The Redskin Report

Stay on your feet Lavar!

Lets just focus on the defense today. There are other issues such as Mark Brunell putting the ball on the ground every time he got touched in the 1st half. Then there are the refs. I’m not going to go off on that 2-point play. When you take a step back there really wasn’t evidence to over turn the call. Of course the main question is why the hell the side judge called it in to begin with. But you could go off on about that all day long. The force-out call was terrible as well.

But the fact is the defense was just horrid in the 2nd half. It was Chris Simms out there, not Phil Simms. The secondary was terrible. Letting a no name receiver by to score a touchdown in crunch time is weak. Walt Harris has to keep up with the guy. But Carlos Rogers and the scrub safeties (Bowen and Prioleau) also go beat deep. Besides Joey Galloway, the Bucs don’t exactly have anyone of note in the receiving corps, yet they kept getting open deep.

I have to lay blame for this game on Gregg Williams. He had to adjust his game plan. I know the book on young quarterbacks is to blitz and get pressure on them. Williams and the Redskins do it successfully to basically every young guy they face. But as the game went on it became clear that the only way the Buccaneers were going to move the ball was on deep passes. Every time they blitzed, Simms just threw it up deep and his guys made plays.

The fact is besides Shawn Springs there were no playmakers out there in the secondary yesterday. Carlos Rogers may develop into one, but at this point we don’t really know. Without Taylor roaming deep, teams can heave the ball up with no threat of our guys picking it off. Say what you will about Taylor but he can make plays on the ball. Gregg Williams had to see this and adjust.

In all likelihood the front four wasn’t going to get many sacks, but there were making things uncomfortable for Simms and crashing the pocket. This wasn’t like the Cowboy game where Bledsoe could have made a ham sandwich in the pocket before our line got to him. The run was being stuffed. The Bucs weren’t going to dink and dunk down the field.

I know its not Williams philosophy to sit back and play conservative, but you have to realize what is going on in the game. You have to realize who’s playing out there for you. If you have Taylor on the field, maybe all this is moot. But he wasn’t, and we lost. Asking Matt Bowen to cover Joey Galloway isn’t going to work out very often.

Stubbornness on the football field can be a good trait. Sometimes you just have to keep running when it’s not working just to keep the defense honest. But in this case Gregg Williams and his stubbornness to keep blitzing after getting burned continuously cost the Redskins the game.