Commanders Post at The Warpath - View Single Post

Shane · 02-01-2005, 02:33 AM

Joe Gibbs is a great coach and a very admirable human being and that is good enough for me.

As far as opening up the offense, its possible we could have been a little more open. But the reality is that this team had so many problems that opening things up would have resulted in some major mistakes and frankly if we had gone out there throwing downfield a lot, I think we would have not won more than 4 games.

To me you want to be able to run a few miles before you sign up for a 10K or a marathon. Ramsey needed to get his confidence up, and we needed to manage the game in the face of receivers who were performing poorly, and we needed to deal with all sorts of other limitations and challenges that we faced with pass protection and so on.

We just didnt have personnel that were ready or who were performing well enough to open up the passing game dramatically.

That said, I think that Gibbs could have opened it up more than he did - not wide open, but more so. I think he didn't for a very understandable reason - he was back as coach and he didn't want to see us losing games in humiliating fashion with large numbers of interceptions and very little competence displayed. If that had happened, he may have felt that people on the team would have questioned him and so forth.

He has gradually brought the team along, they are learning about the realities of the NFL today, and you will see a dramatically different and far more effective offense next year.

02-01-2005, 02:33 AM	#22
Shane Special Teams Join Date: Feb 2004 Posts: 277	Joe Gibbs is a great coach and a very admirable human being and that is good enough for me. As far as opening up the offense, its possible we could have been a little more open. But the reality is that this team had so many problems that opening things up would have resulted in some major mistakes and frankly if we had gone out there throwing downfield a lot, I think we would have not won more than 4 games. To me you want to be able to run a few miles before you sign up for a 10K or a marathon. Ramsey needed to get his confidence up, and we needed to manage the game in the face of receivers who were performing poorly, and we needed to deal with all sorts of other limitations and challenges that we faced with pass protection and so on. We just didnt have personnel that were ready or who were performing well enough to open up the passing game dramatically. That said, I think that Gibbs could have opened it up more than he did - not wide open, but more so. I think he didn't for a very understandable reason - he was back as coach and he didn't want to see us losing games in humiliating fashion with large numbers of interceptions and very little competence displayed. If that had happened, he may have felt that people on the team would have questioned him and so forth. He has gradually brought the team along, they are learning about the realities of the NFL today, and you will see a dramatically different and far more effective offense next year.