Thoughts on Skins vs Titans

[Chief X_Phackter]

Jason Campbell looked pretty comfortable when he wasn't getting pummeled. He had a couple bad throws, but overall I think he made good decisions and had a few decent throws. Mark Brunell had a real nice throw, but was under durress much like Campbell was so didn't have a lot of chances. Todd Collins looked the most consistent, had some good looking passes and led the team for it's only offensive touchdown. I'm not reading too much into that since he was playing against guys who won't even be on a roster this year. Santana Moss looked good, I was worried about that, ARE had a decent catch, other than that, not much else from the receiver corps that's expected to be here after preseason. The O-Line was pretty bad. I'm not too confident in the depth there either let alone the starters. Chris Samuels coming back healthy will help, but there's more to it than that. I hope Bugel figures this one out in the next few weeks or we're in trouble there.

Defense, all I can say is I'm looking forward to bigger and better things this year. Depth looks good. Starters were flying all over the place. They stopped the run. Gave up a few big plays, but I think overall it was a big step forward from what we saw all last year.

Frost was pretty damn good. Suisham? Well, I'll give him another week, but he didn't impress me. Way too inconsistent on his kickoffs: one five yards deep in the endzone, one at the two yard line and one directly out of bounds. Other than that special teams did decent, one run back did get away from them, and we didn't do anything special on returns.

Looking forward to progress next week, especially with the offense.

[CHIEF CHUCKING MY SPEAR]

campbell second fumble came from the front side

[Chief X_Phackter]

Originally Posted by CHIEF CHUCKING MY SPEAR

campbell second fumble came from the front side

It also came about two seconds into the play

[Bstanley]

Originally Posted by angryssg

The outcome of the game was a win for us, however after my analysis we should have either tied or lost. Here ar my thoughts.

1st Team Offense
Jason Campbell was pretty solidwith the excecption of his % and no TD passess. I am weary of him turning the ball over on fumbles. I feel that at least one of the sacks on him could have been avoided had he observed the defense and shifted protection accordingly (the fumble he lost). To his credit he threw no intercecptions, and showed alot of poise.

O-Line
I know that Chris Samuels is out and Wade is new at LG, but the offensive line was getting blown up. Even Jansen made a mistake. Point blank, because of their lackluster play they gave up 2 sacks as a starting unit and gave running backs no holes to run. With that said they have some work to do. Even Jon Jansen made a bad play.

RB
Ladell Betts and Rock Cartwright had no room to run. They made the most of what they had which wasn't much. Both backs are more than capable of running when holes are present. With the excecption of one run by Betts, Rock did a better job of running the football. I didn't see Sellers touch the ball at all.

WR
Santana further proved why he is the number 1 by receiveing for roughly 50 yards on 2 catches. ARE, caught one pass for a first down, but the chemistry between he and Campbell needs improvement. Sadly. Brandon Lloyd nor Cooley made a mark on the field. I do not think that Cooley has fallen off though. Cooley just did not have the opportunity.

Defense
While overall they played great , due mostly to London Fletcher, who did drop a clear intercecption; I do have some concerns. Fred Smoot played off of his receiver a little and allowed a big first down catch. the defense also allowed the TE Scaife to run free a little too much during the game. Other than that the D seemed to get to the ball pretty quickly.

Special Teams
Rock Cartwright made a bone headed move to take the ball out of the endzone on the first play of the game, setting the skins up in bad field position that would plague them throughout the first half. Shawn Suisham missed a field goal by hitting the left upright denying Washington a tie in the first half. Suisham also commited a stupid penatly by kicking his first kickoff out of bounds giving the Titans the ball at the 40. The punt coverage team also did not fair well by giving up a couple of big returns. On a positive note, Frost punted the ball very consistently and even forced a fuble on one play. Too bad it went out of bounds and we were unable to recover.

I am not even going to go over the second team offense as they were more lackluster than the first. IMO Brunell should be cut and Collins should have the Backup job. Brunell just does not have that fire anymore and it looks as if he has done nothing in the offseason to maintain his status.

Second and third team D
They looked good because HB Blades picked up where London left off. That play carried over to the 3rd team D wich won the game. Again, TE's were giving them a bit of a problem. Reed Doughty was in perfect position for an intercecption, but dropped it. I am sold on Byron Westbrook and hope that he makes the team as the 5th corner.

3rd Team Offense
Todd Collins for once outshined Brunell and led the offense to its only score. On this rare occaision I belive that he outplayed Brunell. Todd's awareness of this offense was evident in this game. I also believe that more passess should have been compleeted with all 3 QB's in the game as 2nd and 3rd team WR's dropped many passess. Campbell and Brunell should have faired better.

Final Analysis
Unless the Offensive play picks up I do not see the skins winning more than 7 games this year. This week they got lucky, but if you watched the game you realize that there is still alot of work to be done. I understand the injury that we have on the O-line now, but if it doesn't improve when Samuels comes back and Wade doesn't get a handle on things it is going to be a long season.

How can you have a season Analysis on the first pre-season game?

[Chief X_Phackter]

Originally Posted by Bstanley

How can you have a season Analysis on the first pre-season game?

Agreed...it's way too early to base the Skins record this year on their first preseason game. Let's slow down and let them work out the kinks over the next few weeks, then see where they are at. You might be able to get a better read then.

[MTK]

My thoughts on the game:

Campbell looked ok, he made some nice throws and was a little shaky on a few. He showed some poise stepping up in the pocket and avoiding pressure a few times. Overall I was pleased with his first showing of the preseason. He still has a long way to go, but he looks more comfortable and in control. I can't fault him for the fumbles too much, the protection just wasn't there. Still, he needs to be more aware of holding on to the ball.

