Reality Bites!

[sportscurmudgeon]

First of all, I did not say I was rooting for the Skins to lose their last 3 games. I said they would win against SF and that I wanted them to beat the Cowboys. Then if both of those games are wins, I want them to lose BIG to the Vikings so that they don't go into the off-season thinking they are only a player or two away from a championship. They are not! Hence the title of this thread - - Reality Bites !!

Go check out my picks for the NFL this week and you'll see that I took the Skins with 9.5 points in the game. I collected on the game; I did not lose anything. So I'm not complaining about this from a personal loss standpoint; I'm fed up with poor play on the field by a lot of guys who are not performing like competent NFL players.

Oh, and I'm not overly thrilled with some of the coaching calls either...



gortiz:

The reason I paint such a bleak picture is that the Skins have also been terrible over that peroiod of time that you chronicled in your note. And I don't see them on the list of miraculous turn-arounds yet. The reason it hasn't happened is that the team always thinks that a flashy free-agent signing and a big press conference and a lot of TV time and pics in the papers in March is what the team needs. Well, that has not worked for the last 5 years and it ain't gonna work this year either. And if they get full of themselves with three straight wins at the end of the year and begin fantasizing that they coulda/shoulda beat the Eagles in week 13...



illdefined:

You are what you are. And the Redskins are 4-9 after being 5-11 last year. That means they lose twice as many times as they win.

The offense has improved since Ramsey took over in terms of statistics but in terms of wins and losses, the improvement is less than spectacular. Look, I remember when Sonny Jurgensen was putting up monster numbers every year for the Redskins and they just kept losing and losing and losing. It was fun watching Sonny fling the ball all over the lot, but in the end it did not amount to a pinch of pigeon poop come "playoff time".

And by the way, even with St. Patrick of Ramsey at QB, the Redskins have still only gotten over 18 points once...

Here is the priority order for starting QBs:

1. Win games 2. Score lots of points 3. Accumulate gaudy stats.

Remember, Brad Johnson and Trent Dilfer won Super Bowls in the last five years. They had great defenses around them; Ramsey has one this year that is holding opponents to low scores. The difference? Ramsey - and Brunell as his predecessor - don't score enough to win even with the opponents being held in check. If you don't think that is "reality" go look at the standings one more time...


cpayne5:

Do I think this team is spiralling into oblivion? I hope not. But I am afraid of what they will do if they win the last three games of the year - which are all winnable.


Matty:

The problem is that lots of people here are saying that Taylor is a great player. You read the posts here; you know I'm right about that. He's an intimidator; he makes great plays; he's going to lay out Donovan McNabb; no one will dare go over the middle on the Skins because they will fear him. Sounds good but it is fantasy. Taylor is a head-hunter who makes highlight reel hits. And he gives up lots of big plays and the ones he gave up last night lost the game for the Redskins.

BTW for everyone who is cackling about the Todd Pinkston "alligator-body play"; that was Clark who "scared him"; if you look very carefully at the tape, you will see that it was Sean Taylor who was beaten on the play by about 5-7 yards and who would have wound up chasing Pinkston into the end zone had not Clark "saved the day".

And Matty, you surely remember the postings here where someone went to look up Ramsey's stats in his first 16 or 18 starts and compared them to same games by Favre and Peyton Manning and John Elway. Lo and behold, Ramsey's stats there were declared to be better than all of them. Now what is the implication of that kind of research and analysis. I infer that the person meant to say that Patrick Ramsey is in the same category as those QBs. He might be some day in the distant future, but as of today, he is not as good as Carson Palmer, Ben Roethlisberger, Byron Leftwich, Michael Vick, Chad Pennington, Jake Delhomme, Brian Griese, Aaron Brooks, Joey Harrington, David Carr, or Drew Brees just to name some of the YOUNG QBs in the league at the moment. The jury is out if he is better than either Rex Grossman or Kyle Boller. Please note, I am not comparing him to Favre and McNabb and Culpepper and McNair who have been around so much longer than him; I've also left Brady off the list even though he too is a young QB just because that would be just too embarrassing a comparison to make; I am only comparing him to young QBs. And he is "below average" on that list.

Ramsey has been starting on-and-off for two and a half years now. What is his record in games that he started? I'm asking only because I'm too lazy to go and look it up. I'll bet a sizeable amount of money that he has not won 10 games yet and I would not be at all surprised to find out that he wins one game for every two he loses. Since that is what the team does, that means that his presence at QB is not any better for the team than whomever else he has replaced. And for everyone spring-loaded to quote stats to me here, I'm talking about winning games not completing two out of three passes that are within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage.

Coles can't run anymore; that is the problem. He still plays hard and hustles and gives 100%. I love that. That does not make me fail to see that whatever injury he has to his ankle/foot/toe makes him a whole lot slower now than he was at the beginning of last year. Watch the game tapes and forget how much you admire his tenacity and his guts; just watch him try to outrun CBs or watch him try to accelerate away from them after a cut. He can't do that today; he did it all the time at the beginning of last year. He's hurt and he is the still the best receiver by a wide margin on this team and that tells you why the passing offense for the Skins is miserable.

I'll give Dockery a chance in training camp but I really want them to bring in a solid young OL to push Dockery. He has improved, but he still makes some really boneheaded plays and sometimes gets beaten like a drum. There isn't any gas left in the tank for Raymer. If Samuels does not renegotiate, he has to be cut because he is not worth $11M against the cap next year - period end of message.

I want the overpaid dumbass players cut; I want the younger ones to look at that situation and realize that this country club they call a football team might just cut their dumb asses too if they don't figure out how to play this game intelligently; I want the scouting staff to find draft picks that will all make the team next year AND have at least four of them contribute to the team in something other than punt return blocking duty. And I want the practice squad to have players there who can actually come to the team and plug a hole if necessary. That's the scouting dept's job so why not ask them to earn their money too.