Smoke Signals: ‘The State of the Skins’ edition

http://dcprosportsreport.com/?p=2008
The Redskins are in trouble if they want to make the playoffs. The team has dropped 3 of its last 4 and at 7-5 overall, would be out of the playoffs if they began this weekend. The Redskins face a brutal test this Sunday night in Baltimore, where they will face as good a defense as they have encountered all season — and they haven’t been very good at scoring against top defenses. They are staring 7-6 in the face and the only hope they have is to catch the Cowboys. At 9-3, the top current wild card team, the Carolina Panthers, is probably beyond reach. Passing the 8-4 Cowboys and getting Head Coach Wade Phillips fired is all the hope Washington has right now.

I think most of us knew this was a very flawed team before the season began. The Redskins made the playoffs last year at 9-7 in a very weak conference and were immediately tossed out of the postseason by a Seahawks team that wasn’t more than merely good in its own right. In the AFC, the Redskins wouldn’t have gotten a whiff of the playoffs and they didn’t really look like a genuine playoff team to me. Joe Gibbs led the players on an emotional ride to January following the death of Sean Taylor, but on Sunday we saw how much good that sort of emotion did a year later. Some perspective is in order. The Redskins are 7-5 and in the thick of the playoff race. Their record is better now than it was at this point in the season during any of Joe Gibbs’ last 4 years as head coach. Compared to recent coaches like Steve Spurrier and Norv Turner, Head Coach Jim Zorn looks flawed, but promising in many ways. 

The Redskins are weak in the trenches and it is tough to win a lot of games when that is the case. Apart from LT Chris Samuels, all of the starting offensive line players should be targets for replacement during the offseason. Why Jon Jansen is still in the lineup right now is a mystery to me.

On the defensive line, the Redskins are relatively solid at defensive tackle, though Cornelius Griffin is aging and banged up and probably shouldn’t be counted on as an every down player any more. On the outside, though, the Redskins have major problems. DE Jason Taylor is old and after years of healthy performance, he is now suffering injury problems, something that should be expected at his age. On the other side, DE Andre Carter, an expensive free agent acquisition from San Francisco [the fact that the 49ers didn't want him back should tell you something] has only 3 sacks so far this year, down from 10.5 last season. A starting defensive end earning $5 million per season needs to get more than 1 sack per month. The Redskins get virtually no pass rush out of their very expensive defensive ends and that’s a real problem, especially considering the team’s outside linebackers are not pass-rushers either.

Part of the problem is that the Redskins simply haven’t invested wisely in the defensive line. Anthony Montgomery, Kedric Golston and Demetric Evans are all fine role players, which is what you’d expect and hope for from late round draft picks. But the Redskins have not selected a defensive lineman higher than the 5th round since Kenard Lang in 1997. A team that needs more pass rush year after year simply makes no effort to find affordable pass-rushers in the draft. Instead, the team overpays for veterans — some who simply aren’t all that good [Andre Carter] and others who are past their prime [Bruce Smith, Jason Taylor]. Instead of taking young pass-rushers on the first day of the draft and developing them [something you can afford to do with draft picks taken outside the first 10-15 selections of the first round], the Redskins have tried to take pass-rushers from other teams. The problem is that good pass-rushers are so valuable that few teams will let a good one go. So if you’re getting Andre Carter from a defense like the one they have in San Francisco, it’s because he isn’t an elite pass-rusher at all. Carter’s 19.5 sacks in 44 games with the Redskins indicates pretty clearly that he isn’t elite or anywhere close to it. Nor should he have been expected to be elite, considering he had just 13 sacks in his last 38 games with the 49ers. 

Unfortunately, Washington’s problems don’t exist solely on the line of scrimmage. There is a lack of playmakers on offense. TE Chris Cooley can make plays, but he needs superior athletes around him to draw the attention of the defense and allow him to work the field inside the hash marks. Without that, Cooley just isn’t a difference-maker. WR Santana Moss is being doubled often and is the only player who can really stretch the field. Moss had some big games earlier in the season, but defensive coordinators have figured out that he’s the only deep threat on the team and they’ve also jumped on all those quick screens the Redskins throw to Moss. Without a real threat on the other side of the field, Moss is drawing too much attention from the defense. 

WR Antwaan Randle El is being completely misused. The Redskins threw deep to Randle El yesterday and the result was disastrous. This isn’t surprising. Randle El isn’t fast enough to lose cornerbacks, not big enough to muscle up for a jump ball, and not athletic enough to adjust his body in mid-air to beat the defensive back to the football. He’s just not the sort of guy who should be running deep patterns. I wonder why he isn’t being used in a Wildcat offensive formation. Sure, the Redskins run the occasional option play with Randle El, but that happens about once a month. Randle El was a college quarterback who is shifty and smart and can throw the ball. Why not put him behind center several times a game, at least, and use him the way the Miami Dolphins [a team that is getting more offense with far less money invested in its skill positions than the Redskins] use TB Ronnie Brown.

