Redskins-Giants Game Reviews, other things related to Poorly Executing football teams

Offensive

For the life of me, I can't see what the Redskins don't like about Keiland Williams as a runner. He's really good at it. Maybe it's a scheme thing. We've now had 4 different running backs carry the ball at least 15 times on this team, none of whom more effectively than Keiland Williams has all season. Still, in the name of evaluating other players, Williams has 8 carries for 35 yards in the last two weeks, which is about 1/2 of the team's production on the ground and 1/3 of the carries. Williams had career days against Detroit, then Philly, then Tennessee. At 5-5, the Redskins decided that they didn't like their new-found running game, and so now they don't have one.

They, do however, have a passing game. And in the last three games, the Redskins had discovered that their cover-two happy opponents had a little bit of a weakness right in the middle of the field. The Giants are no different. FS Antrel Rolle is a bad player having a bad year who was bad in this game and tried many times to let the Redskins right back into the ball game. McNabb completed countless completions over the middle of the field, and threw for better than 290 passing yards. Anthony Armstrong was as proportionally close to an 100 yard day as McNabb was to 300. This wasn't the Redskins playing the little sisters of the poor, or Orville Reddenbacher's FarmBoys, these were the New York Giants who have one of the fiercest passing defenses in all the land. McNabb was sacked four times, but those sacks were mostly third down drive enders and other insignificant anomalies, as the Giants really weren't that close to McNabb all day. With time to throw and open receivers in what Madden players would call the "vision cone", this was an offensive explosion waiting to happen.

The coaches set it up like this. After years of Jim Zorn trying to outdiscipline and outlast the Giants while Greg Blache's defense gave up long-sustained drives one after another, the Shanahan duo finally went after and attacked the Giants where they were weak. It was great preparation and a passing onslaught designed to knock the Giants from their perch.

And it didn't work, because the Redskins couldn't get out of their own way.

This was not a coaching/administrative issue. Like the defense, this was a flat failure of the offensive skill positions (not to mention individual pass blocking breakdowns [plural] by Keiland Williams, Stephon Heyer, Jammal Brown, and Will Montgomery). This game featured poor quarterback play, and it featured a lot of it. It featured an endless string of dropped balls -- both before and after the catch -- from receivers who looked like they just wanted to go home. Fred Davis, a drop. Chris Cooley, a fumble. Mike Sellers, a drop. Keiland Williams, a fumble. Santana Moss, a really bad drop. Anthony Armstrong, a really costly fumble. Donovan McNabb threw two interceptions and fumbled twice. The first interception was a horrible, deflating lack of first down discipline. The second was probably a worse lack of discipline, because it was essentially meaningless on the last play of the game and the play had no upside. The intended receiver, Anthony Armstrong, could have easily been hurt on the play (and was, though he appears to be fine now).

It's hard to say who won their individual match-ups on the defensive line. I thought Kory Lichtensteiger and Casey Rabach combined to protect the quarterback pretty well, and Lichtensteiger had one of his best run blocking games, helping to lead an attack that had fantastic success running to the left. Trent Williams played in, I think, 3 series and did very well against Osi Umeniyora. He left because their wasn't much strength in his shoulder. Stephon Heyer was excellent in run blocking at left tackle, but did poorly on his two screen/delay blocks, and was beaten around the edge by Osi Umeniyora for a critical sack. He also had a procedure penalty on a third and short that the Redskins needed to convert, because he's Stephon Heyer. The Redskins really needed more out of Heyer in this one, because running the ball became a luxury the scoreboard didn't allow them to have.

The right side of the line only performed adequately. Will Montgomery did not win the critical battle with Chris Canty, but did well enough to limit the damage, which is likely better than Artis Hicks would have done. He didn't move him anywhere in the running game, and that limited the Redskins' ability to go to the right side on the ground. Jammal Brown was pretty good, but had one inexcusable bad beat where he let his guard down with great position on Justin Tuck in the fourth quarter, and got beaten. Brown was put in a lot of bad situations, and while that one wasn't one of them, he had one of his best games, and the protection for McNabb was really not an issue. A lot of times, McNabb could have evaded one guy and had a lot of time to make a play downfield, but gave himself up at the first sign of pressure.

