry if i missed all this before, but was there any talk here about how Brunell was getting shut down by the ol' vanilla Cover-2? and how Santana Moss himself said that that wasn't a real coverage and he could play cornerback himself phenomonally in it?

how US AT THE WARPATH, we're saying the exact same thing BEFORE the Washington Post and Moss chimed in, and we all know our football from a frickin videogame??

how was that not a diss on Brunell by Moss? how was that gameplan vs. the Titans not DON'T RELY ON BRUNELL? now *everyone* knows Brunell's limitations, and not just the other teams defenses. in their ever-so-exotic, made-to-stop-Brunell, anyone-can-do-it, Cover-2.

those dinky passes most of the game were to bypass Brunell and just get the ball to Moss even if it was behind the line of schrimmage. the 2, 3 times he heaved it, you could hear the bones creak.

that one pass to Cooley was a beauty though. Cooley's the only reciever big enough to hit, and slow enough to not run too far for Brunell to throw to in the middle of the field.

yes, the whole team is suffering. when that happens, you look at the QB to be the leader of the team in crisis, not the easily exploited weak point.

I'd like to know exactly why some people are convinced Brunell gives us the best chance to win in any given week? To me he has proven that he cannot be counted to do the things he needs to do for us to win. Namely, make good decisions and throw accurate short passes. I have totally fallen off his band-wagon and I am not an idito homer fan who yells about the QB. He simply has shown me enough that I can't imagine Campbell doing worse. In fact I think Campbell would have a chance to do better since he still has physical skills to fall back on in absense of quality decision making.

It should have been thank you Al Saunders for not pounding the rock all day long. 14 carries for Portis... that's not Redskins football.


yeah, this one still mystifies me. completely.

yeah, this one still mystifies me. completely.

i have an idea why. Portis is easy to commit to and stop if your team poses no vertical air threat. Saunders ran the ball alot using Moss and Randle El, so that Portis wasn't the only ground threat to key on. clever attempt to hide your offense's vulnerabilty (Brunell and his middle of the field phobia), but alas keeping everyone within 10yds of the line of schrimmage stopped our screens too. sigh

The play calling was atrocious but let's be honest. We didn't execute the plays that were called. It is not like we were playing some great pass defense that was also a terrible run defense. They were terrible at run D and barely passable as a pass D. We should have pounded it but we also should have been able to execute a passing offense too pretty successfully.

i have an idea why. Portis is easy to commit to and stop if your team poses no vertical air threat. Saunders ran the ball alot using Moss and Randle El, so that Portis wasn't the only ground threat to key on. clever attempt to hide your offense's vulnerabilty (Brunell and his middle of the field phobia), but alas keeping everyone within 10yds of the line of schrimmage stopped our screens too. sigh
BINGO!!!!!!

Im a Brunell defender and even i say start Campbell

2) he is almost incapable of throwing intermediate passes. We have complained all along that he doesn't have the arm to go downfield. That is not the problem. He has plenty enough arm to chuck the ball downfield and let fast WRs get to it. He doesn't NOT have the arm to throw a well time and accurate 20 yard seam route in between 2 defenders. Now that is a hard throw but it is throw a good QB can make. He missed 5-6 intermediate throws today and I'd say that he should be expected to have hit 3 of them. I mean on several of them they weren't even close.


This, to me, is the real damning evidence against Brunnell. When he has time, he can rear back and fire the deep ball (not particularly nicely, but whatever), but he just cannot hit these crucial mid-range passes. This is the pass that beats the cover 2, IMO. In between CBs and Safties, Safties and LBs, etc. You beat a zone by sitting in the soft sopts or running in the seams. MB can't do that. And, obviously, this is a big part of any offense, especially Saunders, with its shifts and mismatches. Campbell has the arm to do this. Yes, Iknow, he doesn't have expereince reading Ds, and so he's going to throw INTs. But he's gotta learn sometime, and MB ISN'T GETTING IT DONE ANYWAY. Good post, FRPLG (I think of you as "Fur Plug"--what does this stand for, btw? ;) )

Good post, FRPLG (I think of you as "Fur Plug"--what does this stand for, btw? ;) )

Fire Plug. Old nick name. Retarded one too but it became my online persona.