Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review

GTripp0012 · 08-23-2009, 08:51 AM

Giving this a pilot run for the upcoming season.

Offense

Drive I & II (before and after the fake punt)

It's incredibly important to remember that the entire difference between the offensive performance of the first team against the Steelers vs. the Ravens is a successful fake punt
The Redskins converted only two third downs in five tries. The key for this offense is to stay out of third down, or at very least, out of third and 7+.
I think the one Redskin on the offensive line that most improved his play from last season based on the meaningless sample of 5 drives or so is Casey Rabach. He's making things happen in the middle of the line, things that aren't hits on his quarterback.
On the successful drive, Fred Davis had about three devastating blocks, two of which against the Steelers DL (which appears to be an undertalented unit, hence the Ziggy Hood pick).
As much credit as the offensive line gets, the Steelers' blitz packages were very vanilla. Now, the Redskins struggled with all sorts of blitz packages last year, so this is an improvement. But the Steelers did not stunt once to try to generate pressure on Jason Campbell. We just beat them man on a man.
Ladell Betts needs to be able to finish drives if he's going to effectively spell Clinton Portis. Giving credit where it's due: the third and four draw does not work if Ladell doesn't run though an arm tackle. But we needed two yards in two plays from Betts on the goal line and he got good blocking* and did not deliver. There's no doubt that if you run Portis twice there, he's shakin' it in the end zone. But that's the problem. If you don't have confidence in Betts to score there, then you won't have confidence in him to score in ANY situation over Portis. He's not helping his cause.
*Sellers did whiff on a block that would have sent Betts walking into the end zone untouched, but he also decleated Timmons earlier in the drive, and it was a block that turned a one yard loss for Portis into a two yard gain. I also thought there was a bad spot after the first goal line run and it should have been 1st and goal from the one instead of 3rd and inches. But shit happens, and you have to execute anyway.

Drive III

Unlike the first deep ball to Malcolm Kelly, the second to Moss was actually a well-designed play. The Redskins did not use play action, and simply ran a post corner into cover three. Moss was never open, but when you talk about the proverbial "taking a shot", that play is how you take a shot. The opening play of the game is how you get in second and ten without a doubt. They caught the Steelers in cover three (with Polamalu up near the flat against 3 WR), and if they run that against a team with a poor LCB, it's probably a 55-yd gain. There was no safety help.
Too often, the Redskins max protect when they go deep, and that just wastes a play. When we were competiting passes at the beginning of last year, we were blocking with six and letting Jason Campbell's athleticism help create time for the play downfield, not asking him to force a ball in between three guys 55 yards down the field. Obviously, there are good strategies and bad strategies with the deep ball, and it's not about just winging it out there.
If you max protect that deep ball, you're gambing that they will blitz. That's a 3rd and 4 play, not a first play of the game.
Went to the well once too many times with the draw. Fool James Harrison 4 times, shame on you. Fool him 5 times, and he's giving back some of that bonus money.
Aborted screen number two. You know, if a world champion defensive line isn't physically dominant, it's probably good at something.

Defense

Drive I

The Redskins defense has deflected passes in consecuitve games on the first play. Daniels last week, Carter today.
There were plays were EVERY member of the defensive line beat their blocks on Saturday.
Blache appears to have switched Golston and Montgomery when they are in the game together, and Golston played well at the three techinque. He was adverse to this last year, but I'm not seeing any dropoff.
Whereas the Steelers kept it Vanilla, Blache was throwing out all the stops. Or at least a basic stunt or two on third down. That's about as creative as it gets for our defense.

