Breakdown: Redskins-Jets

good read. but i think the skins main problem on offense is the lack of trust in Campbell. it seems like Saunders and company are satisfied with throwing 3 yard passes. and hoping the receiver breaks some tackles, and makes a play. and we really dont still have an identity on offense. are we a power team? a passing team?

good read. but i think the skins main problem on offense is the lack of trust in Campbell. it seems like Saunders and company are satisfied with throwing 3 yard passes. and hoping the receiver breaks some tackles, and makes a play. and we really dont still have an identity on offense. are we a power team? a passing team?

I've got to admit it, I really wanted Saunders to open up the offense a few weeks ago. But JC has been looking pretty bad these past 3-4 weeks. It's almost as though we have a totally different QB under center. He's young and hopefully things will get turned around, but our passing attack is pretty bad right now.

Very good stuff GTripp. Did you notice anything else about Alexander?He whiffed on the block on the 2nd and goal from the 4 at the end of the first half. His man made the play.

Overall, he did an average job and we were definately blocking better with him on the whole than without him.

Having not rewatched the game I can only go off your analysis. Seems pretty solid (and time consuming). Anecdotally at least, I would agree with most of your observations. Here's a question, though. If Campbell is not as accurate as he was four weeks ago, what has changed? Has his mechanics changed? Play calling? Willingness to throw into any coverage whatsoever? And, has he been all that accurate at all this season? He has hit some nice throws, but it seems like he misses a bunch too. Not just the deep stuff. He also tends to throw high a lot and seems to overthrow Santana all the time (again, not just the deep stuff, but also that early throw at GB where Moss and to do a full extension dive and then in the NE game where Moss did a 5 yard curl that would have given the Skins a first down and Campbell threw way outside and the Skins didn't convert - those are just the two that come to mind). I like Campbell, but he just seems pretty sporadic at this point. If someone can break down what they think is the reason(s) I'd appreciate it.

In JC I see alot of the same stuff w/ alot of the other young QB's around the league. They are all just up and down. None of the young Qb's are consistent. Hell, alot of the veterans are not consistent. It's the toughest position to play in sports. We all want our guy to be the next Tom Brady. But the fact is he just isn't there yet and neither are any of the young qb's. Look how shitty Ben R. played last year? I think he threw 23 INt's. Just terrible. JC has a long way to go to be a good NFL qb. Right now he is just average playing with below average WR's and that is why our offense is so conservative.

Fantastic analysis.

"You must spread some reputation around before giving it to GTripp0012 again."

Great breakdown, especially since I haven't been able to watch any games the past couple of weeks because of work. It's interesting to see how big of a role the DB plays in GW's schematics. Glad we have more depth this season... and I pray another DB won't go down.

Jason Campbell was a lot better in the first half than he was in the second. In second half, I charted 5 mistakes in the 2nd half from Campbell, but NONE after the inteception. After the pick, the coaches appeared to take the game out of his hands entirely, by running with great success

I also noticed that they basically took the game out of Campbell's hands after the pick, and I think that's part of the problem. As much as I used to bash Brunell for having happy feet and throwing the ball away on third downs; I'm starting to think that way of thinking was pounded into his head by Gibbs and company.

We all know that Gibbs hates turnovers, but what do you think that does to a young quarterbacks confidence when you handcuff him to the run for almost the entire second half, because he got hit and tossed a bad ball? Brunell was to the point that he would throw it away with the game on the line, just so he didn't take the chance of throwing a pick. Campbell is starting to display similar tendencies to the way Brunell played(lots of checkdowns, tentative on throwing long, etc.). It's starting to look like, at least to me, that the killer instinct is being trained out of the Washington quarterbacks, and that's probably a big part of the problem with the passing game.

I also noticed that they basically took the game out of Campbell's hands after the pick, and I think that's part of the problem. As much as I used to bash Brunell for having happy feet and throwing the ball away on third downs; I'm starting to think that way of thinking was pounded into his head by Gibbs and company.

We all know that Gibbs hates turnovers, but what do you think that does to a young quarterbacks confidence when you handcuff him to the run for almost the entire second half, because he got hit and tossed a bad ball? Brunell was to the point that he would throw it away with the game on the line, just so he didn't take the chance of throwing a pick. Campbell is starting to display similar tendencies to the way Brunell played(lots of checkdowns, tentative on throwing long, etc.). It's starting to look like, at least to me, that the killer instinct is being trained out of the Washington quarterbacks, and that's probably a big part of the problem with the passing game.


Brian Mitchell said the same thing on the post game show. He said that all week Gibbs pounds into JCs head not to turn the ball over, so he is over thinking, and this taking too much time. That one second though of "dont throw a pick" could be the reason his downfield shots are not on time or on target.

On the D line, Griff only played a few snaps. From the WPost:

Defensive lineman Cornelius Griffin, limited to only two plays against the Jets after aggravating a back injury during pregame warmups, hopes to play a bigger role this week.

That hurts everything on the D and is very worrisome. I think we'll go back to some of the deeper coverage, less blitz stuff against McNabb. Hope Griff can play.

I also think that taking the ball out of JCs hands this week was also a function of the D we we're playing against--they we're begging us to run with 6 in the box, and taking away the deeper stuff for much of the game. He needs more throws to get in rhythm, IMO, like many QBs. Don't know if he's hurting--many have said that, but I'm not sure that's it. He looks (like many young QBs) to be late on the reads at times. Even on throws he makes over the middle, he's not hitting those on timing but with his arm strength. And it's not a bad move to minimize the TOs here--that's been the killer for us. It may be a self-fulfilling prophecy, though: we don't open it up because we don't have to O to recover from TOs, and we don't have the O to recover from TOs because we don't open it up.

But the point, offensively, of this game, was to establish the run. That we did. Now we need to maintain the run production (if not at this huge a number, at a good average, at least), and work JC up in the passing game. And JC has to hit some things in the long game. JUST ONE PLAY THERE MAKES A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE. One TD by a bomb and everything else we do (all the "conservative" stuff) makes sense--the point is to create those shots, not to simply run and pass for short-yardage. This is lost on many pundits, IMO. If JC hits a few of those a game, his stat line and the score line look very different.

GTripp: what was the big problem in the red zone? Why couldn't they get TDs? That's another thing skewing opinion of this game--5 FGs. Just one of those is a TD and we feel much better as a team.

he does look like he gets too excited & puts too much on the ball sometimes, that could very well be the result of coaching but there's also a fine line between a qb rushing the play & standing pat too long.