Dallas vs. Washington
WASHINGTON VS. DALLAS
TEXAS STADIUM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2006 8:15PM KICKOFF
SPREAD: Dallas 5.5 point favorites
from Yakuza Rich Blog
There have been some thrilling and controversial games between these two teams when they play against each other early in the season. In 1998, Dallas overcame a 35-14 deficit in the 4th quarter to come back and win the game on a deep post off a play action pass to Raghib Ismail in overtime. In 2004, Joe Gibbs was back in DC and the Cowboys wound up winning a nail biter 21-18 after a plethora of bad calls by the referees for both teams, but the Redskins wound up on the bitter end of that one. Then in 2005, Dallas was dominating the Redskins but only managed a 13-0 lead late in the 4th quarter. Two passes to Santana Moss and the Redskins wound up eeking out a 14-13 victory.
Last week against Jacksonville was very reminiscent of Skins game for me. Not from the fact that we dominated the game (we didn’t dominate Jacksonville), but it just seemed like we couldn’t deliver the knockout punch when we needed to.
Most people will point to the offense’s lack of efficiency, which I will agree had something to do with it. However, the defense lacked any sense of a pass rush. A friend of mine, whose opinion I greatly admire when it comes to football, has always told me that being able to sack the QB is important, but not nearly as important as sacking the QB in the 4th quarter. It’s there that the defense can cause that fatal turnover and seal the door shut. And often times I find that to be a dead on assessment of football. But last week we saw none of that. While Dallas was able to get pressure on the Skins last year in week 2, they stopped throwing blitzes at the Skins and that gave Brunnell….like it gave Leftwich last week….too much time to throw.
But like last year, last week should hardly be thought of as the end of the world for Dallas fans. Bledsoe had a terrible day, but it wasn’t due to poor O-Line play (which only gave up 2 sacks). It was either due to the rain, his supposedly bad back, or just having an inexplicably bad day. The interior of the defense played well and the interior of the O-Line, most notably Andre Gurode played pretty well.
Still, these are the Skins and nobody likes to start off the season 0-2. This is more or less the “big game” to be worried about.
WHEN DALLAS IS ON OFFENSE
Starting Washington Defense:
RDE: Andre Carter
DT: Joe Salave’a
DT: Cornelius Griffin
RDE: Phillip Daniels
ROLB: Warrick Holdman
MLB: Lemar Marshall
LOLB: Marcus Washington
RCB: Kenny Wright/Shawn Springs
LCB: Carlos Rogers
Slot CB: Mike Rumph
SS: Adam Archuleta
FS: Sean Taylor
The Skins have their own version of the 46 defense. People often think this is an exact replica of Buddy Ryan’s scheme with the Bears and then the Eagles, but it’s a different more watered down version. In Ryan’s scheme they would almost always have 8 in the box and have the CB’s matched up tight on the WR’s. But with the 3 WR sets, more speed on defense and the re-enforced pass interference rules teams were able to easily defeat Ryan’s defense after awhile. Under Williams, the Skins incorporate most of the philosophies that Ryan had, but they tend to guard against going full bore with playing so close to the line of scrimmage.
Their defense revolves around mostly finding defensive front seven players that are fast with good motors and they’ll sacrifice size to get that. It’s not like the Cowboys in the Campo era who greatly sacrificed size to get speed on defense as they had guys like Dexter Coakley and Dat Nguyen who were probably no taller than 5’10”. Gregg Williams wants guys with some height on them because he counts on so many of them being able to rush the passer and guys that are too short usually can’t get the proper leverage on shedding a blocker on a blitz.
While they like to go smaller and with more speed on the front seven, they like to go bigger in the secondary as they have one of the biggest secondaries in the league. This is mainly due to the fact that they blitz up the middle so much that their CB’s are often called on to take on running backs as opposing teams will try to run pitch plays and screens to defeat the blitz. Also, they have to be big to effectively bump the WR at the line of scrimmage and Williams likes to blitz each of his DB’s quite often.
Probably the biggest misconception of the Skins defense is how much and how exactly they blitz. They tend to blitz mostly on first down and are usually one of the league leaders on first down blitzes. However, they only sent 6 pass rushers 11% of the time last season (12th highest in the NFL) and 7 pass rushers 2% of the time (20th in the NFL) From there, that tells me that they like to blitz on first down quite often, but on second and third down they are more apt to send a LB or a DB at the passer, but drop back a D-Lineman.