Donovan's decision making was poor all day. When you look at the Redskins third down performance in this one, it was a lot of short yardage situations set up by good plays on first and second down, and then the ball would go to Donovan to convert on third down. He made questionable reads both before and after the snap. Some of the sacks don't happen if McNabb has a good idea of where he wants to go with the football. Roydell Williams was a popular target of McNabb on these downs and distances, with no success. That's not a good match-up for McNabb. Moss or Armstrong are better match-ups. This was a dreadful performance against a good pass defense in very manageable downs and distances.

A bigger problem was that the Redskins could drive into Giants territory and never get to a third down situation because the turnovers came on early downs. Six turnovers in all: two interceptions, four lost fumbles, and four of the six turnovers came on first down, including both interceptions. The other two turnovers came after the Redskins had gained enough yardage for the first down, just not protecting the football. It's going to be hard for McNabb to justify next year's salary after putting this game on film, as I can't think of a single time in his career where he made more mistakes in a game than this one. There don't appear to be any answers either: the Kyle Shanahan response to all the bad things that happened in the first half was to start throwing the ball to Mike Sellers out of the backfield. The game was already over at that point but...it's depressing.

One thing that worked really well for the Redskins was their 3 TE sets. It's a good formation to run or pass out of and the Redskins have three great tight ends. The other thing is that Chris Cooley is having a remarkably great year as a blocker, and got the assignment matched up with Osi Umeniyora about four times in this game. Chris won on three of them, unfortunately he allowed pressure once on a third down, and McNabb threw high, not seeing an open receiver in the flat. But the three TE sets also open up great running lanes for the backs and create matchups against the front that the Redskins can dominate: Chris Cooley on a safety, Fred Davis on a linebacker, Kory Lichtensteiger up on the middle linebacker, and Trent Williams/Stephon Heyer kicking out the end. Both weakside and strongside runs worked out of this formation. It's just another running game wrinkle the Redskins have for opponents.

At this point, it sounds like the running game should be really effective with all these different concepts the Redskins have to run with, but there is a refusal to commit to our best against their best in critical downs. We have a fairly proven runner in Williams who runs with good vision, and knows all the plays because he's been here from the start. With the season on the line since his career day against Tennessee, he's averaging 4 carries per game the last two games. For context, the Redskins have averaged 59 offensive plays in the same timeframe. Watching the film, I can understand why there is faith in the passing game: things look like they should be working against these cover two defenses with great consistency. The Redskins have protected McNabb very well on the road this year, and he's selling his playfakes on boot action to buy himself even more time. But even with great protection and open receivers, the Redskins passing game didn't work against the Giants. There was little play-to-play offensive rhythm, and turnovers rained down from the sky while there was just a lone passing touchdown.

The Redskins showed that they could both run and pass on a great defense, which is a positive. They also proved how little that means if you fumble six times in a game. The Redskins went into this game as one of the best teams at keeping the football off the ground, and left as pretty much an average team. That doesn't mean much when we look at the talent of this team as a whole, but it's just one more thing to add to the list of "things the Redskins aren't really good at".

Defense

This review is coming out a little later than it usually does because I took a day to get caught up on the stats for the year that I keep week-to-week, but just never totaled. At the mid-way point, there was no specific reason to believe that things were about to get worse for the Redskins, who were about to get blown out by division rivals in two of their next four games. As of this writing, we're still trying to analyze what has happened.

What we know is that the Redskins might be without defensive backs LaRon Landry and Carlos Rogers for the rest of the season, and will definitely be without Albert Haynesworth for the rest of the season. When the Redskins defense had played well this season, Landry, Rogers, and Haynesworth were a big part of the success they enjoyed. Without them, there's not a whole lot of youth to turn to in order to improve the performance of this unit.

In no way was this more evident than watching the tape of the Giants game. It may be difficult to remember, but the Redskins went into the bye week as one of the better rush defenses in the NFL, on the strength of LaRon Landry and London Fletcher being sideline to sideline backfield tacklers, as well as good run support on the edges by Carlos Rogers and DeAngelo Hall, and the irreplacable force that Albert Haynesworth was in short-yardage situations. Fletcher and Hall are still out there doing their thing, but they are surrounded by a lot of players who do not execute the scheme to the level we need to.

