The Redskins Are Close

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by 53Fan

JC's first pass as a pro was a deep ball that hit Brandon Lloyd right in the hands.....and he dropped it. Doesn't seem like JC had too many opportunities after that. I agree with 12thMan, maybe he'll get better the more it's part of the gameplan. I doubt he practices a lot of plays that are not gonna be called. He does seem a little off.

The other thing is that defenses in the NFL today are notoriously conservative. You think there's a reason no one ever goes deep against our defense? It's not because we have an elite secondary, it's because we'll give them the short stuff but take away the long stuff.

Conseqently, going deep for the sake of going deep is usually a horrible offensive strategy. The teams that can push the ball downfield can do so because they can put safeties in a bind with complex down field routes. If you have Larry Fitzgerald and Steve Breaston, you can specifically choose to attack a safety who you deem to be not a great coverage player by trying to get him to bite on a shorter route. In fact, this is exactly what the Cards did to Landry last year, and the result was Fitzgerald vs. Doughty 1-on-1.

If you don't have those guys though, you have to be able to pick your spots. We have the ability to get downfield passes if we can catch the other team in a blitz or something, but when you only have 3-4 oppertunities a game to actually get a play downfield, a lot can go wrong on those plays to give you zero deep ball production.

The short versions of the prior three paragraphs is that we just aren't a great deep ball team, and most of our really big plays in the passing game come on screens.