The-Hogs.net - Washington Football Discussion, Redskins to Commanders Era

to improve on....no matter how good we play, i'll always point out something that could have been better.....
1. pass protection - o-line will get better with time, samuels got beat a couple times, not what you'd expect from him
2. pass rush - although you can't complain with the run stuffing, i'd like to see a little more presure on the qb, keep in mind the the jets o-line isn't "great" and we still only got in the backfield a couple times...room for improvement. maybe cuz the guys were tryin to prove they could stop the run, they were cautious to take a chance in the backfield in fear of over shooting the play.
3.turnovers - not good. lost 2. we were obviously a stronger team than the jets. but that means nothing if you GIVE the other team free shots to score. in close games this is one thing that will KILL you. jets didn't make a turnover, which is why they were in it to the end.
4. penalties - just like turnovers, not good. these two things ate us alive last year. i hate to see any evidence of it carried over into this year. its hard to beat the other team when you are busy beating yourself. maybe everyone is a little rusty, and it will disappear in a couple weeks. if not these two things will cost us a game or 2. one of those games could mean the playoffs.... coaches gotta do a better job enforcing this, and players gotta stay sharp mentally. even though great in pass coverage, ohalete committed the biggest no-no of the game with a 15 yd personal foul...dumb, bauman comes in a close second with the 15 yd face mask. you can't grab the mask, if you're beat let the guy go, don't give him 15 yds for free, depend on your team mates to make the stop.
5. punt coverage - we did ok on kickoffs, but have to better on the punts.

i think with time most of these wrinkles iron themselves out. nothing helps a team more than chemistry. these are the little things we need to fix now to make the big things happen. we are a tough and talented team, just gotta learn to MAKE the other team beat us.

hailskins666 wrote: pass rush - although you can't complain with the run stuffing, i'd like to see a little more presure on the qb

While I agree that pressure on the QB would be great - keep one thing in mind. In most cases, the Jets sacks included, the defense has to overload one side of the line or another, or just blitz enough to tie up all the OL while allowing a pursuer or two through. (Being an ex linebacker I understand this a lot) While LBs are shooting gaps - many times the defense is vulnerable to the run, toss or draw plays, not to mention screens and flat passes with the DBs downfield.

What Edwards did last night was not readily apparent, but was stunning in the final analysis. They not only held the LBs back to some degree to cover underneath, but they were in a perfect position to make "scrape" tackles when the DL held the OL up. The LB scrapes in from the side to catch the runner bouncing to the outside (which happened in most cases last night) and if they execute their tackles, the back is stopped either for a short loss or short gain.

With Lavar, Trotter and Armstead being 1,2,3 in tackles, they did their jobs right. Each person in the secondary besides Bailey had only two tackles - and that is stupendous. They didn't have to support the run defense much at all which kept Vinny to throwing underneath, with an average of 4 yards per attempt. While it wasn't perfect last night due to a few missed tackles on the scrape maneuver - it worked well enough to hold the Jets to 57 yards on the ground.

I will make one prediction - when Chase and Dalton - who are bigger boys with more experience get into the game, you will see more penetration as we did in the last game of the preseason.

that line penetration is what i want to see. that'll keep the qb on his toes, and will make him want to get rid of it sooner. vinny had way too much comfort in the pocket

I loved the defensive gameplan. It compensated for the lack of a pass rush. That being said, if we were facing a real QB, we might have been in trouble. We need pass rush against the better teams - the problem is that it will take this team to blitz to do that. Its just a fact of this defense and we will have to compensate.

Other than that, I think the real worrisome things were the ongoing penalties and the take away ratio. We are already -2. We need to play cleaner games to win against better teams. I agree that the pass defense will improve as the line gets more familiar with one another.

The Falcons are a potentially tough team, but we can probalby have a chance of beating them while being a little sloppy - after week 2, this slack dissapears. The way I see it, we have another two weeks to straighten out our act. We HAVE to be clean by week 3 or we will have a hard front end of the season.

To have any chance of making the playoffs, I think we need to be at least 3-4 by the end of week 7. If not we will have real issues making it to the finish line.