And that’s really the whole basis of the 46 scheme. From a pass rush perspective, it’s a lot like the 3-4 scheme in that often times you don’t know who is coming in on the rush and who is dropping back in coverage. One of the plays they love to run is to have FS Sean Taylor line up across the opposing slot receiver in a passing situation. Then they’ll have their D-Linemen spread out wide, making it look like they are geared up for the D-Line to sack the passer and Taylor to cover the slot WR. But then they’ll have Marcus Washington and Taylor blitz on the inside and leave MLB Lemar Marshall to cover the slot WR. While there’s a serious disadvantage to have Marshall covering a WR, usually Washington and Taylor can get to the passer quick enough and the passer can’t recognize the blitz quick enough that the play works well for them.
Last week Dallas utilized a lot of 5 WR formations, usually having 3 WR’s, then a tight end and a RB lined up in the other WR spots. They even had backup center Al Johnson lineup as an extra tight end and help do some blocking. The results weren’t all that good as I’m not sure Bledsoe is the QB that works best in this type of formation. I was a bit disappointed to see them stray away from some of their 2 TE formations that they used in preseason, especially the formation that had Fasano go in motion out wide like a receiver…essentially morphing into a 3WR set, then throwing a screen pass Fasano’s way with us having a blocking advantage of Fasano lead blocking on a Cornerback.
Last year in week 2, Dallas went to a max protection and started to pass the ball early and often as a counter to Williams’ heavy blitzes on first down. This worked well early on and then Williams made a nice counter to stop blitzing and force Dallas to beat them with the run and short and intermediate routes. My guess is that both teams will feel each other out early on. If Dallas follows the same gameplan as they did in week 2 last year and it works, then Washington will follow the same plan of decreasing their blitzing and making Dallas beat them with the running game and the short and intermediate plays. The good news is that Terrell Owens really looked excellent against the Jags and if he continues to play well and Bledsoe can get him the ball this time in a somewhat accurate fashion, Dallas should actually be a threat in the short and intermediate passing game.
The big weakness for the Skins on defense is their pass rush. They usually get nice pressure on the QB, but can’t find a way to get the sack. They brought in DE Andre Carter to help with that. Carter was great in 2002 recording 12 sacks with the Niners in a similar type of defensive scheme. They are probably banking on him returning to that form since he hasn’t done jack in the last three seasons, partly due to injury and partly due to playing out of position as a 3-4 OLB in 2005. He’s a wildcard as to what he’ll do this year. Flozell Adams struggled against Paul Spicer, but Spicer’s play wasn’t having a big impact on the game last week, Bledsoe just couldn’t throw accurately and made poor decisions.
Their DT’s are pretty strong, although KC Joyner has Griffin not being as good as I thought he was. Still, it seems like every time there’s a 3rd and short yardage play, Griffin comes up with some great penetration. He’s almost like the David Ortiz of football when it comes to clutch plays. Salave’a is pretty much just a run stuffer, but a good one at that. I still think Phillip Daniels is woefully overrated. He gets a lot of props for his 8 sacks last year, but 4 of them came in one game against Torrin Tucker, perhaps the worst offensive tackle in the league last year. Before that he had a whopping 4 sacks in his previous 36 career games. He’s good at defending the run and they are much better off having him on the strongside where they don’t need him to be a pass rusher and last year they struggled on defending runs to the strongside (21st on runs towards left defensive end and 17th on runs towards right tackle)
Holdman was dreadful last year and could be a liability as well. For all of the talk of Lavar Arrington’s “freelancing”, the fact remains he was by and large better than Holdman and the defense greatly improved once they put Arrington in the lineup. Marshall is a former college safety that was converted to MLB. He’s a pretty solid player, but if teams can manage to reasonably block their DT’s Marshall struggles heavily in closed quarters. Marcus Washington is a great, high motor LB and probably the heart and soul of the defense.
Shawn Springs is big and physical, but he’s coming off an abdominal tear. He had a great year last season, but you kind of have to believe he doesn’t have much more left in the tank. And if Dallas can get Bledsoe some time, I like the speed of Glenn and Owens on Springs. Carlos Rogers is a monster hitter. He seems to struggle a bit with the deep ball as well and probably isn’t going to get a lot of INT’s, but he’s got a ton of upside. Mike Rumph may be a weak spot. He was awful throughout his career in San Francisco, but he’s an upgrade over Kenny Wright and this defensive scheme tends to make CB’s look better than they really are.
Adam Archuleta was a nice pickup for the Skins since he fits their scheme much better than Ryan Clark did. There’s a knock against Archuleta’s cover skills, but he was stuck playing in the Cover 2 in St. Louis which is probably the worst scheme they could have him play. Sean Taylor has all of the tools to be the best safety in the league, but he’s got a 10 cent brain. Forget the gun incident, spitting on Michael Pittman, etc….he was still susceptible to biting hard on play fakes and often going for the monster hit instead of just making the textbook tackle.
