'Bring the Pain' Stepping away from the panic button, slowly

[Beemnseven]

Originally Posted by skinsfan69

Did anyone actually think we were better than the Giants??? I have news for everyone. They are a better football team than we are. From ownership on down the freakin water boys they're better. Can someone tell me any area where we're better than NY? I can't think of one. I'm not going to panic cause I know they're better than us. Let's regroup next week.

Wow. So we should have had no expectation of winning against the Giants? They're so much better, we should have forfeited the game?

Are they in a different league than us? No. If that's the outlook we have the organization should absolutely fold and the players should all retire never to be heard from again.

Ask the players if they looked at that game the way you apparently did.

[over the mountain]

im not panicing but yesterday certainly hurt alot b/c we didnt get the answers and improvement we were expecting right away.

- defense pressuring the opposing qb
- passing game stretched the field to loosen things up for portis
- JC making quicker decisions/looking more comfortable with zorns offense
- zorn trusting his players (JC and O line) enough to open up the play book alil

none of these areas looked any different than last year.

i also think this team will put together some kind of winning streak at some point in the season, I just hope we can stay close to .500 until things start clicking for us.

go skins!!

[skinsnut]

Ok...here are my thoughts.
Not much has changed since the end of last year.
You just witnessed a typical 6-10 type team.
Outcoached, outplayed in Offense, Defense...probably beat them in special teams though.
We were essentially dominated...except the Giants cant get TD's when close...just like us.

What are the issues?
You got it....passing game suspect, pass rush a bit suspect...but a bit better.
Can't stop opposing offense on long drives in the 4th when losing.
QB takes too long to throw.
But the biggest of all of these is lack of creative playcalling.

Outside of offensive line injuries last year (which I think is a bit of a scapegoat approach). Zorn's offense can be easily game planned. There is very little creativity.
The bottom line is that when you cannot throw deep effectively, you need to use misdirection to get the Dline to slow and to get 8 out of the box.
I happen to like the ARE play...perhaps it was at the wrong time, and it was poorly executive, but it showed intention to take risks to win. Unfortunately, other than the special teams fake FG. There was very little to shake things up offensively.
Zorn should use Shotgun, Hurry up....which Campbell excels at and also eliminated Dline rotations. Sweeps, reverses, Screens of all sorts, draws, play action, etc.
Where is the 2 TE set?, Where were the rookie WR? is Campbell afraid to throw to them?
Why not bench Santana and throw in one of the Big guys when he is being shut down?
Where are the 2nd half adjustments?
I haven't seen them yet under Zorn.

Also...why not attack the Giant's weakness....they had a starting corner out...did anyone even notice?

Most of this game exposed our weaknesses in Roster....but a good coach with good playcalling can cover most of those and attack the weaknesses of opponents.
This did not happen...
I am more disappointed with coaching than the players at this point.
That is what worries me the most right now

[DynamiteRave]

Originally Posted by JWsleep

In the spirit of this thread, I'll give an optimist's spiel:

I actually think we're pretty close as a team. The main issues now are confidence and execution--from top to bottom, including play-calling. The Rams couldn't come at a better time. The offense is a rhythm, timing type-deal. That either looks great or awful--there's not a lot in between. So it looks awful on one series, great on another right now. But it will come. Over the next few weeks, we'll win some games. Of course, everyone will go nuts and think we're superbowl bound. The hope is that we'll get our record and confidence up so we can win some of the tough ones down the road.

As for the D, I think it will become more dominant as we move down the road. The gints are an efficient team and can be very frustrating. But recall that the gints won the SB 2 years ago, and were 13 game winners last year. They don't have the flash of many teams, but they know how to win. The D will get better. Again, the Rams helps!

As for all the nutty "fire everyone" threads and posts, here's my view: if you want to rant like that, let's have a rant thread. Or just go to extremeskins: there's like 20 such threads active right now. But on the Warpath, let's try not to mess up a good board with crap. That doesn't mean no angry critical posts. On the contrary, fire away! They just have to have some brains behind them. Otherwise, this is just a place to rant and vent--fun for the poster, maybe, but boring as hell to read.

I'm tempted to put that together... a big The Rant Thread. So everyone can go in there bitch about anything to their hearts content and leave intelligent discussion to the real threads. Hell. I'll go do that now. I'll throw it in off-topic.

[Beemnseven]

Originally Posted by 12thMan

And if we don't? Look this team has a habit of playing down to their level of competition. I don't expect the Rams to beat us, but I ain't expecting a blowout either.

