Blognostications: Week 11 - @ Tennessee Titans

Blognosticator - servumtuum

I had a general idea of what I was going to write until Monday night. ...

More...

Servumtuum, nice work. It's gotta be tough to do a write up right after that Monday Night game.

I didn't realize the Titans were having such QB troubles. It's been ages since we beat an AFC team on the road but maybe the stars have aligned for us this time. We could sure use it.

Great job, Srev. Never again will I complain about having to write about the Colts. This had to be the toughest week so far and yu nailed it.

So Gano has to kick FGs, then in your final score prediction you had him nailing 8, huh?

With Britt out, the only two weapons they have are CJ and Moss. Moss didn't get a catch cast week, and CJ hasn't exploded yet this year for one of his monster games. If we can hold those two guys in check, i think we have a pretty good shot of winning.
Posted via BGO Mobile Device

Great job, serv!

The problem I have with the Redskins defensive 3rd-down % stat is that its a bit misleading. Teams don't get to third down against us that often. I have no idea where to look up the stat, but I bet you the Redskins D has seen the fewest 3rd down plays in the NFL.

If Vince Young gets taken out, my boy from FAU Rusty Smith will be in the game. He did a lot of good things for the Owls, but the guy has the ugliest throwing motion in football. He makes Phillip Rivers look like Peyton Manning! Maybe Fisher has been correcting it, I'm not sure.

Nice job Serv. It had to be tough to get motivated enough to write this piece and predicting what this team will do after that Monday Night debacle is next to impossible. I truly think they'll come together as a team but I don't know if it will be good enough to win. You can bet Jeff Fisher will be watching film to see what the Iggs did right in the running game since that is the Titans bread-and-butter and you can bet he'll go after our Defense in the same fashion.

To me, the key is stopping Chris Johnson.....not just when he runs but when he catches screens. He's just as dangerous in the short passing game and that is something Vince Young does well.

The Skins can win this game IF they can stop the run and keep the Titans in 2nd or 3rd and long situations and win the field position battle. Then again, if the Defense plays like it did Monday Night, I just might turn the game off at the half.

Henry said:

Servumtuum, nice work. It's gotta be tough to do a write up right after that Monday Night game.

I didn't realize the Titans were having such QB troubles. It's been ages since we beat an AFC team on the road but maybe the stars have aligned for us this time. We could sure use it.

Click to expand...

Henry you have no idea how hard it was to come up with something that day. I was feeling sick, angry, morose, disgusted and wanted to punch almost every coach and three-quarters of the players in the mouth. I know what I wrote was inadequate on several levels but I was fighting rising bile as I typed and didn't want to do a rant.

Not an experience I would care to repeat, to be honest.

Goaldeje said:

So Gano has to kick FGs, then in your final score prediction you had him nailing 8, huh? Posted via BGO Mobile Device

Click to expand...

Nah, just three-preferably four.

Seriously after Monday night's debacle I was having trouble trying to come up with ways the Skins could actually pull off a win so I decided to simply see what the teams that had beaten the Titans had done a try to incorporate that into things the Skins had demonstrated an ability to do this season.

What scares me about Randy Moss is his attitude "I play when I want to" which masks what is still elite-level talent. Miami's CB Vontae Davis did an exceptional smothering job on Moss-something he also did in the pre-season when Miami played New England while Moss was still there. He's still a tough one to defend-just ask Darrelle Revis.

Lanky Livingston said:

Great job, serv!

The problem I have with the Redskins defensive 3rd-down % stat is that its a bit misleading. Teams don't get to third down against us that often. I have no idea where to look up the stat, but I bet you the Redskins D has seen the fewest 3rd down plays in the NFL.

Click to expand...

You may have given me something to dig around and research, LL-I tend to use multiple sources which compile different sets of stats but I don't remember if anyone tallys total number of third downs. I'll dig around and see what I can find.

Another thing-which I should have pointed out in the write-up is, as you hinted at, the Titans don't have all that many third downs because they're not a "grind-it-out-down-the-field" type team-they like to score as fast as they can to demoralize the other team and get a quick lead. As a matter of fact the Titans have toe second lowest time-of-possession in the league at 26:55 and yet have the highest scoring per game at 28.

Most analysts, by the way, have stated that the reason they jumped on Moss was due to the lack of a deep threat in order to stretch the field vertically-you score faster that way.


Generally, thanks for the appreciation-I know it wasn't as good as it could-or probably should have been but I was having trouble thinking coherently at the time.

servumtuum said:

You may have given me something to dig around and research, LL-I tend to use multiple sources which compile different sets of stats but I don't remember if anyone tallys total number of third downs. I'll dig around and see what I can find.

Click to expand...

I found it on NFL.com (I didn't look before). We're actually middle of the pack at 16th in 3rd-down attempts w/ 120, but 2nd in defensive plays from scrimmage with 628. I dug a little further, and we are tied for 2nd in the lowest percentage of 3rd-downs with 19% (tied with Houston and Denver). Combine this with our 3rd-worst yards-per-play ranking (an even 6.0) & 3rd worst 1st downs per game (22.6), and teams clearly don't see a lot of 3rd downs against our defense. Sad.

Nice job, serv. Agreed on it being a very tough week to have this duty.