WHEN DALLAS IS ON OFFENSE
Starting Washington Offense:
QB: Mark Brunnell
RB: Clinton Portis
Roving TE: Mike Sellers
LWR: Santana Moss (2005 YR All Pro)
RWR: Brandon Lloyd
Slot WR: Antwaan Randle El
TE: Chris Cooley (2005 YR All Pro)
LT: Chris Samuels
LG: Derrick Dockery
C: Casey Rabach
RG: Randy Thomas
RT: Jon Jansen
In many ways, the Al Saunders offensive scheme and philosophy is like Gregg Williams’ defensive scheme and philosophy. Both coordinators believe in simplifying the language in their playbooks so their players can worry more about learning more plays and more exotic formations. Whereas Williams relies on exotic blitzes, Saunders relies on the use of a lot of pre-snap motion then confusing pass patterns to scorch the defense.
The big issue is whether or not Saunders can step right in and work his magic like he did with Kansas City when he served as their O-Coordinator. On one hand, it’s hard to argue Saunders’ success in KC, on the other hand the KC offense was one of the top 10 offense’s in the league (also had a 4,000 yard passer in Elvis Grbac) and then they made major upgrades by signing FA’s Trent Green, Priest Holmes, and Willie Roaf.
I think the common misperception on Saunders is that he’s a guy that had so much success on offense without having any star WR’s in Kansas City. Well, he really didn’t need star Wide Receivers when he has perhaps the greatest tight end that ever lived and one helluva tailback that was superb at catching the ball out of the backfield.
Against the Vikings the Redskins offense ran a little differently than what Saunders did in KC. In KC, Saunders routinely used his backup tight ends (Jason Dunn, Kris Wilson) and fullback William Henderson split out wide in the backfield.
ORIGINAL SET FORMATION
18………84………X..X..X..X..X..88……………87
.....................................10
.....................................27
KRIS WILSON GOES IN MOTION
18…………………X..X..X..X..X..88…………….87
....................................10
.........................84
....................................27
As you will see, Wilson (#84) is in the backfield, but he’s split out wider than your fullback normally is in a splitback set. From there, KC could use his blocking ability to set up a run to the outside left or they could run to the outside right using Tony Gonzalez’s (#88) great blocking ability. And of course, they could just throw the ball. The Skins do have Mike Sellers who can serve as the “rover end”, but against the Vikings they decided to put Randle El here in order to utilize his speed and quickness.
Last year the Skins ran the ball up the middle only 36% of the time, lowest in the league. This year with Saunders’ system and with Portis’ shoulder issues, they seem to be even less likely to run the ball up the middle. The passing game seems more geared around the WR screen and swing passes than it was under Gibbs. The good news for Skins fans is that the schemes and plays led to a lot of confusion for the Vikings which led to a lot of yards and consequently points on the scoreboard. The bad news for Skins fans is the execution was really lacking on offense and that may be due the players still struggling with the system. That being said, I didn’t see a lot of blown assignments or procedure penalties from the Skins on Monday.
My guess is that you’ll see more of the same from the Skins offense against Dallas. Dallas is a large team. I wouldn’t call the defense slow, but it’s certainly not one of their strengths so if the Skins can stretch the field and make it a footrace, that should work in their favor.
SPECIAL TEAMS
K: John Hall
P: Derrick Frost
KR: Ladell Betts
PR: Antwaan Randle El
Betts and El are a formidable pair of returners. Betts is like Tyson Thompson, doesn’t put up huge returns, but in the end he puts up consistently good ones. El definitely is a threat at punt returner and I really look forward to him matching up against McBriar, provided McBriar punts like he did last week. Frost is a weak punter. Even against the Vikings, which was considered a good game for him, his punts were easily returnable. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them cut John Hall. His kicks from 40+ yards are not splitting the uprights and he isn’t even kicking off anymore.
YR’S KEYS TO THE GAME:
1. GETTING THE PASSING GAME BACK ON TRACK
For all of the complaining about the Jaguars loss, the simple fact is that you’re not going to win many games when your QB looks like Tommy Maddox out there. I was talking to a buddy of mine who is a Steelers fan and I was telling him how awful Bledsoe looked and he commented on how he sort of looked like Tommy Maddox and then that made me remember…the Steelers lost to the Jaguars last year at Pittsburgh after an awful performance by Maddox.
In all, the pass protection was solid and the receivers…particularly Owens..were getting open. But Bledsoe was missing wide open receivers and started to make bad reads. The question is whether it was a back injury, the rain (he did look awful against Seattle in the rain) or just a bad day.
