Not To Be Negative...

Our mistakes were small and not one that cost us a win. To go to philly on MNF with a young QB and come out with a win is no mistake.

I'd almost rather have Pucillo starting at RG, but Fabini is fine for now I suppose

I posted this on another thread, but it is related:

Apparently the 'Skins are already looking for a possible replacement for Randy Thomas according to JLC. His injury must be serious.

Redskins Insider (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/redskinsinsider/)

i am a bit puzzled at to why we are not more of a pressure D like we were in 04 and 05. I gave the benefit of the doubt last year with the secondary issues. But I thought this year with the additions we made there, we would bring a lot more pressure. Now, given Smoot was out last night so that may have some weight, but against Miami we didnt' really bring any pressure. I think we have the horses to bring more pressure, and maybe as the season goes on we will be more aggressive. Also, if we have a two score lead early we may bring some more heat, so I will give it another week or two before question GW right now.

offensively, i think we are what we are. Campbell missed a couple balls, and we dropped a couple. All in all, I think we ran the ball effectively, and Campbell hit 8 of 15 3rd downs! that is awesome. He stood in the pocket and delivered some good balls, took a couple of shots down field. That is OLD SCHOOL JOE GIBBS FOOTBALL. I think it was a great win for us, gives our D some confidence, and Campbell some as well.

The biggest thing that bothered me last night was seeing the dropped balls from Cooley. I don't care if everyone on the teams forgets to use thier hands, we can't afford to drop some of the passes he did. He made up for it with the TD catch, but a couple of them were drive killers.

I'm puzzled that people are puzzled over the defensive changes.

There was a lengthy article in the offseason about how GW was going to revamp the defense and that he thought that NFL offenses had gotten to the point where they had figured out the cover 2.

Now we're running more cover 3 and bringing less exotic blitz packages in order to leave more guys in coverage, and he's letting the D-line get after the QB.

Seems to be working so far.

negatives I saw:

1) andre carter on every play would rush to the outside so all the left tackle had to do was push/ride him past the qb

2) campbell didnt seem to lock-on right away to his 1st option receiver on the short-to-intermediate routes as much but i wasnt looking for that this game

3) missed tackles, especially the westbrook play where he juked LL then easily brushed off d. evans arm tackle . . nfl.com video highlights really shows this well . .

what i liked:

1) campbell's long ball was soooo nice, it is either right there or alil long which i can live with for a young qb

2) fletcher running westbrook to teh sideline on the play i talked about above so that it wasnt just westbrook against PP . .

3)

I posted this on another thread, but it is related:

Apparently the 'Skins are already looking for a possible replacement for Randy Thomas according to JLC. His injury must be serious.

Redskins Insider (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/redskinsinsider/)

I'd be surprised if Keydrick Vincent leaves town without a contract.

I like that we showed a bunch of bump and run on 3rd down. Every time we used it they were punting on 4th down.

Last night was great and it feels good to be 2-0. That said, there were some things that we really need to improve on if we're going to have a chance at the division this year.

My list:

1. Hands. We've got to catch the ball. Cooley and Moss both had a few drops in addition to their great receptions last night. I'd love to see Carlos Rogers get a few practice reps catching the ball. He puts himself in great position but just can't make the catch. That's huge.

2. Jason Campbell's short-medium range accuracy. Seems like he has a tendency to fire the ball a little high and outside on the shorter routes. That could very easily cost us some points if corners start jumping the routes.

3. QB pressure. We got close ALOT last night, but didn't get as many sacks as we could've out of it. Some will probably say that McNabb is a mobile qb and that's why he was able to elude the pressure. I disagree. Last night, McNabb was not all that fluid and wasn't pulling away from anyone. I think our dline just has to adjust their technique a little bit to turn pressures into sacks.

What did you see?

I would like to add one more thing that I hope you dont take negatively.

PASS COVERAGE. Look, McNabb was inaccurate as hell last night. But that does not take away from the fact that he had recievers in a open spot in the defense. If he completed half of the passes he made these poor throws on, the outcome of this game may have been much different.
The press coverage was great and had McNabb running for his life. But when the defense switched to a zone coverage, there were open recievers.

McNabb was WAY off his game and over/under threw a majority of his targets.

There are better passers coming up in your schedule then what you saw last night, and those QB's will HIT those targets, unlike McNabb.

THe only real negative was the fact that we could have easily put the game away with that looooong incompletion from Campbell to Moss.

He was wide open, and if he gets hit, then the game is over.

Good teams will come back when other teams dont capitalize!