The Baltimore Ravens’ very stout starting defense put a-hurtin’ on the Washington Redskins’ first-team offense this past Saturday night and it didn’t take long for the masses to call the ‘waaaambulance.’ There has been talk about backup Kirk Cousins’ better play at the quarterback position than starter Robert Griffin, III by analyst and former Redskins’ Super Bowl QB Joe Theismann. There have been fans’ phone calls to local sports talk radio about how out-of-sync the offense looked. On film it’s apparent that the offensive line could have been more effective. But, according to the starting players on the team, while they’re not happy about how the game went against Baltimore, they are not at all panicked. Redskins Nation should not be either.
The problem is that in the 23-17 defeat, quarterback Robert Griffin, III 2014 did not look like Robert Griffin, III 2012. He was hesitant with his throws, didn’t appear to go through his progressions properly and he stared down receivers. But his pocket also collapsed at an alarming rate a couple of time, players dropped well-thrown balls and guys missed blocks. But even with all of that… even given the fact that there is only one preseason game left before the regular season commences against the Houston Texans (in less than two weeks), folks need to calm down.
Quite honestly, if the players were worried, that would be cause for concern. Who wants a guy on their squad that thinks his team isn’t good enough to win games?
These Redskins players are realists but they’re also football players. Every guy in the National Football League is good (they wouldn’t be in the NFL if they weren’t) and every guy feels he can be great. That is as it should be. But this is the preseason. There has been no game-planning and the coach isn’t even necessarily counting on winning these games. Even considering this, in speaking to the guys in the locker room today, no one sugar-coated the way the game went.
“There’s a few things we would have treated differently,” center Kory Lichtensteiger said today about how things might have gone had there been game-planning versus the Ravens. “But it’s on us as players — no matter what the preparation, no matter what the situation — just to perform. We didn’t execute as well as we should have.”
The plays that are called during the preseason are called so that coaches can evaluate their scheme, evaluate their players and evaluate how well their scheme fits their players (or vice versa if you like). Preseason is for figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Redskins’ head coach Jay Gruden has likely not shown even a fraction of his “real” plays during this preseason. The plays are only just scripted practice plays that can show a coach different things. The game-planning will come just before the Houston game.
Still, is there any real concern among the first-team offense about the lack of production in last weekend’s contest?
“That’s what you do preseason for,” starting fullback Darrel Young said today. “You go out there and find yourself… basically try to find an identity and we haven’t found it yet. Now we’ve got another preseason game to kind of find ourselves, we’ve got some practices. But that’s what you do. You don’t really game plan for preseason games like you would in the season. [Baltimore] did a good job. Credit to the defense and stuff like that but, at the same time, we know what we have to work on. There’s nothing that they did out there that our defense hasn’t done in training camp. At the end of the day there’s just got to be better execution on the field amongst us players.”
There was some chatter today that the starting offense could play for a short time this Thursday in the final preseason game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Traditionally, this is not the case because coaches do not want to risk injury to their starters. While Gruden indicated in his press conference that there was a slight chance of his first team playing, the players wouldn’t necessary mind it given their performance Thursday night.
“That’s fine,” Young said when asked how he felt about possibly playing Thursday. “We need to get better so… if our first team has to go out for half or three quarters, we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do. We can’t do what we did the other night. That was embarrassing to us. What we did… all the hype in the off-season, I mean, it was just embarrassing to us as players and the coach is up there doing a heck of a job coaching us. The things that we did [Thursday night] they didn’t coach us to do so… it’s about us players just not being in the right technique, [there were] missed assignments here and there, lack of communication amongst receivers, backs, [the offensive] line… just stuff like that. So we weren’t all on the same page and that’s what you have to do to be successful.”
So, they weren’t all on the same page. That’s what practice is for. This could eventually happen and happen in time for a good season. Game planning helps with players all being in sync as well.
Cornerback DeAngelo Hall had something interesting to say about when his teammates might all arrive on that ‘same page’ today.
“Fans want to win right now” he said about the level of concern in the fan base. “They want to win during conditioning [phase of the offseason]; they want to win during training camp and preseason. But that’s not how we’re made. We’re made to kind of keep progressing, keep progressing… [Then] hit it full tilt at the right time. And we understand as a team that we have to be rolling at the right time. So we can never be too high, never be too low and just keep playing good football; trying to get better every time we step out on to the field. That’s what I think this team has done a good job of doing.”
Hail.