After watching the Skins on Monday night, their defense appeared to still be a bit stingy, but not nearly as threatening as it was in the past. Part of that is due to Minnesota’s O-Line with Bryant McKinney dominating Andre Carter and the rest of the O-Line having little problem with the Skins pass rush. But I’ve got a feeling that Washington D-Coordinator didn’t feel too comfortable sending his usual exotic blitz packages with Kenny Wright and Mike Rumph in the defensive backfield. And Minnesota doesn’t have much in the way of WR’s, but was able to get separation all game long, especially from Troy Williamson.
I honestly believe that if Bledsoe plays an average game for him, Dallas beats the Jags rather handily. But since he was so terrible, Dallas had trouble moving the ball, squandered opportunities, and was forced to be a bit more predictable and conservative with their offensive playcalling.
So if Dallas can protect Bledsoe like they did against the Jags last week and Bledsoe plays much better early on, it’s going to take away from what Redskins D-Coordinator Gregg Williams likes to do and gives Dallas a big advantage.
2. FLOZELL VS. ANDRE CARTER
The Achilles heel for the Skins defense under Williams has been the inability of their D-Line to sack the QB. When the D-Line is getting some sacks, it has a dramatically positive impact on their defense since they don’t have to force their blitzes as much. Sounds simple, but in many schemes…particularly the 3-4…the pass rush from the down lineman isn’t too important since you’re usually getting your sacks from your linebackers.
Anyway, Flozell didn’t play well last week, but it wasn’t like Paul Spicer’s play made a dramatic impact on the game. However, you can’t afford to have your left tackle to continue to play poorly as sooner or later he’ll open the floodgates to the Quarterback.
3. KICKING GAME
Both kickers aren’t very good, but Hall can at least make his FG’s inside 40 yards. The good news is that I think Shawn Suisham will be a very good kicker in the league some day. He’s got a strong leg and usually those guys eventually learn to become accurate (i.e. Neil Rackers was awful until he was signed by the Cardinals). Unfortunately he’ll probably become a good kicker with a different team. Suisham’s kick last week didn’t cost Dallas the game, but I’d hate to see him miss a chippy early on which may kill momentum or even worse, miss a chippy that costs Dallas the game.
4. IMPROVED NICKEL DEFENSE
This is where Jacksonville killed the Dallas defense. I don’t think the problem was so much the secondary. The only guy that got beat badly was Anthony Henry, and that was only on short routes, usually quick slants. The rest of the time the CB’s were in great position, but couldn’t make the play against the tall Jaguars receivers. I think the main problem is that we didn’t blitz very often outside of 3rd and long situations. Most of the time we only sent 4 pass rushers and none of them got much pressure on the QB.
5. LB PASS COVERAGE ON WASHINGTON RB’S
Two reasons why Leftwich got on fire last week was partly due to him having a lot of time to throw, but the other reason was due to him having wide open checkdown receivers to throw to. Last year, Dallas’ LB corp finished last in the NFC East in passes defensed. The Washington offense is predicated on using 3 WR and throwing passes and checkdowns to the running backs. The nickel defense and the coverage on the checkdowns needs to improve immediately. I think they need to blitz more and that probably would’ve cooled off Leftwich last week, but it often appears that Zimmer and Parcells make up their mind before the game whether they are going to blitz or not and they stick to that gameplan no matter what happens.
6. LOOKOUT FOR THE TRICK PLAY
I would be willing to bet money that Gibbs is going to throw some type of trick play against Dallas with Randle El as the catalyst. Gibbs used to get infuriated by Landry’s use of trick plays and then getting beat by them with Parcells using them when Parcells was coaching the Giants and now with the Cowboys. Gibbs really has never been a big trick play guy and never really had the personnel to pull trick plays off. But, I’ve got to believe he’s chomping at the bit to get a trick play in there ever since he signed Randle El.
7. SANTANA MOSS
I did notice that Santana Moss was almost non-existent after he was hit hard by Darren Sharper on a pass in the endzone that Moss dropped. Still, he killed Dallas last year and well, killed most teams he faced last year.
OUTLOOK
I will always predict Dallas to beat Washington since it’s a rivalry thing. I think Washington’s defense continues to lose its edge with their questionable cornerbacks and Williams’ getting more conservative in order to protect them.
Owens makes a couple of catches early on, Washington starts to roll more coverage his way and Glenn and Witten take advantage of that. Bledsoe plays decent, expect he makes a bad decision that results in a pick by Sean Taylor and the fans still question whether or not Romo should be brought in. Julius and Marion get off to a slow start, but hit their stride and then cool off again. Dallas gets a 21-7 lead, but Washington starts to make the comeback and Al Michaels and John Madden talk about week 2 ad nauseam and heart attacks and ulcers for Cowboys fans are abound.
But, Dallas holds off Washington in this one and goes 1-1 into the bye week and then onto Nashville.
