A Redskins-Panthers Offensive Review Undeserving of a Title

Not sure if his stamp should be upside down or not?

Issues with Zorn's Scheme

Contrary to popular belief, it's clear that Zorn doesn't just trot out the same 7 or 8 offensive plays every game. In this game, we moved the pocket, we ran naked bootlegs, we lived off the lead draw play, we broke out the slant pass that this offense has been sorely lacking, and we attacked with a few all vertical plays. Zorn's trying a whole bunch of different formations (an empty backfield ace formation was among the most unique), he's trying to get everyone involved, and unlike last year, he's giving his unit every chance to score. The reason the Redskins rank 27th in the league in points scored/game is because of execution, not because of anything Zorn's failing to do. The Redskins averaged 3.91 yards per play in this game, which would be a mediocre rushing average, except that includes all plays.

The reason we're losing close games to bad teams is as much Zorn's fault as anyone elses though, and that really is the bottom line. The second half game management was just horrendous. I think Zorn, in making the decision to punt the ball back to Carolina at around midfield on 4th and 5 greatly underestimated how easy it is to run off five minutes of game clock when the other team has no timeouts. Ask Tampa. Carolina ran only six plays to end that game. They needed to get only one first down to put the Redskins offense in a situation where a touchdown drive would have been basically impossible. I'm not saying I wouldn't have punted in that situation, especially since I thought the defense could have made Carolina go three and out, but it would have been mighty tempting to keep the game in the offenses hands.

Secondly, the Redskins, who after the Clinton Portis one yard TD run lead 17-2, ran the ball only three times before the Redskins found themselves trailing in the game. Of course, that spanned only two drives, and one of those drives was a three and out, so eh. But the Redskins, in the past, have always run to win. And in this game, with an 8 point lead, they did not run, and they did not win. On top of that, Carolina was getting killed at the line of scrimmage all day when we went downhill at them, and won the battle all day when we dropped back and tried to throw.

Of course, running the ball is basically giving up any chance at a play longer than 12 yards, and Zorn needs to score points to have any chance to save his job. So there's that. But we've also put our quarterback under center on 85% of the snaps where he's clearly less comfortable, and we're going to run play action? I like the ingenuity in the gameplan, coach, but like your players, your execution on gameday has been poor.


Once again agree with you for the most part.

Why wasn't Rhino up?
Was on the injury report?

My main problem with Zorn's playcalling is imo his over-reliance on the running game early in games.

Its counter to our strengths, its counter to the WCO philosophy and its counter to Zorn's previous playcalling.

I just hope the OL doesn't cause him to retreat further into a reliance on the running game.
With Heyer at LT instead of Batiste it should be an improvement on Campbell's blindside and if the were to play Williams out of position at RG then he should be good enough to start at his natural position and Montgomery is as good if not better then Rhinehart and i thought Rhinehart was playing well.

Very nice as usual.