Smoot Lays The Smack Down (Redskins vs Steelers)

This team lives and dies by the play of the OL. Just look at when the line let us down we lost and when it was great we won. Right now, Samuels is hurting with that knee, I'm sure Jansen is sucking wind after having missed 2 consecutive years and getting old. Hopefully the bye week will revitalize this team. The good thing after the bye is that we get Springs and hopefully Taylor and Betts. I think that Zorn will have to get Thomas and Kelly (or whoever replaces him if he goes in IR) more involved. Our lack of WR depth is showing, especially, tonite.

Well now that my anger is somewhat gone, I'll say this...

I would like to believe that our team can pull itself up and fair better after the bye but many things need to happen.

Offense: We need points, we need to take advantage of the short field, and we need to protect our QB. Our offense needs to come through against weaker teams, and play smart against strong teams. We have a good running play and that should allow a number of deep balls. Our receivers need to get open and when JC has time, he should be able to go deep to Moss.

Defense: Our defense is good, but not great. They can keep the team in the game, but the offense has to come through when the defense gets a turn over or causes the opposing teams to go 3 and outs. We are getting to the QB, but now we need to step it up to the next level. Our DBs cannot let INTs to slip through their hands, and we need to cause fumbles (esp. when we sack the QB).

Health: Our team has been a constant injury list, and the bye week should help with that. We need our top players to play and stay healthy. I know that's hard to control, but we need to catch a few breaks with our stars. Hopefully this has been the reason for the deficiencies in offense and defense.

Goals: I'd be happy with getting a wild card, but the team needs to focus on higher seeding in the playoffs and possibly taking the division. We have a favorable schedule ahead, with a number of home games, our team needs to learn to show up for all games. Getting another 6th seed in the playoffs will be almost like a failure (of course, unless our team can show up during the playoffs and pull a NY Giants).

These are the same issues fans and the sports media has brought up over and over again, in both wins and losses this seasons. And this is the frustation that fans get when we lose games like this one. We're in a hyper competitive division, and barely winning will eventualy turn to barely losing, and eventually it will cause us barely losing a big game (i.e. playoffs).

Tonight's loss does not bother me so much. The Steelers are an elite team--the Skins are not.

What is troubling is that the past 4 weeks the Skins have looked more mediocre than good. Two wins where the Skins eeked out against suspect teams and two losses at home (one an upset).

Rest and regroup the next two weeks Skins. After the bye their task is to go 2-1 at home against NFC East foes and .500 on the road...

The only thing I enjoy about losses like this is being able to lurk over at ES and watch all the FREAK OUT threads, but in all seriousness I would like to see the team attempt to throw it downfield more often especially with Cooley. At least send him on a post or a corner, you know something that would work on Madden (jk about Madden). I sware all I saw tonight where curls and it annoyed the hell out of me.

Times like this make me wish the team drafted Jordy with that pick instead of Thomas. I know Thomas needs more time and I hope he makes me eat this post sometime in the future (Crabtree or Heyward-Bey in 08 baby :D), then again whats to expect when you have a coach that seems to take pages away from the playbook each week? We know Zorn is better then this remember the third down (I think it was against the Saints) in the fourth quarter when we were ahead and Zorn called a play action bootleg that led to a huge first down from Cooley. Where is that Jim Zorn?

Instead now it's short pass, run, to short of a pass or to much pressure on third and long. Of course thats assuming we don't get a penalty. This team frustrates me so much because I know they're better then this. Still the season is not over and we have twice as many wins as we do losses including two huge wins against divisional foes and we're poised to make a playoff run with a healthy Jason Taylor not to mention the fact that Evans is turning into a beast. Anyway Hail to the Redskins.

Campbell had guys way too much in his face. Samuels did not play well and committed several holds, etc.. Jansen showed why Heyer took his spot at the beginning of the year..

We did great breaking up passes to start off the game but couldn't get the ball going (literally) after that. The first attempt to Moss in the end zone looked like a great play, just didn't work out, and we basically deserted our attempts at going long again, maybe Campbell wouldn't have even gotten it to the guy the way some of his throws were coming off though.

Can anybody tell me why we left the press coverage and started going huge buffer zone? When the Steelers were on the 8, we had Rogers standing ON the goal line, he had been doing pretty well, other than the easy INT drop but hell, he stopped that play. It seemed like when we left the man coverage, we started letting everything through, very reminiscient of the 2006 season and some of last year where we let anything 5-15 yards through "bend but don't break" style. Was there something that I missed?