It's abundantly clear to me that Jim Zorn is married to his system and not interested in tailoring it to the strengths of this Redskins team. Giants players were leaving the game left and right yesterday, yet we couldn't seem to exploit any of those match-ups. Sure it's only one game, but yesterday's game was nothing more than a carry over of what we witnessed the second half of last season.

Until we light up the Rams, my arms are folded and my foot is tapping.

Well said;, you and I are pretty much on the same page.

It's bothersome to me that we now have full season under Zorn's system, a full offseason, minicamps, OTAs, and training camp, without much player turnover, and things still aren't clicking. Don't tell me how 'awesome' the Giants are -- we had the pass protection, and Campbell made all the completions you could think of underneath. But the outside receivers still can't get open, and they couldn't get open against NYG backup corners.

To me that's bad scheming, a lack of cohesion, bad communication, misalignments -- all things that shouldn't be happening if this offense is taking us to the next step.

[skinsfan69]

Originally Posted by Beemnseven

Wow. So we should have had no expectation of winning against the Giants? They're so much better, we should have forfeited the game, heh?

Are they in a different league than us? No. If that's the outlook we have the organization should absolutely fold and the players should all retire never to be heard from again.

Ask the players if they looked at that game the way you apparently did.

I never said that NY was in a different league did I? Actually I think we're getting close to them but they're still a better team. There is a reason they won the SB two years ago and won 12 games last year. Not only are they better but they seem to play smarter and that comes down to coaching.

[skinsfan69]

Originally Posted by HBnotBlades

I actually don't think Campbell played that terribly, he completed over 70% of his passes and averaged over 10 yards per completion. He seemed to be looking down the field very well and hitting receivers in stride, and that's what we didn't see last year. Did he make two stupid plays? Of course he did, but not stepping up in the pocket probably results in a TD for the defense less than 1% of the time. It was just bad luck and this would have been a completely different game if that was a sack instead.

The over-the-line interception was inexcusable, Campbell should, and does know better. He showed last year that he can be trusted to take care of the ball, so I don't think that play will be indicative of his play for the rest of the year.

The playcalling was disappointing though. In parts of the 2nd and 3rd quarter it looked like they couldn't stop us when we went 3 wide. The Giants didn't have enough corner depth to stop us when they need their nickle on the field, but all of the sudden we went into run-run-pass playcalling and let them off the hook.


SIDE NOTE: Hi guys, I just joined up today after deciding I couldn't take extremeskins anymore. The place is essentially unreadable for much of the year and is completely devoid of logic. The Warpath seems to have actual discussion in place of profanity laced tirades, and I look forward to Skins talk with all of you.

Cheers

Nice post and you're dead on. That comes down to coaching. Zorn didn't make the adjustment adn doesn't seem to know how to make adjustments during games.

[JWsleep]

I don't know. The way it looked to me was that the gints rolled their safeties to the outside to protect their CBs, and Zorn/Campbell hit the intermediate middle for lots of plays. ARE and Cooley had big days.

But the odd thing is that Zorn didn't stick to his WC system ENOUGH, IMO. Why run Portis on 1st down? Because, hey, you've got a 1400 yard back, Buges as a line coach, it's the NFC east, you've got to control ToP, etc. That looked like Gibbs II, not the WC. I think maybe we need to move away a bit from the Buges/Gibbs stuff and throw to set up the run. We haven't done enough of that yet.

[Beemnseven]

Originally Posted by JWsleep

I don't know. The way it looked to me was that the gints rolled their safeties to the outside to protect their CBs, and Zorn/Campbell hit the intermediate middle for lots of plays. ARE and Cooley had big days.

But the odd thing is that Zorn didn't stick to his WC system ENOUGH, IMO. Why run Portis on 1st down? Because, hey, you've got a 140 yard back, Buges as a line coach, it's the NFC east, you've got to control ToP, etc. That looked like Gibbs II, not the WC. I think maybe we need to move away a bit from the Buges/Gibbs stuff and throw to set up the run. We haven't done enough of that yet.

Yep, I'm with you here. Time to dump the delusion that we're a power running team. We haven't been that way since Riggins retired.

We have all these receivers, two pass catching tight ends, and a running back that can block. Even though the deep accuracy isn't always there, we have a QB with an arm like a howitzer. Put Campbell in the shotgun and throw it 65% of the time. Run the ball to change things up and to put away the oppenent with a safe lead. But throw the damn ball, and throw it with purpose.

[MTK]

I would have liked to have seen a few more 1st and 2nd down pass plays. I think Zorn was a little too cautious.

[JWsleep]

Originally Posted by Beemnseven

Yep, I'm with you here. Time to dump the delusion that we're a power running team. We haven't been that way since Riggins retired.

