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Originally Posted by The Goat
GT not clear on your meaning of hurt the offense? Do you mean that Zorn tries to call bombs on 1st down w/o seeing success so we're stuck w/ 2nd and 10? Ok fair enough but I then ask why are we not seeing success. Last year the answer was something like "pass-protection was often too little to sustain the deep ball and our long range 'targets' are small guys who struggle to grab the ball out of the air under coverage." Obviously you get some inaccurate passes from JC that lowers the success rate a bit further, but the quality of protection and lack of long range threats are the bigger deal still. So I say 1) fix the pass protection 2) make the WR corp better. The whole point is to put the defense on the defensive...force them to cover the whole field rather than throw 8 guys in the box and basically allow them to forget about everything 25 yards behind the LOS. This is more intuition on my part than anything but it seems probable we fail to see large gains by our backs because the whole defense is able to concentrate on the backfield first and then 25 or so yards behind the LOS.
...ok so of the examples you gave (1,2, and 3) i choose number 4: a long bomb on 2nd and short. I don't remember seeing that scenario play out last year. Predictability is basically what I'm getting at bro...we've been far too predictable.
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The pass pro wasn't bad on first and second down for the majority of last season. It was bad on third down all year. When we were in those third and mediums that good offenses usually convert, I remember breaking down a lot of pass protections, and charting missed blocks to Yoder, Betts, Jansen, Thomas, etc., and suggesting that we have a problem in obvious passing downs, but that it
should correct itself. Problem was, before it corrected itself, we lost the well-established ability to run the ball and ended up with a useless offense.
The Redskins completed two bombs and drew one penalty on 24 attempts last year. That's obviously an ineffective use of plays. I think Campbell is a little bit overrated as a deep ball thrower. He's got a good, maybe a little bit better than good deep ball. It's not the automatic weapon some think it is. The other thing is, who is he going to throw it to? Moss can get behind corners and safeties, but most teams in the league have defensive ability to take him away without compromising more than just that cliche'd eight in the box. Randle El doesn't have any sort of deep ability, so you're left hoping that either Thomas or Kelly will flash some deep ability.
The thing that's the big issue right now is converting the third downs we should, while being able to run the ball at a reasonable rate. To me, I think for a west coast team, in every sense of the word, trying to force the ball down the field actually detracts from our actual offensive problems, which is the fundamental pass protection (not necessarily OL) issues on downs the Redskins need to sustain drives, and the cast decline of the running game.
But you touched on the ultimate idea: if we only launch 24 bombs all of this upcoming season, but we complete them at a rate twice as good as last year: 7-8 completions + penalties drawn, you combine that with an improved offensive efficiency and Campbell has an outside shot at a 4,000 yard, 25 TD season.
But of the offensive improvements were likely to make this year, improved third down passing and moderately successful running behind a rebuild pass protection unit are likely. Improved deep ball efficiency is probably not happening in this season. Maybe I'm wrong and we underperformed our deep ball abilities last year, but I just don't think we have the ability to go deep four-five times a game with 40-50% success.