Defense next Year
 

I'm sure to eveyone's delight the Cowboys defense sucked this year, especially compared to there top rank D last year. There 2003 D was pretty damn good, and if anything they got a little better by adding Elllis.... but in 2004 they went from 2nd in points to 28, and 1st in yards to 16th! I can't find any real good reasons why...

Does anyone think our defense could hit the same wall next year??

If so, why?

and also, who has an explanation for the Dallas's Defense decline this year??

i'm not sure about this but when dallas' defense was #1 didn't their cornerbacks over achieve and this year they played the way they should have.


i have to believe the skins d is gonna be pretty good next year, maybe even better than this year. with lavar back, bowen back, hopefully a pass rushing de and for the simple reason of finally another season with the same defensive coach. the big ? is smoot. if he leaves , who replaces him? i'm not sold on garnel wilds or walt harris just yet

I Dallas D slipped real bad becuace they didn't play ANYBODY that first year. Think about it they played us twice, the giants, cardinals, Lions. Those teams just sucked and they were able to boost there ratings with good porfarmances.
I don't think our D will slip up next year, I think it will be better simply cause of the offense. They shouldn't have to play as many plays as they did this last year.

[QUOTE=skins009]I don't think our D will slip up next year, I think it will be better simply cause of the offense. They shouldn't have to play as many plays as they did this last year.


great point! i hope it's true:)

the cowboys lost their corners, with the exception of newman. Edwards got signed by someone else and i forget the other one. I think our D could definitly slip next year. It remains to be seen who we resign, and who we add. We'll get a better idea in the next few motnhs

Also, lost in all the "Brunell is the worst offseason move ever" hoopla that surrounded us Skins fan, is the fact that Marcellus Wiley was similarly awful in Dallas. They lost Ekuban and gained Wiley (though I'm not positive Ekuban was a DE). In any case, Wiley plain sucked this year

I think we COULD slip, but I think we'll be competitive. I'm hoping for more takeaways next year, but that may lead to more yards. Next year will be very important to see if our D stays nasty! I hope it does. As Pittsburgh has shown, ball control is important to the ranking of your defense. Pittsburgh defense is good, but certainly not the best in the league, as far as Im concerned.

As someone said above, I think the Cowboys played something like a .35% winning percentage of their opponents. So the numbers were boosted.

Woodsen was hurt all year and that had a hugely negative impact on the Dallas secondary AND on the ability of Roy Williams to play aggressively on running plays. That hurt the Cowboys as much as anything.

They had injury problems, plus an offense that couldn't run the ball early in the year therefore leaving the D on the field much longer.

i do'nt think the skins d will take a major hit next year.hell,unless smoot is gone,isee us better.

I'll trade slipping a few slots in the defensive rankings to have more turnovers/points from turnovers.

Dallas' defense is very similar to ours. Blitz-heavy and relying on the secondary to cover 1-on-1. Dallas lost 2 starters in the secondary, and their replacements were getting burned when Dallas blitzed. Redskins can improve if we can resign Smoot to get a comparable replacement.

the system, not the players
 

The reason why we will not slip very much in the defensive ranking next year is solely beacuse of Gregg Williams. Because no one player is bigger than his system as a whole, it doesn't matter who we have, as long as the system is executed efficiently (see patriots Crennel for 2001, 2003, and now 2004).

Gotta agree with Madison as long as we have Coach Williams are D will be tough. Look how injured we were this year and we were still in the top 5. Now if only we could do that on Offense.

The Redskins' injury list on defense was not nearly as bad as lots of other teams - - including ones in the Super Bowl. Arrington missed games. Other than that, the defense was not missing key players.

The Redskins' defense this year was a statistical wonder but not a winner. They produced one TD for the year I believe and they gave up end-of-game drives to cost the team wins in two games against bad teams (Cleveland and Dallas).

It would be far bettr for the Skins' defense to rank 10th in yardage and much higher in points scored and "points produced from great field position" than in yards gained. They don't pay off for yardage stats.

