New 2004 Goal: get Portis 1500 yds

[joecrisp]

Originally Posted by LadyT

Watching last night's game, I was extremely frustrated that Portis didn't get a lot more carries. When he does and is successful, we win. When he doesn't, we lose. Why does Gibbs keep varying the game plan week to week? Some weeks, Portis is the man. Other weeks, he's almost an afterthought. Portis is our strongest offensive weapon and, for a lot of games, he has been woefully underused. I thought we went to the pass way too often last night.

And the final nail in the coffin was the choice to throw long on first down, when we had the tie and perhaps the win in our hands. That is just unforgiveable. Why didn't they give the ball to Portis when we got within scoring range? What were Gibbs and Ramsey thinking? I blame Gibbs because he called that unnecessary pass play and Ramsey because he threw it into double coverage.

I agree 100%. Gibbs' playcalling was terrible. The running game should have been leaned on a lot more, and I would've like to have seen more of Betts, as offiss suggested. It really blew my mind that the Eagles D-line was totally decimated, yet Gibbs seemed scared to run the ball and completely wear them down.

Portis was running well early, and though the Eagles' D began to clamp down on the run, there was no reason for Gibbs to virtually abandon the running game the way he did. I couldn't understand why Betts didn't get a lot more carries, like he did against the Giants. It would've seemed to make sense, when Portis started to get shut down on the outside, that Gibbs would then start hammering the interior line with Betts.

There are so many other reasons the Skins lost (penalties, poor clock management, pass-blocking, stupid INT by Ramsey at the end), but I think Gibbs's playcalling stifled the Redskins' offense more than the Eagles' defense did.

Ramsey made a terrible throw on that INT, but Gibbs never should've put him in that situation to begin with. Like the saying goes, "ya dance with who brung ya," but rather than sticking with the agonizingly conservative, methodical passing game that had brought them within 3 points of tying and possibly beating the mighty Eagles, Gibbs chose to put Ramsey in the kind of situation from which he had tried to protect the young quarterback all season, and it ultimately cost them the game.