Drive II

As good as Orakpo is against the pass, he's just not there yet against the run. The difference is at RDE, there would be someone behind him to clean up his mess. At SLB, the runners are in our secondary pretty fast. You can have a pass rushing end who is weak against the run, you cannot get away with a linebacker who is.
The Redskins had disproprtionately good third down pass defense last year. If that number nomalizes to expected levels, all the pass rush in the world isn't going to get off the field. Last year, you could describe our DB's as "clutch." This year, they're just thin. And the thing is, nothing is different except the outcomes.
Poor Charlie Batch. On one play, he evaded Andre Carter, Brian Orakpo, and Albert Haynesworth who all had beaten their blocks, and then he ended up getting piledriven anyway by C. Griffin. This is Redskins football.
Greg Blache dials up a seven man blitz on third down and 13, which is a firable offense (in the regular season, of course ). I'm not sure exactly what the strategy is here, 7 man blitzes never work, and it gives you man to man across the board. In addition to this, Chris Horton was playing the deep safety (with Landry on an ineffective blitz) and he just never broke on the in cut by Santonio Holmes. Rogers got beat to the inside, but you'll generally give them that in cut. This was a complete disaster of a play from the coaching through the execution. Might of well have just given them a first down.
Worse: after the Redskins gave up the third and long, the intensity on the DL completely disappeared. No fierce pass rush from those guys on either of the next two plays. It was night and day.
So despite that, the Steelers misfire on two passes, and the Redskins defense gets 3rd and 10 again. This time, Blache dials up a man under-cover two scheme with no blitz, and DeAngelo Hall is indefensably toasted. It's the same man scheme that more or less killed him in Oakland. Whereas Rogers had to worry about Holmes getting vertical on him the first down before, Hall's only concern on this play is that they don't get the ball in to Ward. Fail. Great catch by Ward though, because this could have easily been an overthrown pass.
Then the Steelers spread out the Redskins defense on first down and get a wide open receiver in the flat. Nice, creative play call. No one person to blame on the defensive end, Batch diagnosed the coverage quite quickly.
The Steelers touchdown play was nearly identical to the "student body" play which Portis almost scored on in our drive. They blocked it perfectly, and Landry took a bad angle (much like Polamalu took a bad angle that gave Portis and Sellers the edge).

This year, instead of running play success rate, I'm going to be calculating a highly experimental stat that can only be done with game film: lineman yards. The goal is to borrow the adjusted line yards concept from football outsiders, and instead of calculating how well the line does as a whole independant of long runs, I'm going to try to divide the yards gained by the blocker who earns them. Ideally, I'll be able to make a statement like: Derrick Dockery is worth 4.5 YPC on front side runs. But again, it's going to be a lot of work for something that probably won't hold up as a legitimate evaluation method, so I might ditch it.

On the Redskins third drive (a three and out), this is how I would calculate the lineman yards:

Drive IV

1st & 10: Cartwright rushes for three yards off the right side. The regression states that OL value for a 3 yard carry is 100% of value. Thusly I award three total yards to each of the individual blockers at the point of attack, which on this play was Randy Thomas and Stephon Heyer. Only players at the point of attack will be judged by lineman yards. (Heyer 1-3, Thomas 1-3)
2nd & 7: Cartwright rushes off the left side for four yards. At the point of attack is Fred Davis, Chris Samuels, and Derrick Dockery. (Davis 1-4, Samuels 1-4, Dockery 1-4)
3rd & 3: Campbell throws off of Davis' hands, incomplete. Had this been a screen pass, I could have factored it in.

And so it works like that. If Portis breaks for 15 yards, I'd have to break the play down into three parts. First, at the line, I'd assign full value to the players at point of attack. Then, at the second level, lineman get half value for their blocks (half an attempt as well). Finally, in the secondary, no points awarded. We'll see how that goes.

Paintrain · 08-23-2009, 09:39 AM

Nicely done. If you can consistently track the linemen YPC that will be interesting to see over the entire season.

dmek25 · 08-23-2009, 09:39 AM

good stuff here. are you going to do this every week? i know its time consuming, but i would appreciate( if that means anything)

NYCskinfan82 · 08-23-2009, 09:50 AM

Good stuff, now if you could only come up with a formula for the winning lotto #'s.

TheSmurfs22 · 08-23-2009, 10:46 AM

Very well done thank you. The Skins have got to finish drives. It reminded me of last year. We still struggle in the Red Zone.

stu_nna · 08-23-2009, 11:00 AM

What happens on negative rushing yards? does it count against the YPC?

MTK · 08-23-2009, 11:38 AM

The main positive for me last night was the D, especially the seemingly constant pressure from the line. Our starting unit could be downright scary.

SmootSmack · 08-23-2009, 11:39 AM

Nice work here Andy Stitzer

GMScud · 08-23-2009, 11:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mattyk72

The main positive for me last night was the D, especially the seemingly constant pressure from the line. Our starting unit could be downright scary.