In this game, Defensive Coordinator Jim Haslett went into the game with a pretty clear and sound gameplan for stymying the Giants injury-riddled offense based on stopping the run early and winning what he perceived to be the key match-up in the passing gmae: DeAngelo Hall on Mario Manningham. The Redskins won that match-up and were still dominated by the Giants because their front seven and eight simply could not beat the Giants on the ground. On multiple occasions the Redskins were beat by great blocking on the part of the Giants, but too often, a majority of the players did their job in terms of gap responsibility, only for the last guy or two guys to come over and not finish the play with an effective form tackle. This wasn't a breakdown in team defense, it was the abscence of 11 guys who all shared the same desire to stop the Giants from beating them on the ground. In other words: bad run defense independent of scheme.

If everyone had come to play as hard as SS Reed Doughty did, the outcome of this game would have been very different. Doughty limited his errors and wasn't targeted in coverage, basically spending the whole game running around and demonstrating correct form tackling. This was lost on pretty much everyone. I thought Phillip Daniels also had a really good game in limited time, and that Ma'ake Kemoeatu and Adam Carriker both played very well in the second half. That meant much better DL (and consequently, LB) play in the second half of this game than in the first, when the front seven was getting dominated.

While Doughty and Daniels deserve credit for being "good executers" on a day where the Redskins absolutely could not execute the defensive scheme, let's also give some credit to DeAngelo Hall and the pass defense in general. The plan was to go in and stop Eli Manning from being able to throw all over the Redskins like he had done in pretty much every other game against us thanks to scheme deficiencies. While the Redskins had no solution for Derek Hagan, who played like a number one receiver on this day (7 catches, 65 yards), Manning was largely ineffective. The Giants scored just once on a drive where they passed more than they ran, and that drive was only extended by a holding call on London Fletcher. The next play: a 28 yard TD run by Jacobs. I'll take that split of runs and passes any day of the week, but in order to not sound like a fool for saying that, the Redskins HAVE to be able to at least slow a rushing attack down. Good scheme in this one, not awful team defense, but terrible lapses in execution ruled this game.

The pass defense worked because Hall won his match-up. The strategy wasn't to overload and pressure Eli Manning, rather to take advantage of the Giants' tendency to max protect by winning the match-ups on the outside and trying to force coverage sacks. They didn't get any of those because they only won the battle one side at a time. They did get two holding calls on Brian Orakpo, however, and could have easily gotten three more with a more competent officiating crew (these guys had last years Giants-Redskins MNF game at FedEx and this year's Rams game as well). They (the Redskins) also might have jumped offsides once or twice if the officials had seen it. Oh well. There's only so much you can see with seven sets of eyes.

The other thing about the pass defense is that the Redskins are legitimately better at playing zone coverage than they were earlier in the season, and the pass coverage in the secondary is getting tighter by the week. Now, in this game, the Redskins were playing a little bit of man coverage, particularly behind their blitzes. But one way I measure zone coverage efficiency is by looking at how many uncontested completions the Redskins allow. When that number goes down, it's because the safeties, corners and LBs are doing a better job at passing off receivers at the right time and not allowing the quarterback to break down zones by throwing while receivers are uncovered. Here are the week by week occurences of uncontested completions allowed:

>Week 1 vs Cowboys - no data
>Week 2 vs Texans - 10
>Week 3 at Rams - 4
>Week 4 at Eagles - 3
>Week 5 vs Packers - 6
>Week 6 vs Colts - 6
>Week 7 at Bears - 4
>Week 8 at Lions - 3
>Week 10 vs Eagles - 2
>Week 11 at Titans - 0
>Week 12 vs Vikings - 1
>Week 13 at Giants - 0

You can separate that into four game sets and total: 17+ Cowboys game (probably 5 or 6) in the first quarter of the season, 19 in the second quarter in the season. 3 since the bye. On the whole, the Redskins haven't changed their defensive coverage scheme, but what they have done since the Lions team is emphasize coverage over pass rush, and the results have improved. Since the switch to more coverage and less pressure, the hole in zone completion total sits at just over one per game, a very respectable number.

The other way to look at this is to see how many passes the Redskins are defensing, looking specifically at the pass breakups from week to week (I count dropped interceptions as passes defensed, because I still love you, Carlos Rogers).

