My return and thoughts on the season.

[Daseal]

Turns out I’m not nearly as mentally strong as I thought. I found myself reading thewarpath a bit, along with the parking lot, and I couldn’t stay away. After the game last night I kept thinking about the off-season and who I could talk to about stuff. Turns out, most people I know really don’t care about football that much, so I need a venting grounds! The break rejuvenated me, and gave me a chance to back away. Hopefully the offseason will kill a lot of the bad threads/dead weight.

On to my thoughts of the season and what I think will/should happen in the offseason. This will be a long and boring read. However, if you do want to respond, please read the whole thing. There may be a part, for example, under Joe Gibbs that may be cleared up under Al Saunders.

Coaching Staff
Joe Gibbs: He’s had three years and to be honest, hasn’t impressed me. If he had any other name, we’d be wondering who the next head coach of the Washington Redskins would be. He’s done less with more than anyone I’ve seen. A lot of our recent losses look like the Joe Gibbs football we’ve been seeing since he came back. Get up by 14 or so points, start trying to kill clock in the 2nd or 3rd quarter, then lose the game. I’m willing to give him another year, but I’m still not sold Joe Gibbs has the killer instinct needed to be a coach now day. I think the old adage of run and stop the run is starting to become outdated. Don’t get my wrong, both are extremely important aspects in the game, but have lost significance since Joe Gibbs last coached. For instance, during the Giants game, why isn’t he ordering us to go deep. The Giants got pass interference after pass interference. It was obvious the officials wanted to call ticky tacky fouls, and we didn’t take advantage of it. We need to be more aggressive through the air and not stop playing. I don’t care if the other team feels bad because they had so many scored on them. I’ll give him one more year, but I’m currently not exactly happy with what he’s brought to the table this go around. One point my stepmother brought up about Joe Gibbs was that he probably doesn’t relate very well to young, rich, and mainly black athletes. She used Eddie Jordan as an example of someone who really connects with his players. Has Joe Gibbs lost touch with these players?

Greg Williams: Asking for this man to be fired is ridiculous. He’s had a top 10 defense nearly every year he’s been a coordinator. In my opinion, he’s entitled to his down year from time to time. We need a little more talent. Some big injuries in the secondary totally changed the way this defense played early in the year. I think later in the year we played much better. Had trouble with Tiki and Steven Jackson, but for the most part did well. As always, offense and defense go hand in hand. Even if our defense plays good, they need our offense to put together a few long drives to give them some breathers. This defense could be much better, but we need to either get Springs to restructure, or bring in someone like Nate Clements to take over for him as the #1. Springs has been a glass cannon this year. He’s been a real force when he’s been in, but he’s also been broken a lot.

Al Saunders: I think it’s funny people are talking about how we need to go back to Joe Gibbs offense. His offense was one of the worst the league had seen last year. In the playoff game against Tampa Bay, they should have just disqualified both teams and pulled the 7 seed up as the winner. Al Saunders’ offense has been very good in Kansas City and I feel it will translate to Washington. He got a year to see how his offensive line worked, his new quarterback, and his receivers. I expect him to slightly retool the offense and get it going. That said, as the year went on we seemed to do great when we were trying to score. I think the team finally started to understand his offense. If we work on our red zone offense and keep going and not start trying to kill clock in the 2nd quarter our offense will be much improved. Run, run, pass becomes very easy for the opposition to stop. I don’t know who is in control of this. The way I understand it, Saunders calls the plays and Gibbs says the basic plan and tempo of the game. I don’t know who makes these calls, but they need to change.

Players
In an overview, I don’t want to change our players around to much. I’d like to keep most of the team in tact if possible, but I realize this could be hard in the era of free agency.

Mark Brunell: You know I have to start with him. I don’t think he was unfairly attacked like some do. I think that the Mark Brunell haters aren’t being fully understood. First of all, he was horribly inconsistent. He’d have a good game, then an awful game. He was a one dimensional quarterback who was easily flushed out of the pocket and threw it away. Mark Brunell wasn’t going to win any games for the Redskins, but he could throw it away like a champ. When it was obvious our team wasn’t playing very well, the call for the change came more so we could see Campbell than hate for Brunell. Brunell was playing decent football, but at that point he wasn’t going to lead us anywhere. The reason for the boos in the last game, I feel, is people got a flashback to Ramsey. Ramsey went down with a small injury, could have gone back in and Brunell stayed in. The difference is, people are much more in love with Campbell than Ramsey.

Clinton Portis / Ladell Betts: I know this isn’t a popular stance. But deal one of these guys. I’d prefer to trade Betts away. I think his value is currently through the roof and I think he played slightly over potential. He’s a solid backup, but I don’t like the idea of backs sharing a lot of carries. Many backs, and I include Portis in this, get better as the game goes on. I think Rock/Sellers/Duckett are all good enough for that backup action. I think if we can get good value for either, we should prolly ship one off.

Carlos Rogers: I really think this guy has been just destroyed by the fans. He’s been barraged with insults much more undeserving than Mark Brunell. Don’t get me wrong. Carlos had a couple very bad games, but let’s not forget he’s a 2nd year player at a very hard position in this league. He’s a physical corner and will soon be better than Springs ever was. The guy plays strong, plays the run, and has confidence which is of the utmost importance at corner. The dropped interceptions became a big issue, but none of our other corners got into position to even get an interception. So a little work on his hands and we’re talking about why isn’t he starting in the offseason.

Brandon Lloyd: I really like this guy, still. I heard the reason he’s in the doghouse (via Chris Cooley interview on EITM) is because he wore a baseball hat with “Fuck” written on it. And that got Gibbs’ panties in a wad and caused a fight. Anyhow, I’d love to see us use him down the field and his leaping ability. Especially in the redzone. We need to work 3-4 WR sets into the mix more often and spread the ball around, not to mention run out of them on a regular basis.

Santana Moss: I know this sounds odd, but this is the year he impressed me. Last year I figured he was a one year wonder and wouldn’t pan out to be as great as he seemed to be. This year, he shocked me with huge catches down field, his blazing speed, and everything about him I love. He’s truly a stud receiver, and I’d just like to see him not complain quite as much.

Sean Taylor: Some good, some bad. He seemed to be trying to do too much, but he missed a lot of tackles and mad a suprising few amount of players. However, anyone else notice he’s starting to act like Antonio Pierce? Moving players into position, shouting commands, really becoming the leader of this defense. Now I want to see the reason GWilliams calls him “swoop” because we haven’t seen it.

Derrick Dockery: This guy played great all year and I still saw attacks on him. He needs to be recognized as a strong part of this offensive line. He had his problems, but he’s playing good football right now. Our offensive line is really the strong part of this offense.

In General
I’d really like to see this team stay together for the most part, start building through the draft, and get the guys like Marcus Washington in free agency. Not huge names, but solid talent for a good price. I don’t expect all of them to turn into studs like Washington. This team if it cleans up its offensive playcalling/clock management, and the defense gets back to half of what it was before now, we’re in business. If we go through another losing season, time to shake things up bigtime. Lets build through the draft, we have tons of talent, no need to acqure a ton more via free agency.