I agree about the defense. It's going to need to be scary if our offense continues to look this bad. If we were a normally strong unit offensively, I would be okay with the "it's just the preseason stuff."

Until we don't look like the offense of the last 8 games of 2008 and the first two preseason games of 2009, I'm super skeptical (and hopeful at the same time) about what we can achieve.

washingtonpost.com

washingtonpost.com

JWsleep · 08-23-2009, 05:40 PM

Great stuff, Tripp. Not sure about that stat, but if you've got the time, go ahead and get your math on!

skinsfaninok · 08-23-2009, 05:52 PM

WTF can't this team score pts?? (red zone especially) we have offensive talent, Cooley, Portis, Moss, and big receivers!! I don't understand why we cant score it's like every year we have a solid d and an awful offense. All we need is like 20pts per game and we will win 10 games.

RobH4413 · 08-23-2009, 05:55 PM

Awesome read. Great job as usual Gtripp.

GusFrerotte · 08-23-2009, 06:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheSmurfs22

Very well done thank you. The Skins have got to finish drives. It reminded me of last year. We still struggle in the Red Zone.

Yeah that does worry me. We have some exciting new talent on offense though, so hopefully that will change. If it doesn't we will have yet another 7-9 or 8-8 season.

ethat001 · 08-23-2009, 10:29 PM

I'm worried about the defensive slip on the second series. Seems like you think it's Greg Blache's fault for calling an aggressive blitz when he could have played conservatively, and then Hall getting beaten...

Last year we had to worry about the Dline -- I hope we don't have to worry about the DB's now. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

TheSmurfs22 · 08-23-2009, 10:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GusFrerotte

