Quote:
Originally Posted by GusFrerotte
Statistically we were a top D til like 4-5 weeks ago, according to NFL.com. We were #1 pass Defense and #2 overall for a bit of a stretch there til our O got in a groove, but the D seemed to collapse.
|
Because our offense wasn't a threat, bad teams could afford to lean on their running games against our always pretty effective run defense, instead of having to rely on their passing games to challenge our weaknesses.
I mean, you were there to see Stafford absolutely torch this joke of a defense in his third ever start with two 80+ yard drives. There wasn't a whole lot of that going on in the first six games or so because the offense wasn't pulling it's weight and teams could beat us without putting it in the air. But when they chose to, even the worst passing games in the NFL had a fair share of success.
It wasn't a coincidence that the Blache scheme got exposed as soon as the offense started to find it's stride. Once opponents realized that they would need to put up a few TDs in order to beat the Redskins, it caused them to have to find mismatches in the passing game against us. That's when you started to see all the double moves. It's not that Carolina and Kansas City couldn't have done the same thing to us, it's that they could compete simply by grinding it out and not putting it in the hands of their QBs.