YR’S PREDICTED SCORE: Dallas 21 Washington 17
TEXAS STADIUM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2006 8:15PM KICKOFF
SPREAD: Dallas 5.5 point favorites
from Yakuza Rich Blog
There have been some thrilling and controversial games between these two teams when they play against each other early in the season. In 1998, Dallas overcame a 35-14 deficit in the 4th quarter to come back and win the game on a deep post off a play action pass to Raghib Ismail in overtime. In 2004, Joe Gibbs was back in DC and the Cowboys wound up winning a nail biter 21-18 after a plethora of bad calls by the referees for both teams, but the Redskins wound up on the bitter end of that one. Then in 2005, Dallas was dominating the Redskins but only managed a 13-0 lead late in the 4th quarter. Two passes to Santana Moss and the Redskins wound up eeking out a 14-13 victory.
Last week against Jacksonville was very reminiscent of Skins game for me. Not from the fact that we dominated the game (we didn’t dominate Jacksonville), but it just seemed like we couldn’t deliver the knockout punch when we needed to.
Most people will point to the offense’s lack of efficiency, which I will agree had something to do with it. However, the defense lacked any sense of a pass rush. A friend of mine, whose opinion I greatly admire when it comes to football, has always told me that being able to sack the QB is important, but not nearly as important as sacking the QB in the 4th quarter. It’s there that the defense can cause that fatal turnover and seal the door shut. And often times I find that to be a dead on assessment of football. But last week we saw none of that. While Dallas was able to get pressure on the Skins last year in week 2, they stopped throwing blitzes at the Skins and that gave Brunnell….like it gave Leftwich last week….too much time to throw.
But like last year, last week should hardly be thought of as the end of the world for Dallas fans. Bledsoe had a terrible day, but it wasn’t due to poor O-Line play (which only gave up 2 sacks). It was either due to the rain, his supposedly bad back, or just having an inexplicably bad day. The interior of the defense played well and the interior of the O-Line, most notably Andre Gurode played pretty well.
Still, these are the Skins and nobody likes to start off the season 0-2. This is more or less the “big game” to be worried about.
WHEN DALLAS IS ON OFFENSE
Starting Washington Defense:
RDE: Andre Carter
DT: Joe Salave’a
DT: Cornelius Griffin
RDE: Phillip Daniels
ROLB: Warrick Holdman
MLB: Lemar Marshall
LOLB: Marcus Washington
RCB: Kenny Wright/Shawn Springs
LCB: Carlos Rogers
Slot CB: Mike Rumph
SS: Adam Archuleta
FS: Sean Taylor
The Skins have their own version of the 46 defense. People often think this is an exact replica of Buddy Ryan’s scheme with the Bears and then the Eagles, but it’s a different more watered down version. In Ryan’s scheme they would almost always have 8 in the box and have the CB’s matched up tight on the WR’s. But with the 3 WR sets, more speed on defense and the re-enforced pass interference rules teams were able to easily defeat Ryan’s defense after awhile. Under Williams, the Skins incorporate most of the philosophies that Ryan had, but they tend to guard against going full bore with playing so close to the line of scrimmage.
Their defense revolves around mostly finding defensive front seven players that are fast with good motors and they’ll sacrifice size to get that. It’s not like the Cowboys in the Campo era who greatly sacrificed size to get speed on defense as they had guys like Dexter Coakley and Dat Nguyen who were probably no taller than 5’10”. Gregg Williams wants guys with some height on them because he counts on so many of them being able to rush the passer and guys that are too short usually can’t get the proper leverage on shedding a blocker on a blitz.
While they like to go smaller and with more speed on the front seven, they like to go bigger in the secondary as they have one of the biggest secondaries in the league. This is mainly due to the fact that they blitz up the middle so much that their CB’s are often called on to take on running backs as opposing teams will try to run pitch plays and screens to defeat the blitz. Also, they have to be big to effectively bump the WR at the line of scrimmage and Williams likes to blitz each of his DB’s quite often.
Probably the biggest misconception of the Skins defense is how much and how exactly they blitz. They tend to blitz mostly on first down and are usually one of the league leaders on first down blitzes. However, they only sent 6 pass rushers 11% of the time last season (12th highest in the NFL) and 7 pass rushers 2% of the time (20th in the NFL) From there, that tells me that they like to blitz on first down quite often, but on second and third down they are more apt to send a LB or a DB at the passer, but drop back a D-Lineman.