Yeah that does worry me. We have some exciting new talent on offense though, so hopefully that will change. If it doesn't we will have yet another 7-9 or 8-8 season.

~~~~
Lets hope so. I felt like I was having a deja vu moment last night.
I do not get too panicked or too stoked about preseason games, but it does give some insights of what we might be dealing with. Personally, I see us going 8-8 this season.

08-23-2009, 08:51 AM	#1
GTripp0012 Living Legend Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Evanston, IL Age: 36 Posts: 15,994	Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review Giving this a pilot run for the upcoming season. Offense Drive I & II (before and after the fake punt) It's incredibly important to remember that the entire difference between the offensive performance of the first team against the Steelers vs. the Ravens is a successful fake punt The Redskins converted only two third downs in five tries. The key for this offense is to stay out of third down, or at very least, out of third and 7+. I think the one Redskin on the offensive line that most improved his play from last season based on the meaningless sample of 5 drives or so is Casey Rabach. He's making things happen in the middle of the line, things that aren't hits on his quarterback. On the successful drive, Fred Davis had about three devastating blocks, two of which against the Steelers DL (which appears to be an undertalented unit, hence the Ziggy Hood pick). As much credit as the offensive line gets, the Steelers' blitz packages were very vanilla. Now, the Redskins struggled with all sorts of blitz packages last year, so this is an improvement. But the Steelers did not stunt once to try to generate pressure on Jason Campbell. We just beat them man on a man. Ladell Betts needs to be able to finish drives if he's going to effectively spell Clinton Portis. Giving credit where it's due: the third and four draw does not work if Ladell doesn't run though an arm tackle. But we needed two yards in two plays from Betts on the goal line and he got good blocking* and did not deliver. There's no doubt that if you run Portis twice there, he's shakin' it in the end zone. But that's the problem. If you don't have confidence in Betts to score there, then you won't have confidence in him to score in ANY situation over Portis. He's not helping his cause. Sellers did whiff on a block that would have sent Betts walking into the end zone untouched, but he also decleated Timmons earlier in the drive, and it was a block that turned a one yard loss for Portis into a two yard gain. I also thought there was a bad spot after the first goal line run and it should have been 1st and goal from the one instead of 3rd and inches. But shit happens, and you have to execute anyway. Drive III Unlike the first deep ball to Malcolm Kelly, the second to Moss was actually a well-designed play. The Redskins did not use play action, and simply ran a post corner into cover three. Moss was never open, but when you talk about the proverbial "taking a shot", that play is how you take a shot. The opening play of the game is how you get in second and ten without a doubt. They caught the Steelers in cover three (with Polamalu up near the flat against 3 WR), and if they run that against a team with a poor LCB, it's probably a 55-yd gain. There was no safety help. Too often, the Redskins max protect when they go deep, and that just wastes a play. When we were competiting passes at the beginning of last year, we were blocking with six and letting Jason Campbell's athleticism help create time for the play downfield, not asking him to force a ball in between three guys 55 yards down the field. Obviously, there are good strategies and bad strategies with the deep ball, and it's not about just winging it out there. If you max protect that deep ball, you're gambing that they will blitz. That's a 3rd and 4 play, not a first play of the game. Went to the well once too many times with the draw. Fool James Harrison 4 times, shame on you. Fool him 5 times, and he's giving back some of that bonus money. Aborted screen number two. You know, if a world champion defensive line isn't physically dominant, it's probably good at something. Defense* Drive I The Redskins defense has deflected passes in consecuitve games on the first play. Daniels last week, Carter today. There were plays were EVERY member of the defensive line beat their blocks on Saturday. Blache appears to have switched Golston and Montgomery when they are in the game together, and Golston played well at the three techinque. He was adverse to this last year, but I'm not seeing any dropoff. Whereas the Steelers kept it Vanilla, Blache was throwing out all the stops. Or at least a basic stunt or two on third down. That's about as creative as it gets for our defense. Drive II As good as Orakpo is against the pass, he's just not there yet against the run. The difference is at RDE, there would be someone behind him to clean up his mess. At SLB, the runners are in our secondary pretty fast. You can have a pass rushing end who is weak against the run, you cannot get away with a linebacker who is. The Redskins had disproprtionately good third down pass defense last year. If that number nomalizes to expected levels, all the pass rush in the world isn't going to get off the field. Last year, you could describe our DB's as "clutch." This year, they're just thin. And the thing is, nothing is different except the outcomes. Poor Charlie Batch. On one play, he evaded Andre Carter, Brian Orakpo, and Albert Haynesworth who all had beaten their blocks, and then he ended up getting piledriven anyway by C. Griffin. This is Redskins football. Greg Blache dials up a seven man blitz on third down and 13, which is a firable offense (in the regular season, of course ). I'm not sure exactly what the strategy is here, 7 man blitzes never work, and it gives you man to man across the board. In addition to this, Chris Horton was playing the deep safety (with Landry on an ineffective blitz) and he just never broke on the in cut by Santonio Holmes. Rogers got beat to the inside, but you'll generally give them that in cut. This was a complete disaster of a play from the coaching through the execution. Might of well have just given them a first down. Worse: after the Redskins gave up the third and long, the intensity on the DL completely disappeared. No fierce pass rush from those guys on either of the next two plays. It was night and day. So despite that, the Steelers misfire on two passes, and the Redskins defense gets 3rd and 10 again. This time, Blache dials up a man under-cover two scheme with no blitz, and DeAngelo Hall is indefensably toasted. It's the same man scheme that more or less killed him in Oakland. Whereas Rogers had to worry about Holmes getting vertical on him the first down