Hey, the sun did rise this morning!

[memphisskin]

I watched the game and posted in the game day thread, which as anyone of you has done should understand is only a reflection of that game. During any game it is easy for emotions to run away, especially during a particularly good or particularly bad showing. I watched the postgame coverage on Comcast, saw Jim Zorn's post game presser on redskins.com, and awoke this morning to read some of the game day posts and have a different perspective.

First off, anyone who judges regular season success from preseason records is naive. It was good to have Zorn "practice" winning, but most of those wins were achieved by guys who won't be wearing the burgundy and gold come Sep 4.

The defense played a heckuva first quarter. The offense didn't get a first down, and the defense held up. Even after the sudden change on Campbell's sack they held the Panthers to a field goal. They simply wore down. The Panthers get paid too, their coaches knew this and it was a series of runs that broke this game open. In the past, our defense has carried us when our offense has looked like this. And actually, having Landry in the game would have saved a couple of touchdowns as his speed and aggressiveness would have stopped at least one of those long runs.

The offense is impossible to judge simply because on just about every play one of our lineman was losing an individual battle. But was is clear is that Jason Campbell isn't trusting this offense yet. Zorn wants him to make quick decisions, but one offseason and training camp aren't nearly enough to get acclimated to a brand new offense and philosophy. It will click with Campbell, but it will just take some trial by fire. He'll be fine, it seemed he wanted to not make a mistake and so he pumped and second guessed himself. This can be corrected, probably not in 12 days but over the first four games.

We're not as bad as this game would appear and we're not as good as that 3-0 PRESEASON record looked either. We are what we are, a team installing a new offense under a rookie head coach. There will be bumps and bruises, but I think given a chance Zorn can be a good head coach in this league. It may not be this year, although I hope it is, but he will prove himself.