And that’s really the whole basis of the 46 scheme. From a pass rush perspective, it’s a lot like the 3-4 scheme in that often times you don’t know who is coming in on the rush and who is dropping back in coverage. One of the plays they love to run is to have FS Sean Taylor line up across the opposing slot receiver in a passing situation. Then they’ll have their D-Linemen spread out wide, making it look like they are geared up for the D-Line to sack the passer and Taylor to cover the slot WR. But then they’ll have Marcus Washington and Taylor blitz on the inside and leave MLB Lemar Marshall to cover the slot WR. While there’s a serious disadvantage to have Marshall covering a WR, usually Washington and Taylor can get to the passer quick enough and the passer can’t recognize the blitz quick enough that the play works well for them.
Last week Dallas utilized a lot of 5 WR formations, usually having 3 WR’s, then a tight end and a RB lined up in the other WR spots. They even had backup center Al Johnson lineup as an extra tight end and help do some blocking. The results weren’t all that good as I’m not sure Bledsoe is the QB that works best in this type of formation. I was a bit disappointed to see them stray away from some of their 2 TE formations that they used in preseason, especially the formation that had Fasano go in motion out wide like a receiver…essentially morphing into a 3WR set, then throwing a screen pass Fasano’s way with us having a blocking advantage of Fasano lead blocking on a Cornerback.
Last year in week 2, Dallas went to a max protection and started to pass the ball early and often as a counter to Williams’ heavy blitzes on first down. This worked well early on and then Williams made a nice counter to stop blitzing and force Dallas to beat them with the run and short and intermediate routes. My guess is that both teams will feel each other out early on. If Dallas follows the same gameplan as they did in week 2 last year and it works, then Washington will follow the same plan of decreasing their blitzing and making Dallas beat them with the running game and the short and intermediate plays. The good news is that Terrell Owens really looked excellent against the Jags and if he continues to play well and Bledsoe can get him the ball this time in a somewhat accurate fashion, Dallas should actually be a threat in the short and intermediate passing game.
The big weakness for the Skins on defense is their pass rush. They usually get nice pressure on the QB, but can’t find a way to get the sack. They brought in DE Andre Carter to help with that. Carter was great in 2002 recording 12 sacks with the Niners in a similar type of defensive scheme. They are probably banking on him returning to that form since he hasn’t done jack in the last three seasons, partly due to injury and partly due to playing out of position as a 3-4 OLB in 2005. He’s a wildcard as to what he’ll do this year. Flozell Adams struggled against Paul Spicer, but Spicer’s play wasn’t having a big impact on the game last week, Bledsoe just couldn’t throw accurately and made poor decisions.
Their DT’s are pretty strong, although KC Joyner has Griffin not being as good as I thought he was. Still, it seems like every time there’s a 3rd and short yardage play, Griffin comes up with some great penetration. He’s almost like the David Ortiz of football when it comes to clutch plays. Salave’a is pretty much just a run stuffer, but a good one at that. I still think Phillip Daniels is woefully overrated. He gets a lot of props for his 8 sacks last year, but 4 of them came in one game against Torrin Tucker, perhaps the worst offensive tackle in the league last year. Before that he had a whopping 4 sacks in his previous 36 career games. He’s good at defending the run and they are much better off having him on the strongside where they don’t need him to be a pass rusher and last year they struggled on defending runs to the strongside (21st on runs towards left defensive end and 17th on runs towards right tackle)
Holdman was dreadful last year and could be a liability as well. For all of the talk of Lavar Arrington’s “freelancing”, the fact remains he was by and large better than Holdman and the defense greatly improved once they put Arrington in the lineup. Marshall is a former college safety that was converted to MLB. He’s a pretty solid player, but if teams can manage to reasonably block their DT’s Marshall struggles heavily in closed quarters. Marcus Washington is a great, high motor LB and probably the heart and soul of the defense.
Shawn Springs is big and physical, but he’s coming off an abdominal tear. He had a great year last season, but you kind of have to believe he doesn’t have much more left in the tank. And if Dallas can get Bledsoe some time, I like the speed of Glenn and Owens on Springs. Carlos Rogers is a monster hitter. He seems to struggle a bit with the deep ball as well and probably isn’t going to get a lot of INT’s, but he’s got a ton of upside. Mike Rumph may be a weak spot. He was awful throughout his career in San Francisco, but he’s an upgrade over Kenny Wright and this defensive scheme tends to make CB’s look better than they really are.
Adam Archuleta was a nice pickup for the Skins since he fits their scheme much better than Ryan Clark did. There’s a knock against Archuleta’s cover skills, but he was stuck playing in the Cover 2 in St. Louis which is probably the worst scheme they could have him play. Sean Taylor has all of the tools to be the best safety in the league, but he’s got a 10 cent brain. Forget the gun incident, spitting on Michael Pittman, etc….he was still susceptible to biting hard on play fakes and often going for the monster hit instead of just making the textbook tackle.