before, Hall's only concern on this play is that they don't get the ball in to Ward. Fail. Great catch by Ward though, because this could have easily been an overthrown pass. Then the Steelers spread out the Redskins defense on first down and get a wide open receiver in the flat. Nice, creative play call. No one person to blame on the defensive end, Batch diagnosed the coverage quite quickly. The Steelers touchdown play was nearly identical to the "student body" play which Portis almost scored on in our drive. They blocked it perfectly, and Landry took a bad angle (much like Polamalu took a bad angle that gave Portis and Sellers the edge). This year, instead of running play success rate, I'm going to be calculating a highly experimental stat that can only be done with game film: lineman yards. The goal is to borrow the adjusted line yards concept from football outsiders, and instead of calculating how well the line does as a whole independant of long runs, I'm going to try to divide the yards gained by the blocker who earns them. Ideally, I'll be able to make a statement like: Derrick Dockery is worth 4.5 YPC on front side runs. But again, it's going to be a lot of work for something that probably won't hold up as a legitimate evaluation method, so I might ditch it. On the Redskins third drive (a three and out), this is how I would calculate the lineman yards: Drive IV 1st & 10: Cartwright rushes for three yards off the right side. The regression states that OL value for a 3 yard carry is 100% of value. Thusly I award three total yards to each of the individual blockers at the point of attack, which on this play was Randy Thomas and Stephon Heyer. Only players at the point of attack will be judged by lineman yards. (Heyer 1-3, Thomas 1-3) 2nd & 7: Cartwright rushes off the left side for four yards. At the point of attack is Fred Davis, Chris Samuels, and Derrick Dockery. (Davis 1-4, Samuels 1-4, Dockery 1-4) 3rd & 3: Campbell throws off of Davis' hands, incomplete. Had this been a screen pass, I could have factored it in. And so it works like that. If Portis breaks for 15 yards, I'd have to break the play down into three parts. First, at the line, I'd assign full value to the players at point of attack. Then, at the second level, lineman get half value for their blocks (half an attempt as well). Finally, in the secondary, no points awarded. We'll see how that goes. __________________ according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

08-23-2009, 09:39 AM	#2
Paintrain Pro Bowl Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Ft. Lauderdale, FL Age: 54 Posts: 5,006	Re: Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review Nicely done. If you can consistently track the linemen YPC that will be interesting to see over the entire season. __________________ Paintrain's Redskins Fandom 1981-2014 I'm not dead but this team is dead to me...but now that McCloughan is here they may have new life! Jay Gruden = Zorny McSpurrier Kirk Cousins = Next Grossman

08-23-2009, 09:39 AM	#3
dmek25 MVP Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: lancaster,pa Age: 63 Posts: 10,672	Re: Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review good stuff here. are you going to do this every week? i know its time consuming, but i would appreciate( if that means anything) __________________ "It's better to be quiet and thought a fool than to open ones mouth and remove all doubt." courtesy of 53fan

08-23-2009, 09:50 AM	#4
NYCskinfan82 Playmaker Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Queens, NYC Age: 55 Posts: 3,803	Re: Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review Good stuff, now if you could only come up with a formula for the winning lotto #'s.

08-23-2009, 10:46 AM	#5
TheSmurfs22 The Starter Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Staunton, VA Posts: 1,261	Re: Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review Very well done thank you. The Skins have got to finish drives. It reminded me of last year. We still struggle in the Red Zone.

08-23-2009, 11:00 AM	#6
stu_nna Special Teams Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Virginia Age: 47 Posts: 239	Re: Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review What happens on negative rushing yards? does it count against the YPC?

08-23-2009, 11:38 AM	#7
MTK \m/ Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: NY Age: 52 Posts: 99,464	Re: Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review The main positive for me last night was the D, especially the seemingly constant pressure from the line. Our starting unit could be downright scary. __________________ Support The Warpath! \| Warpath Shop

08-23-2009, 11:39 AM	#8
SmootSmack Uncle Phil Join Date: Feb 2004 Posts: 45,256	Re: Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review Nice work here Andy Stitzer __________________ You're So Vain...You Probably Think This Sig Is About You

08-23-2009, 05:40 PM	#10
JWsleep Propane and propane accessories Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Houston, TX Age: 55 Posts: 4,714	Re: Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review Great stuff, Tripp. Not sure about that stat, but if you've got the time, go ahead and get your math on! __________________ Hail from Houston!

08-23-2009, 05:52 PM	#11
skinsfaninok Warpath Hall of Fame Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: UNITED STATES Age: 37 Posts: 36,113	Re: Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review WTF can't this team score pts?? (red zone especially) we have offensive talent, Cooley, Portis, Moss, and big receivers!! I don't understand why we cant score it's like every year we have a solid d and an awful offense. All we need is like 20pts per game and we will win 10 games. __________________ “Mediocre people don’t like high achievers, and high achievers don’t like mediocre people.” ― Nick Saban

08-23-2009, 05:55 PM	#12
RobH4413 Wildcard Bitches Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Bethesda, MD Age: 39 Posts: 2,638	Re: Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review Awesome read. Great job as usual Gtripp. __________________ This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!

08-23-2009, 10:29 PM	#14
ethat001 Impact Rookie Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Atlanta, GA Posts: 920	Re: Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review I'm worried about the defensive slip on the second series. Seems like you think it's Greg Blache's fault for calling an aggressive blitz when he could have played conservatively, and then Hall getting beaten... Last year we had to worry about the Dline -- I hope we don't have to worry about the DB's now. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

Redskins-Steelers First Team Game Review

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