All good points SS. I see Zorn's playcalling a little differently though: he wasn't near aggressive enough. Sure, call the game like we need to hit them in the mouth, but to not take deep shots until the game is basically over. I know I'm gonna get crapped on but... this felt like Gibbs football all over again.

On to Rogers - he ain't Springs and not even in the same solar system as Bailey. Rogers cannot be our #1 corner beyond this year or we'll never be a contender.

Totally agree on Jansen but the FO bet the farm w/ him this year so we're stuck w/ a gaping hole at RT. We didn't draft shit for the OL and this is the result. (Heyer must not be healthy yet which tells me he's less and less looking like a long term Skin and Rhinehardt has yet to wear a jersey).

Other than the butterfingers I'm not sure why people knock Rogers, he's having a hell of a year and when playing man to man, which a large physical corner should, he's been absolutely shutdown. Please explain yourself.

Giving up that blocked punt really hurt us too. It gave the Steelers a TD right before the half and gave them the lead.

Man, to that point every single punt in the game was a step or less away from being blocked, on both sides. That was ridiculous. I called that there would be a blocked punt before the half and then it happened :(

Instead now it's short pass, run, to short of a pass or to much pressure on third and long. Of course thats assuming we don't get a penalty. This team frustrates me so much because I know they're better then this.

Yeah, Campbell may be taking the "open man" scenario a bit too textbook, sometimes you have to chance it and open a drive. I think that they said that with our 3rd downs, the average yards we needed to gain was 8.8, that's absolutely pathetic. I was glad to see some more passing on first down, but it seemed that we just ran the same plays all night, something I'll have to review later. And you're right, Evans did have a great game.

I don't know the stats, but I felt like we took shots all through the game, starting with the 2nd series after the INT. We just could not convert any, and then their D just started pounding us.
The loss took the luster off, but its the 3rd quarter of the season, lots of games left.

HAIL REDSKINS!!!

As much as this game sucks I think I'm really just chalking it up to Pittsburgh being really good. Their defense is nasty, physical and tough. Their offense isn't spectacular, but they get the job done and clearly have depth at QB.

Sure, we screwed up and had our missed opportunities. On offense I think a lot of that is because of who we were playing. JC was under immense pressure all night from a blitz crazy defense that has gotten to a lot of other QBs.

I think most of the problems last night center around the offense not being able to get it together, but is that surprising?


Consider:

Pittsburgh allows an average of about 230 yds per game - we got something like 221.
They allow an average of of 164 passing yards, we got a little over 200.
They allow an average of 64 rushing yards per game, we got almost exactly that.
They lead the league in sacks, we got sacked all night long.
They average about 1 INT per game, they picked us off twice.


If you look at the Pittsburgh defense throughout the first half of the season, they did to us almost exactly what they've done on average to everyone else. Is that shocking? Did we really expect to have the #1 ranked defense come in here and we'd put up 35 on them and air it out all night? Did anyone think CP was going to rack up another 150 on these guys?

On the other side of the ball our defense really did quite well:

Consider:

We held them to 179 yards passing and 1 INT.
Held Parker to 70 yards on 21 carries (3.3 YPC)
Racked up 5 sacks (really spectacular for us given our complete lack of sacks).


If you handed anyone the defensive stats I just listed the universal response would be "sounds like the defense played a really good game."

The difference in this game I don't think was that we just killed ourselves or we're horrible or the season is over or the Redskins suck - we just got outplayed by a really good team. They put up the points when it really mattered like a good team should - we're just not THAT good team right now.

Moral of the story: this wasn't like losing to the Rams.

The fans. I can look past the poor performance of the O-line. I can forgive Los' dropped INT. I can let go of the fact that we racked up a whopping 100 yards of offense through 3 quarters. What I can't let go of is how about 25,000 Redskins "fans" gave up their seats to a MNF game when "their" team was 6-2. Unless your kids are in the hospital, you are seriously ill, or you crashed your car on the way to the game, make it to the show or give your tickets to a Redskins fan. You are a pathetic excuse for a fan.
IMO, this is the only truly disgusting part of the game. The "fans" on many levels were pathetic.

Right on Mheisig. Would anyone be surprised to see the Steelers in the Super Bowl?