We have all these receivers, two pass catching tight ends, and a running back that can block. Even though the deep accuracy isn't always there, we have a QB with an arm like a howitzer. Put Campbell in the shotgun and throw it 65% of the time. Run the ball to change it up and to put away the oppenent with a safe lead. But throw the damn ball, and throw it with purpose.

Right on. Just what I'd like to see.

[44Deezel]

Has anyone stopped to consider the possibility that the Giants aren't that good? They were 1-3 to finish last season and haven't done much to upgrade their personnel, although we made their Wide Receivers look like pro-bowlers. I saw lots of comments predicting the demise of the Giants due the loss of Plaxico (which I didn't buy for a second... or the junk about Romo missing TO for that matter, but whatever).

What if the Skins just got beaten up by an 8-8 or 9-7 team?

[44Deezel]

Originally Posted by JWsleep

Right on. Just what I'd like to see.

Romo connected on a 70 yard TD pass to Roy Williams and the ball only traveled through the air around 15 yards. We don't need to throw the ball 50-70 yards in the air to have a big play. Everything seems to be either a 5-10 yard dink or a bomb that misses terribly. Where's are the intermediate plays? The YAC?

[SBXVII]

Originally Posted by Beemnseven

Campbell wasn't exactly running for his life this afternoon. Yeah, they got to him a couple of times, but the fumble by Umenyora was more a product of Jason holding the ball too long.

Seemed like the protection was basically there today.

Exactly. I think someone pointed out that there was only 2 sacks and none from Heyer's side. Touche', good job O-line. But, ......how many rush's were there? or close sacks? It seemed like all game I kept saying "get rid of the ball", "get rid of the ball."

In a nutshell I expected the Skins to be better then the Giants. I bought in to the fact the Giants have no WR's, they have key injuries, our O-line was boosted, and we have better weapons this yr. Totally bought it. Sold. I still don't think the Giants are better, I think the Skins allowed them to physically man handle them to get them off their game. Moss was upset, Landry was upset, just to name a couple. I expected to see a lot of Kelly, a little of Thomas, some of Davis, and perhaps a lot of Mitchell in the red zone. I mean Mitchell is practically taller then everyone which makes for a good target.

If Zorn was having trouble getting the runs in, no different then when we play the Steeler's, Eagles, Ravens, Titans...etc. They have big defensive lines. It's a clue to send the RB around the D-line and get the ball to him so he can get up field. The whole game the run only worked twice. Send Portis out. Get him into open space.

The play calling was atrocious. Run, Run, Pass, Punt. Go figure. Zorn, here's a quick tid bit.....if the run is not working PASS. Get something going. and yes I noticed JC looks to feel more comfortable in the shot gun also. I guess cause he does not have to count steps while back peddling, look at the rush, check the defense, and get the pass off. To much for him to think about.

[44Deezel]

Originally Posted by SBXVII

Exactly. I think someone pointed out that there was only 2 sacks and none from Heyer's side. Touche', good job O-line. But, ......how many rush's were there? or close sacks? It seemed like all game I kept saying "get rid of the ball", "get rid of the ball."

In a nutshell I expected the Skins to be better then the Giants. I bought in to the fact the Giants have no WR's, they have key injuries, our O-line was boosted, and we have better weapons this yr. Totally bought it. Sold. I still don't think the Giants are better, I think the Skins allowed them to physically man handle them to get them off their game. Moss was upset, Landry was upset, just to name a couple. I expected to see a lot of Kelly, a little of Thomas, some of Davis, and perhaps a lot of Mitchell in the red zone. I mean Mitchell is practically taller then everyone which makes for a good target.

If Zorn was having trouble getting the runs in, no different then when we play the Steeler's, Eagles, Ravens, Titans...etc. They have big defensive lines. It's a clue to send the RB around the D-line and get the ball to him so he can get up field. The whole game the run only worked twice. Send Portis out. Get him into open space.

The play calling was atrocious. Run, Run, Pass, Punt. Go figure. Zorn, here's a quick tid bit.....if the run is not working PASS. Get something going. and yes I noticed JC looks to feel more comfortable in the shot gun also. I guess cause he does not have to count steps while back peddling, look at the rush, check the defense, and get the pass off. To much for him to think about.

They can also go 4 or 5 wide and run from that formation. Or run from shot-gun. Or go no-huddle in the first quarter. Or pass on first down. They're just so friggin predictable. I believe the ball never crossed the plane of the end zone through the air until the pass to Cooley. That's ridiculous. I want to see balls fall incomplete (better yet complete) in the end zone BEFORE the 4th quarter.