The Redskins have a very conventional offensive game plan that seems to vary little from week to week. Considering the lack of playmakers on offense, Head Coach Jim Zorn needs to get a lot more imaginative than he has been so far. We won’t be hearing any more Coach of the Year talk about Jim Zorn, who has already been surpassed by fellow rookie head coaches like John Harbaugh in Baltimore and Mike Smith in Atlanta.

TB Clinton Portis is increasingly banged up every week and probably cannot sustain this pace. Portis needs to give up some carries to TB Ladell Betts if the Redskins are going to continue to be a run-oriented offense. [And they don't have much choice, since the passing game is so sterile and weak.] The Redskins need to cut Portis’ carries to about 20 per week, at the most, and consider holding him out of at least one game. I can see a good reason to hold Portis out of the Sunday night game against the Baltimore Ravens. It is very unlikely the Redskins will be able to run against the stout Ravens defense, particularly since Baltimore will do to Washington what the Giants did — load up against the run and force the Redskins to do something they cannot do, win a game by throwing the ball. Why not sit the injured Portis for the Ravens game and let Betts and TB/KR Rock Cartwright share the beating to come? Then perhaps Portis will be rested and a bit healthier for the 3-game stretch run against the Bengals, Eagles, and 49ers that the Redskins need to sweep in order to go 10-6 and have a shot at the final wild card spot. 

The inability of the passing game forces one to consider QB Jason Campbell. Considering the lack of talent on the edges and the poor offensive line, it’s hard to judge Campbell. He’s mostly avoided mistakes, but he’s mostly avoided big plays, too. The Redskins simply don’t make yards and touchdowns with Jason Campbell behind center. Is that his fault? Well, not entirely, that’s for certain. Not even mostly. But some of it is Campbell’s fault, I suspect. I’d like to know what the coaches determine when they look at the tape. Is Campbell checking down too quickly and missing plays downfield? He certainly seems to be double-clutching and hesitating on a lot of throws. I’m not one who believes that Todd Collins or Colt Brennan are likely to improve things this season, so I wouldn’t bench Campbell. However, neither would I extend his contract during this offseason unless we see a real difference in the last month of this season. Campbell just hasn’t proven that he’s a winner. He isn’t making plays with his arm. Let’s face it: The Redskins offense has not been good with Jason Campbell at quarterback. That’s not an argument for Collins or Brennan, but there will be passers available in free agency during the offseason. The Redskins should look in that direction. At the very least, Campbell needs real competition. He may well need to be replaced. 

Whew. That’s quite a list and a lot of work for the front office to do. Which brings me to my next point. Who has confidence in this front office? It’s far too early to judge the 2008 draft, but the first 12 games have brought the Redskins next to nothing outside of 7th round pick Chris Horton. 2nd round TE Fred Davis was inactive again yesterday and is apparently regarded by the head coach as not clever enough to run proper patterns or know where he is supposed to block. 2nd round WR Devin Thomas made a nice reverse TD run yesterday, but he was actually drafted to catch passes and he doesn’t do that. Neither does fellow 2nd round WR Malcolm Kelly, who had a big drop yesterday. I don’t know how much the Redskins expected to get from their 3 2nd round picks in their rookie seasons, but they must have expected more than this! The point is, the front office needs to start getting things right. The Jason Taylor trade looks like a big bust [he wasn't even double-teamed yesterday!] and it is hard to see him being brought back in 2009 at $8.5 million. In other words, the Redskins have a lot of holes to fill and the front office hasn’t exactly been expert at plugging leaks.

The Redskins lost to the Giants yesterday because they are simply inferior. The Giants are better at QB and offensive line [MUCH better at offensive line] and equal or better at running back and wide receiver. The Giants are better than the Redskins along the defensive line [even with the injuries and retirements], better at linebacker and special teams, and have a better coaching staff, too. The only area where the Redskins are probably better than the Giants is in the secondary — and even that looked doubtful yesterday. The Giants are the class of the NFC East and thus the target the Redskins must set for themselves in 2009. Right now, they’re nowhere close to being competitive. They’ve got a lot of work to do. 

Washington might make the playoffs this year, but if they do they’re probably one and done like last year. The Redskins are not close to being Super Bowl contenders and they have more question marks than anything else right now. They’ll need to make a lot of decisions in the offseason. Let’s see if Washington’s decision-makers do better in 2009 than they did in 2008.