No love from cnnsi.com either

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/nfl/specials/preview/2005/scout.report/?cnn=yes

4-12.....That's hilarious!

Dr. Z. Where did he get his PHD from?

You have to be pretty aggressively bad to go 4-12. Who sees that much rottenness on this team?

I'm not really upset by people who says we're a 6-10 team. I disagree, but I'm not angry. This kind of thing just pisses me off, though. They must really think the D is going to fall off the face of the earth.

It gives our D no credit whatsoever, which is just stupid. They'll at least be as good as they were last season, I'd even say better given their second year in a scheme, LaVar back, strong CB's.

I see them actually scoring a load this season instead of 'just' setting the Offense up with good field position.

And:

The ball is still in Patrick Ramsey's hands, but there are two other options at quarterback if the offense sputters as it did a year ago

Did Joe Gibbs really come back for this? Did the Hall of Famer and three-time Super Bowl winner return to pro football last year to go 6-10, his worst record in 13 seasons as an NFL coach? Did the offensive guru end his retirement to watch his team score 15 points a game, the second-fewest in the league? "People always ask me, 'Did you have fun?'" says Gibbs, 64. "I say, 'I did six times. Ten times I didn't.' But I think for me, this is where I'm supposed to be."

Whether Gibbs has more fun this year depends in large part on the ability of Patrick Ramsey, a quarterback on a short leash, to hook up with a height-challenged receiving corps. At one wideout the Redskins will start 5'10" Santana Moss, acquired from the Jets in a trade for Laveranues Coles. On the other side they have 5'10" David Patten, lured from the Patriots with a five-year, $13 million free-agent deal. By going small at wide receiver Washington is bucking the trend toward the Terrell Owens prototype (the physical aspects, anyway) but also harking back to the days of their own Smurfs -- the quick, diminutive wideouts who helped the Gibbs-led Skins to victory in Super Bowl XVII. Patten adds that anyone who doesn't believe a team can win with smaller receivers hasn't been watching the Patriots win three of the last four NFL titles. "Look at their roster the past four years," he says. "You might prefer a big receiver and think he's going to give you an advantage, but you look at [the Pats'] corps, our tallest starting receiver [David Givens] was 6 feet. And Deion Branch, last year's Super Bowl MVP, is 5'9"."

At least Ramsey is 6'2" and able to spot his receivers squirting through the secondary, though at the same time he'll be watching over his shoulder for veteran passer Mark Brunell and rookie first-round pick Jason Campbell. Ramsey won back the starting job from Brunell at midseason last year, but he threw only 10 touchdown passes against 11 interceptions, and Brunell, who turns 35 on Sept. 17, has looked better in camp than he did in 2004 (his first season with Washington). In reaffirming Ramsey as his starter going into the season, Gibbs says selecting Campbell out of Auburn with the 25th pick follows his pattern of always drafting good quarterbacks when they are available, as he did with Jay Schroeder in the third round of the 1984 draft, when he had Joe Theismann. The Redskins, however, paid a high price for the 6'5" Campbell, sending the Broncos their third-round choice in 2005 and first- and fourth-round selections in '06 so they could move up to take him.

Ramsey, the last choice of the first round of the 2002 draft, admits that he felt slighted when the Redskins selected a quarterback so high but says what matters most is that the ball is in his hands. "What it comes down to is, I need to play well this year," Ramsey says, "and we'll take it from there." He will at least be working behind an improved line. The team signed free-agent center Casey Rabach (six years, $18.5 million), late of the Ravens, and right tackle Jon Jansen returns after missing all of 2004 with a ruptured left Achilles tendon. Those two will also be counted on to open more and bigger holes for Clinton Portis, who in his first season in Washington rushed for 1,315 yards but was held to 70 yards or less in seven games.

Jansen says the offense should be better in 2005 simply because players didn't have to learn another new system, a rarity for them in recent years; the seven-year veteran says this off-season was the quietest he has seen in Washington. True, free safety Sean Taylor faces a felony aggravated-assault charge stemming from a June incident in which his two all-terrain vehicles were allegedly stolen (his scheduled Sept. 12 trial date could be postponed until after the season), but there were no major coaching moves for a change and relatively little player turnover as owner Daniel Snyder has stuck to his word and let Gibbs run the team. "Every year leading up to this one we've had a lot of hoopla and a lot of circus activity," Jansen says. "This year we've stayed pretty low-key and we've kept a lot of guys, as many as we could. I think there are going to be a lot of [opponents] who aren't ready for us."

If part of the Gibbs plan was to sneak up on opponents in Year 2, last season will have been the perfect setup.

-- Bill Syken -- :mad:

Nice picture of Ramsey.

all the negative press the Skins get is 95% deserved. the other 5% is just creative license. can't waste our frustration on the writers, we gotta save it for the referees and Vinny Ceratto.

someone should print the reams of bad press and leave it in a pile in front of Redskin Park. if shutting Lenny Pastabelly's gaping maw isn't motivation, nothing is.

I'm not saying everyone should say we are gonna win the Superbowl. I dont even mind that much guys who say were not a good team. But 4-12??? Thats like worst team in the league category. You gotta be joking me with somthing like that. Whatever.

this article is just horrid! I cannot believe that someone can predict 4-12 knowing the type of defense we have. Even if the offense is the same, we are at worst a 6-10 team. Jesus, I can't wait to send that little pri*k an email.

people are just trying to compensate for when they said 11-7 last year with Gibbs' return. not Lenny tho. he's committed to hating us even if we drafted Jesus.