WHEN DALLAS IS ON OFFENSE
Starting Washington Offense:
QB: Mark Brunnell
RB: Clinton Portis
Roving TE: Mike Sellers
LWR: Santana Moss (2005 YR All Pro)
RWR: Brandon Lloyd
Slot WR: Antwaan Randle El
TE: Chris Cooley (2005 YR All Pro)
LT: Chris Samuels
LG: Derrick Dockery
C: Casey Rabach
RG: Randy Thomas
RT: Jon Jansen
In many ways, the Al Saunders offensive scheme and philosophy is like Gregg Williams’ defensive scheme and philosophy. Both coordinators believe in simplifying the language in their playbooks so their players can worry more about learning more plays and more exotic formations. Whereas Williams relies on exotic blitzes, Saunders relies on the use of a lot of pre-snap motion then confusing pass patterns to scorch the defense.
The big issue is whether or not Saunders can step right in and work his magic like he did with Kansas City when he served as their O-Coordinator. On one hand, it’s hard to argue Saunders’ success in KC, on the other hand the KC offense was one of the top 10 offense’s in the league (also had a 4,000 yard passer in Elvis Grbac) and then they made major upgrades by signing FA’s Trent Green, Priest Holmes, and Willie Roaf.
I think the common misperception on Saunders is that he’s a guy that had so much success on offense without having any star WR’s in Kansas City. Well, he really didn’t need star Wide Receivers when he has perhaps the greatest tight end that ever lived and one helluva tailback that was superb at catching the ball out of the backfield.
Against the Vikings the Redskins offense ran a little differently than what Saunders did in KC. In KC, Saunders routinely used his backup tight ends (Jason Dunn, Kris Wilson) and fullback William Henderson split out wide in the backfield.
ORIGINAL SET FORMATION
18………84………X..X..X..X..X..88……………87
.....................................10
.....................................27
KRIS WILSON GOES IN MOTION
18…………………X..X..X..X..X..88…………….87
....................................10
.........................84
....................................27
As you will see, Wilson (#84) is in the backfield, but he’s split out wider than your fullback normally is in a splitback set. From there, KC could use his blocking ability to set up a run to the outside left or they could run to the outside right using Tony Gonzalez’s (#88) great blocking ability. And of course, they could just throw the ball. The Skins do have Mike Sellers who can serve as the “rover end”, but against the Vikings they decided to put Randle El here in order to utilize his speed and quickness.
Last year the Skins ran the ball up the middle only 36% of the time, lowest in the league. This year with Saunders’ system and with Portis’ shoulder issues, they seem to be even less likely to run the ball up the middle. The passing game seems more geared around the WR screen and swing passes than it was under Gibbs. The good news for Skins fans is that the schemes and plays led to a lot of confusion for the Vikings which led to a lot of yards and consequently points on the scoreboard. The bad news for Skins fans is the execution was really lacking on offense and that may be due the players still struggling with the system. That being said, I didn’t see a lot of blown assignments or procedure penalties from the Skins on Monday.
My guess is that you’ll see more of the same from the Skins offense against Dallas. Dallas is a large team. I wouldn’t call the defense slow, but it’s certainly not one of their strengths so if the Skins can stretch the field and make it a footrace, that should work in their favor.
SPECIAL TEAMS
K: John Hall
P: Derrick Frost
KR: Ladell Betts
PR: Antwaan Randle El
Betts and El are a formidable pair of returners. Betts is like Tyson Thompson, doesn’t put up huge returns, but in the end he puts up consistently good ones. El definitely is a threat at punt returner and I really look forward to him matching up against McBriar, provided McBriar punts like he did last week. Frost is a weak punter. Even against the Vikings, which was considered a good game for him, his punts were easily returnable. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them cut John Hall. His kicks from 40+ yards are not splitting the uprights and he isn’t even kicking off anymore.
YR’S KEYS TO THE GAME:
1. GETTING THE PASSING GAME BACK ON TRACK
For all of the complaining about the Jaguars loss, the simple fact is that you’re not going to win many games when your QB looks like Tommy Maddox out there. I was talking to a buddy of mine who is a Steelers fan and I was telling him how awful Bledsoe looked and he commented on how he sort of looked like Tommy Maddox and then that made me remember…the Steelers lost to the Jaguars last year at Pittsburgh after an awful performance by Maddox.
In all, the pass protection was solid and the receivers…particularly Owens..were getting open. But Bledsoe was missing wide open receivers and started to make bad reads. The question is whether it was a back injury, the rain (he did look awful against Seattle in the rain) or just a bad day.
After watching the Skins on Monday night, their defense appeared to still be a bit stingy, but not nearly as threatening as it was in the past. Part of that is due to Minnesota’s O-Line with Bryant McKinney dominating Andre Carter and the rest of the O-Line having little problem with the Skins pass rush. But I’ve got a feeling that Washington D-Coordinator didn’t feel too comfortable sending his usual exotic blitz packages with Kenny Wright and Mike Rumph in the defensive backfield. And Minnesota doesn’t have much in the way of WR’s, but was able to get separation all game long, especially from Troy Williamson.
