Second look at Ramsey

[joecrisp]

Gibbs' primary objective in re-shaping Ramsey should be to break him of this "Favre syndrome" he seems to suffering from. Like Favre, Ramsey has a heck of an arm, and he knows it. Like Favre, he's so confident in his arm that he thinks he can make any throw from anywhere on the field. Like Favre, that stubborn insistence upon making the throw at all costs winds up costing his team the game in too many instances.

Where Ramsey differs from Favre is in the winning department. Favre has bought himself the license to make stupid throws, because those gambles have occasionally paid off-- and in some cases, paid off big. Favre's recklessness, while still a liability for the most part, totters precariously on the fine line between stupidity and heroism, whereas Ramsey's foolhardy gunslinger mentality almost always backfires, and is certainly a liability for a quarterback hoping to take the full-time reigns of a Gibbs offense.

If Gibbs does nothing else this week, he should strap Ramsey to a chair like the antihero in A Clockwork Orange, and force him to watch looped footage of quarterbacks making stupid throws that cost their teams the game. It's going to take some hardcore de-programming like that to purge all those evil little Spurrierisms from Ramsey's sack-riddled brain.

Seriously though, this week's gameplan should be centered upon establishing the run early (duh! This is Gibbs after all, and Dallas is ranked a paltry 27th against the run), and when the play does call for a pass, it needs to be in maximum protection rollouts, with Gibbs firmly reminding Ramsey over the headset, "If it's not there, just throw it away!"

Run the ball, protect the quarterback, protect the ball, control the clock... help the defense win the game.