>Week 1 vs Cowboys - 2
>Week 2 vs Texans - 0 (1 INT)
>Week 3 at Rams - 3 (1 INT)
>Week 4 at Eagles - 2 (1 INT)
>Week 5 vs Packers - 2 (1 INT)
>Week 6 vs Colts - 5
>Week 7 at Bears - 1 (4 INT)
>Week 8 at Lions - 3 (1 INT)
>Week 10 vs Eagles - 0
>Week 11 at Titans - 3 (1 INT)
>Week 12 vs Vikings - 2
>Week 13 at Giants - 3 (1 INT)

The correlation is not as strong here, if because teams have run on the Redskins a lot more in the last quarter of the season than the first half of it. However, if zone coverage continues to improve, you might expect the Redskins to defense more passes in the final quarter of the season than in any quarter prior. They've eliminated those horrible holes in the zones from earlier in the year, the only reason the Texans were able to come back to beat the Redskins.

Unfortunately, the decline in the play of the front seven, mostly in terms of run defense, has lead an overall decline of the Redskins defense, as we now feature one of the worst run defenses in football. The Redskins are now giving up 5.0 yards per carry, worst in football. In all games started by LaRon Landry, that figure was close to 4.0. The only team that ranks lower than the Redskins in run defense DVOA is...Tampa Bay, the Redskins next opponent. For a team that went through most of the season above average in run defense, the fall of the last four weeks is a nice reminder that, while a couple of really good run defenders really CAN make a great run defense, you can't always count on them being there. This team needs Adam Carriker and Ma'ake Kemoeatu to play every one of the last 16 quarters like they did in the second half of the Giants game, and not like they did in the first. They need Kedric Golston and Rocky McIntosh to...take a seat. I hope Jeremy Jarmon and Perry Riley are healthy enough to be in this lineup, because the Redskins need them.

The benching of Phillip Buchanon in this game was unfortunate, because it over-estimated the control that Buchanon had over the level of play of his match-up, Derek Hagan. To be clear, Buchanon was part of the execution issue the Redskins had in this game. He made a pair of lazy tackle attempts and didn't do much in coverage, allowing 69 yards in 7 targets. Kevin Barnes came off the bench and played...a little better. I really like Kevin Barnes because he reads plays well, will stick his nose in on a tackle, and provides good run support. I don't think he'll ever be a great coverage player though, and Buchanon is having a fantastic coverage season.

In this game, Buchanon was the weak link of the secondary. But the secondary wasn't the problem. The problem was that the game was lost in the front seven when the three starting defensive linemen as well as first backup Anthony Bryant failed to get anything done against a banged up Giants OL that still threw the kitchen sink at the Redskins in terms of rushing scheme. While they were able to slow down Ahmad Bradshaw anywhere except inside the ten yard line, they couldn't stop Brandon Jacobs anywhere. Too many guys who started for the Redskins in this game, including Buchanon, McIntosh, and Kareem Moore wanted no part of the physical nature of the game the Giants established from the second play forth. That is why the Redskins lost.

....very nice,I disagree with some of it but very nice.

once again tripp,another great but depressing{especially the mcnaab stuff}breakdown

I have tons of respect for McNabb and he was a wonderful quarterback in his day, but one can reasonably assume that day is nearing its end....

Good work Tripp.....Four words could reasonably sum-up all that you've said. "This team has problems."

McNabb's indecisiveness on the half slide/fumble play may have been the worst play that I've seen him make, EVER. He was late spotting open receivers downfield, yet still could have fallen down for the first down. Simply terrible.

McNabb's indecisiveness on the half slide/fumble play may have been the worst play that I've seen him make, EVER. He was late spotting open receivers downfield, yet still could have fallen down for the first down. Simply terrible.

That was indeed a rare play, a mistake you wouldn't expect coming from a QB that's been around as long as McNabb has...... an uncommon mistake that sort of characterizes the Redskins season thus far.

....very nice,I disagree with some of it but very nice.

Curious as to what you disagree with? Antrell Rolle?

GT, great job as always.
You said that we've become much better in zone coverage & that we played more man this game. Hall then folllowed Manningham until he got deep enough for the safeties? Manningham did get open a couple times but Hall had safety help to take the angle away. I don't know if that was by design or Hall was beaten by a step or two?

I thought that Orakpo had a noteworthy game. On the first td he clearly didn't keep contain & he almost looked like he was jogging the play out, then he gets blocked & jacobs cuts back for 6 on his side. He seemed to wake up from that & I noticed him pursuing down the line to make plays on the other side of the field more. He doesn't seem like a vocal leader, but in terms of leadership by example, I think he will be key to the d in that regard next year & hopefully long after. He's one of the few players on the team that seems to really hate losing.