Quote:
Originally Posted by over the mountain
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First and foremost I am looking for the 1st unit offense to play better across the board. From playcalling to OL to RB and yes QB the 1st unit has to look better.
The Ravens front is formidable and our starting OL against the Lions starting DL was outmatched and thus the 1st unit offense couldn't get anything going outside of 1 Alfred Morris run.
From PFF:
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Granted, left tackle Trent Williams didn’t play, but Washington still had four of its five projected starters on the field for RG III’s time...Rookie first-round pick Brandon Scherff is supposed to help — he played right guard on Thursday night — but he struggled, surrendering a sack on a bull rush on the team’s first passing play. He finished the game with a -3.0 grade.
--Ezekiel Ansah (+1.5) only played eight snaps, but he left his mark on the Washington offense registering a hit, a hurry and a defensive stop in spite of his limited playing time.
Scherff is a rookie but we're expecting a lot from him and moving from RT to RG should allow him to maximize his talent. Against the Lions the team started Willie Smith starting at LT and it was a mistake. The guy had only started 1 game at OT the previous season. That is less then both Morgan Moses and Tom Compton imo either would have been better option. But thankfully Trent Williams returns to the line-up.
At some point I believe the evaluation approach playcalling with the 1st unit offense has to become preparation playcalling. I watch far more preseason football then I care to admit, and from that I see there several different approaches. The Eagles for example run their regular offense. Some teams gameplan a more then others, especially for rookie QBs. Our 1st unit offense has yet to call a screen, a read-option and iirc only 1 or 2 bootlegs. They have been base personnel under center run on almost every 1st down. There have been a few play-action passes. But primarily we've been drop back passing from under center and from shotgun.
Jay himself pointed out:
"So far with Robert, unfortunately, as play callers we’ve done a poor job of getting our team into a rhythm. We haven’t got a first down and then followed up with a nice bootleg or something like that. We’ve just been first down, second down, third down, punt, it seems like it was against Detroit. It’s very necessary for us to try to get our offense moving positively a little bit to get us in a rhythm, we just haven’t been able to do that. Defense, give them a lot of credit. Detroit played great defense, pass rush. They stopped the run, made it very difficult on us. They were No. 2 ranked in the league last year for a reason. But we do have to compete a lot better than that with our ones."
“We just have to make sure we do our best to put Robert in a good place, with play calls and and getting things going offensively,”
The first unit offense had
a LOT of issues to overcome from a personnel stand point. 3rd string LT and virtually no TE. Compton played most of the snaps at TE with the first unit and of course that was mistake because its an obviously tell to the defense 'run'.
Having Jordan Reed back is also going to be huge.
To sum up: with Trent and Reed back I expect to see better playcalling and better production from the 1st unit offense.