[QUOTE=sportscurmudgeon]The Redskins' injury list on defense was not nearly as bad as lots of other teams - - including ones in the Super Bowl. Arrington missed games. Other than that, the defense was not missing key players.

The Redskins' defense this year was a statistical wonder but not a winner. They produced one TD for the year I believe and they gave up end-of-game drives to cost the team wins in two games against bad teams (Cleveland and Dallas).

It would be far bettr for the Skins' defense to rank 10th in yardage and much higher in points scored and "points produced from great field position" than in yards gained. They don't pay off for yardage stats.[/QUOTE]

Lavar, bowen, daniels, barrow....thats four starters out of 11, id say thats a pretty big hit to take considering most of them were out the whole season. People stepped up, but our starters were out. And didnt whoever took bowens place go out to and we used a third person at that position? If you took last years bucs and took their people at those same positions, lynch, rice, brooks and shedon quarrels(sp) that is a huge hit. Granted, those players are considered better than we lost, but still, you lose that many guys for the whoel year its tought to replace them, we got lucky that people stepped up big this year.

I think you are thinking we didnt have too many injuries, becuase since most of them didnt play much at all, you dont consider them starters, but they definitly were.

As someone else pointed out in this thread, the Steelers showed the importance of ball control to a team's overall defensive ranking. Does anyone really think after their performance yesterday that the Steelers were a 'championship' caliber defence, time and again in the second half of that game when the Steelers needed a stop they could not do it. With regards to the Redskins offense, to quote Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post, "Who better to trust to fix a Joe Gibbs offense, then Joe Gibbs."

Barrow never played a down. (Did he even make it into the first pre-season game?) So you have no idea if he would have been better than Pierce or Marshall. When a guy gets injured in July and never steps on the field for a team he has never played for, you cannot call that a huge loss to the team. That may be a huge loss in terms of publicity and hype, but that's all it can possibly be. Now when Jansen got hurt, that was a different story. You knew what he could/would do on the OL and you knew what the rest of those jamokes could/would do and so you knew that was a big deal. But Barrow? Forget all the stats about tackles and that stuff; you have no idea if he would have played well in this defense for one simple reason - - he never played in it. If you went solely on stats from prior years, the Skins would have gone out and found someone other than Pierce because before this year he had no stats that were even marginally interesting.

Oh by the way, Pittsburgh lost Joey Porter at LB for four or five games and Kendrell Bell was nicked too. These guys may not be as flashy and free-wheeling as Arrington, but they can play LB for any team in the NFL

Yes Daniels was injured. He is one DL. So compare him to Richard Seymour who was out for about 5 games and playoffs with the Pats. I know that because Daniels wears a Redskins uniform people here think he is Superman but no one - not even Daniels' family - can possibly believe that losing him on the Skins DL was as bad as losing Seymour on the Pats' DL.

Meanwhile the Eagles lost three starting DL for significant periods of time during the year and unless there's a misprint in my paper, they finished 13-3 this year while the Daniels-less Redskins finished 6-10. Losing three starters in Philly versus losing Philip Daniels here. Yup, the Skins had it tough. That explains Philly's seven extra wins.

In the secondary the Skins lost Bowen and Lott. They are good players; I'll grant you that. Now check out New England again where perennial all-Pro Ty Law and the other cornberback Tyrone Poole missed the majority of the year together. Once again, even their mothers cannot rank Bowen and Lott ahead of Law and Poole in tems of skill-level. And remember, the Redskins had the huge benefit of having Sean Taylor playing the other safety spot to cover for Bowen's and Lott's absence. Taylor had every offensive player in the NFC wetting their pants if they were called to go over the middle - if you are to believe the postings here. The poor Pats had to resort to plugging in Troy Brown who is one of their WRs and all he did was get three INTs for about ten games as a part time DB.

The Redskins lost Arrington. That is the ONLY significantly talented player on the defense who missed a significant number of games this year. The Skins defensive injuries were not as mumerous as other teams (I believe the Titans had 12 players on IR which means out for the year by the ninth week of the year.) and on the defensive side of the ball they did not lose their top talent.

The ONLY injury that was a significant and lasting blow to the team was Jansen.