I honestly believe that if Bledsoe plays an average game for him, Dallas beats the Jags rather handily. But since he was so terrible, Dallas had trouble moving the ball, squandered opportunities, and was forced to be a bit more predictable and conservative with their offensive playcalling.
So if Dallas can protect Bledsoe like they did against the Jags last week and Bledsoe plays much better early on, it’s going to take away from what Redskins D-Coordinator Gregg Williams likes to do and gives Dallas a big advantage.
2. FLOZELL VS. ANDRE CARTER
The Achilles heel for the Skins defense under Williams has been the inability of their D-Line to sack the QB. When the D-Line is getting some sacks, it has a dramatically positive impact on their defense since they don’t have to force their blitzes as much. Sounds simple, but in many schemes…particularly the 3-4…the pass rush from the down lineman isn’t too important since you’re usually getting your sacks from your linebackers.
Anyway, Flozell didn’t play well last week, but it wasn’t like Paul Spicer’s play made a dramatic impact on the game. However, you can’t afford to have your left tackle to continue to play poorly as sooner or later he’ll open the floodgates to the Quarterback.
3. KICKING GAME
Both kickers aren’t very good, but Hall can at least make his FG’s inside 40 yards. The good news is that I think Shawn Suisham will be a very good kicker in the league some day. He’s got a strong leg and usually those guys eventually learn to become accurate (i.e. Neil Rackers was awful until he was signed by the Cardinals). Unfortunately he’ll probably become a good kicker with a different team. Suisham’s kick last week didn’t cost Dallas the game, but I’d hate to see him miss a chippy early on which may kill momentum or even worse, miss a chippy that costs Dallas the game.
4. IMPROVED NICKEL DEFENSE
This is where Jacksonville killed the Dallas defense. I don’t think the problem was so much the secondary. The only guy that got beat badly was Anthony Henry, and that was only on short routes, usually quick slants. The rest of the time the CB’s were in great position, but couldn’t make the play against the tall Jaguars receivers. I think the main problem is that we didn’t blitz very often outside of 3rd and long situations. Most of the time we only sent 4 pass rushers and none of them got much pressure on the QB.
5. LB PASS COVERAGE ON WASHINGTON RB’S
Two reasons why Leftwich got on fire last week was partly due to him having a lot of time to throw, but the other reason was due to him having wide open checkdown receivers to throw to. Last year, Dallas’ LB corp finished last in the NFC East in passes defensed. The Washington offense is predicated on using 3 WR and throwing passes and checkdowns to the running backs. The nickel defense and the coverage on the checkdowns needs to improve immediately. I think they need to blitz more and that probably would’ve cooled off Leftwich last week, but it often appears that Zimmer and Parcells make up their mind before the game whether they are going to blitz or not and they stick to that gameplan no matter what happens.
6. LOOKOUT FOR THE TRICK PLAY
I would be willing to bet money that Gibbs is going to throw some type of trick play against Dallas with Randle El as the catalyst. Gibbs used to get infuriated by Landry’s use of trick plays and then getting beat by them with Parcells using them when Parcells was coaching the Giants and now with the Cowboys. Gibbs really has never been a big trick play guy and never really had the personnel to pull trick plays off. But, I’ve got to believe he’s chomping at the bit to get a trick play in there ever since he signed Randle El.
7. SANTANA MOSS
I did notice that Santana Moss was almost non-existent after he was hit hard by Darren Sharper on a pass in the endzone that Moss dropped. Still, he killed Dallas last year and well, killed most teams he faced last year.
OUTLOOK
I will always predict Dallas to beat Washington since it’s a rivalry thing. I think Washington’s defense continues to lose its edge with their questionable cornerbacks and Williams’ getting more conservative in order to protect them.
Owens makes a couple of catches early on, Washington starts to roll more coverage his way and Glenn and Witten take advantage of that. Bledsoe plays decent, expect he makes a bad decision that results in a pick by Sean Taylor and the fans still question whether or not Romo should be brought in. Julius and Marion get off to a slow start, but hit their stride and then cool off again. Dallas gets a 21-7 lead, but Washington starts to make the comeback and Al Michaels and John Madden talk about week 2 ad nauseam and heart attacks and ulcers for Cowboys fans are abound.
But, Dallas holds off Washington in this one and goes 1-1 into the bye week and then onto Nashville.
YR’S PREDICTED SCORE: Dallas 21 Washington 17
posted by The Gryphon at 8:07 PM
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