[JWsleep]

On the D line, Griff only played a few snaps. From the WPost:

Defensive lineman Cornelius Griffin, limited to only two plays against the Jets after aggravating a back injury during pregame warmups, hopes to play a bigger role this week.

That hurts everything on the D and is very worrisome. I think we'll go back to some of the deeper coverage, less blitz stuff against McNabb. Hope Griff can play.

I also think that taking the ball out of JCs hands this week was also a function of the D we we're playing against--they we're begging us to run with 6 in the box, and taking away the deeper stuff for much of the game. He needs more throws to get in rhythm, IMO, like many QBs. Don't know if he's hurting--many have said that, but I'm not sure that's it. He looks (like many young QBs) to be late on the reads at times. Even on throws he makes over the middle, he's not hitting those on timing but with his arm strength. And it's not a bad move to minimize the TOs here--that's been the killer for us. It may be a self-fulfilling prophecy, though: we don't open it up because we don't have to O to recover from TOs, and we don't have the O to recover from TOs because we don't open it up.

But the point, offensively, of this game, was to establish the run. That we did. Now we need to maintain the run production (if not at this huge a number, at a good average, at least), and work JC up in the passing game. And JC has to hit some things in the long game. JUST ONE PLAY THERE MAKES A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE. One TD by a bomb and everything else we do (all the "conservative" stuff) makes sense--the point is to create those shots, not to simply run and pass for short-yardage. This is lost on many pundits, IMO. If JC hits a few of those a game, his stat line and the score line look very different.

GTripp: what was the big problem in the red zone? Why couldn't they get TDs? That's another thing skewing opinion of this game--5 FGs. Just one of those is a TD and we feel much better as a team.