The OL pass protection was seriously lacking. I think we got a taste of just how important Chris Samuels is. Heyer looks promising as a youngster, but let's face reality. If he sees significant playing time this year we're in big trouble.

Defensively I was very pleased, I thought the run D was solid, we saw some pressure and a nice hit by Landry on a blitz, and overall I thought the D looked much improved over last year. No complaints here at all.

While I would have liked to have seen at least one scoring drive from the starters it's certainly not panic time. The OL was missing a critical piece, and we really didn't try to establish the run. I thought the whole mission of the first half was to get Campbell as many pass attempts as reasonably possible.

[hooskins]

As most people have said I think the positive we can take out of this is the win(and the positive attitude it brings for us) and our first string D's performance.

[rickmmrr]

It's a good thing we didn't finish the game with Brunell or we would have come away with a big fat zero. It's time for him to hit the road. He really sucks.

[theJBexperience]

Originally Posted by 70Chip

They have a lot of work to do. Also, the offense was as bland as last year's preseason. No pre-snap motion. Ran basic running plays on first and second down mostly. This would make me feel better, ecept the O-Line shouldn't look so bad on such basic stuff.

There was pre-snap motion. The two biggest passing plays came off receivers in motion. ARE's first down catch and Santana's nice long reception.

[4mrusmc]

Unfortunetly it was a preseason game with two bad teams playing in it. Gibbs should be very embarassed with this team to actually put on a burgundy and gold uniform. Albeit the starters on the offense were not in long. The O-line was a huge disgrace out there. Hey Buges, your much coveted line looks like garbage! You let a titans team with a bunch of no-names wreak havoc on your line with no fancy stunts or inovative blitz packages. Simply terrible, good way to get your starting qb killed! Their front FOUR got mad penatration on our O-line. Are you kidding me?!? Our O-line couldn't run block nor could they not pass block either. And this one play when JC got wacked and fumbled again the ball was just laying on the field with nobody giving two shits about recovering it and then when it is recovered no one was interested in atleast touching the guy down who just laid there for eternity with the ball. That lack of hustle, and desire to help your team is not acceptable! And when your qb gets creamed because of your sorry ass cannot block worth a !@#$, could you at least help-up your franchise qb?
The reason why our defense looked good is because GW played his guys as if it were a midseason game. Lots of semi complex schemes and different looks for a first game preseason contest. Again, not alot of front FOUR pressure! I'm sure opposing offenses will carve up our high paid secondary once the season starts.

[theJBexperience]

Originally Posted by holcknowsbest

ade maybe gone but did you see him get 2 pancake blocks on the same guy on a punt return........he pancaked #42 Henry and the the guy got up and kept on gettin it down the field and jimoh comes over and just lays his ass out again.....the dude can play some special teams man. he wont make the team with his coverage though, hes as bad as they come at corner.

I didn't see those plays on special teams. I realize the special teams has been what's kept him around for a while. Personally, I'd like to give some of these youngers corners a chance instead of holding onto solid special teamers that are always going to be just that.

I also liked how the announcers tried to put over Chris Henry as a hoss after a few good runs. Then, the rest of the night he was getting drilled for no yardage.

[BleedBurgundy]

My impression was that Campbell played a bit better than I'm reading here. He did have a pretty egregious over throw and led Espy about 3 yards too far on an out but other than that his throws had good velocity and were on target. It's hard to throw with an entire dline in your face. About the fumbles, yes you'd like to see him "sense" the hit and cover up but it's the first pre-season game, those were the first hits he's taken this year and they weren't small. I saw nothing from Campbell that would make me anything but optimistic about the future (including this year.)

[70Chip]

Originally Posted by theJBexperience

There was pre-snap motion. The two biggest passing plays came off receivers in motion. ARE's first down catch and Santana's nice long reception.

Thanks for the correction.

[Bully Worm]

My take on the game was mixed. I thought Campbell looked pretty good when he had time to throw the ball and he made a couple good passes to Moss and Randle El. He does need to learn to hold the ball and just go down when the pass rush is coming and the pocket collapses. He also needs to read blitzes better because on that first sack and fumble he didn't even see the blitzer coming and got blind sided. I think the titans also picked on Heyer and Wade a lot.

I agree that our o-line didn't create many holes for Cartwright to run through, but when he did have holes, if it was Portis or Betts, they would've created much more with the football.

My biggest worry about the offense was where was Cooley? Was he thrown to at all in the entire game? He needs to be a huge part of this offense and I don't believe he saw any looks. I mean maybe they moved him to protection since tennessee was blitzing a lot but he needs to see much more action.

The defense looked pretty dang good, Fletcher looks ready to play and he looks like one of the better acquisitions we've made in awhile, plus he played under GW for awhile in Buffalo so they have some chemistry. The d-line looked good against the run even in the absence of Griffin, and I think we did pressure the quarterback enough to make him throw bad passes. Landry made a couple good plays and so did Rocky McIntosh, didn't hear Washington's number called too often. I think our secondary does look a little bit suspect and we are still playing like ten yards off of people so that worries me.

The last thing I noticed is that Suisham or whatever does not have any competition on the depth chart, and he clanked a 49 yarder off the upright and kicked a kick-off out of bounds. After watching this performance I think we need to think about bringing in some competition into training camp.

Overall, I think this was a game of ups and downs and hopefully we'll see a better performance from the starters, especially the offense, next saturday against the steelers.

[JWsleep]

Welcome, Bully Worm. Good post.

I didn't see the game, but weren't they kind of forced to keep Cooley in to protect? Probably it was a result of the O-line shuffling.

Good to hear about Fletcher and the LBs. We still need some push from the DEs, no doubt, but hopefully that will come.

The offense better pick it up, because the Steelers play some good D. If we can't get the left side of our o-line into shape, we are going to have some problems.