My apologies to everyone, especially serv, for being late getting it posted. I spent yesterday teaching a class to some new hires at our corporate office on the west coast so was not in my usual chair in my home office to post it at the usual time.

what worries me about the titans isnt their QB situation as we have made almost every qb other than romo look good against us, im more worried that we may make Moss look good and that Chris Johnson will most likely have a career day against this aborted mission of a defence we are currently running.

It would be nice if we actually played our best players at their best positions, I guess seeing landry light it up (for the most part) playing his natural spot at SS didnt click?

I believe the Titans have won 12 straight versus the NFC.

I did a little research to see how Shanahan's Denver teams responded after blowout losses. First you have to define what a blowout loss is. For purposes of these stats I have broken them down into losing by 3 scores or more (at least 17 points) and losing by more than 21 points.

When losing by 17 or more points Shanahan's Denver teams were 10-6 plus an additional five losses to end the season (including playoffs) so there were no games the following week.

When losing by 21 or more points Shanahan's Denver teams were 6-2. Plus one season ending game.

I'm not sure this tells us a whole lot except that Shanahan's teams lose by wide margins an average of 1.5 times per year.

Shanahan's teams were also 10-4 after the bye week before Monday...

Doc Watson...sorry...


Had some trouble with Jim Haslett's D.....he had only players that could run a 4-3...

The Tennessee Titans eyes lit up with glee as they get a chance to face a bad Redskins D....

The Tennessee Titans were long and lean...the color of blue and white and their D was mean...

They had the nerve and we were a dud and we'll probably get beat by a Tennessee Stud.....




Just not feeling it this weekend gang......

I have tickets for the game this week and I have serious doubts about a possible win. I know Vince Young is injured and has some leadership problems, but I think he will do fairly well.

One guy that I have not noticed anyone talk about so far is Nate Washington. I think Moss will start opening up the field this week and Washington along with Johnson will have field days. I am not saying that Nate Washington is going to catch 10 passes for 130 yards, but my prediction is he gets around 5 passes for 70 plus a TD.

Also, Carlos might be out which makes this matchup even more difficult. That means we get to see more of Philip Buchannon. One word sums that up - Yuck!

If they copy the Eagles and hit Moss or Washington on a big play in the beginning, will it be game over? That will open up the field for CJ, who I think is going to carve up our D anyways.

Great job Servumtuum. I wanted to bump this one for two reasons.

First, to give props and to recognize that Servumtuum nailed the QB situation for Tenn. Case and point - today is all you need to know about their QB troubles.

Second, I didn't reply to this thread earlier in the week and it slipped my mind for some unknown reason. But I'm happy with the win and enjoyed reading this analysis.

On to the Minn. game.

Thanks, BB, I appreciate it. I knew the Titans had weaknesses that the Redskins could exploit -if they gave an effort to do so and that's the part I was so uncertain about.

But they did put forth an effort-and, considering all the injuries, a damned impressive one in my book. This team is not the pile of incompetent $h*t I'm reading more of than I care to. Could last season's team have been at 5-5 now having, among other things knocked off three teams currently at 7-3 after ten games?

This team hasn't improved my a$$.

Agreed and nicely done with this week's entry serv!

You were right on the money about the FGs. That was kinda creepy.

Henry said:

You were right on the money about the FGs. That was kinda creepy.

Click to expand...

Not really creepy, Henry, I was looking for ways the Titans could be beaten depending on the game situation. When the Steelers beat them the Steelers only had one TD-in the 1st quarter just like the Skins. They kept putting themselves in FG position-again just like the Skins, or, more accurately we did it like they did it. McNabb's 30-50 376 yards passing filled another requirement: out-pass them. I had serious doubts about the team having any chance at this one until Collins went down in the Miami game. A healthy Young with Collins as backup is a QB combo few teams are lucky enough ever to have. When Young got hurt the dropoff by bringing in Collins was one of the shallowest in the league. When Collins went down in the Miami game that took the Titan's safety net away from them and with both knee and ankle injuries affecting Young-they are struggling right now-we caught them at a vulnerable moment and took advantage of it.

A couple more things the Redskins did I had listed on the "to-do" list of ways to win the game.

1.) Keep their 3rd down percentage below 31%. They were at 27% for the game.

3.) Win the turnover battle. The Redskins were +1 for the game.

We also did a couple of things that were pleasant surprises. Our 3rd down conversion rate was at 50% (!). 8-16.

We kept CJ out of the end zone and preoccupied Young enough for him to pretty much ignore Randy Moss as a target.

The "Right place at the right time award" goes to Philip Buchanon and his INT.

One quick note-about my earlier statement concerning the fact that the team has improved. After the meltdown of the second half of the 2008 season and the near-complete implosion of last season the Redskins, at least in my view, lost something. The will to win. Last season the team just seemed to stop trying, stop fighting, stop believing in themselves as a football team. That was the most depressing thing to me about last season.

This season they're different. Mike and Kyle Shanahan and Jim Haslett have made some mistakes, some pretty bad ones. But, giving credit where credit is due, the most improtant thing I think they have done for the Redskins is to restore their belief in themselves. This team tries to win. Out-manned, out-gunned, even out-coached this season's Redskin team doesn't curl up and go into hiding when things get bad. After getting their clocks cleaned by the Eagles they picked themselves up, brushed off the mud and grass stains and traveled into Tennessee's home turf with the mindset of "We're gonna try like hell to win this game". Even with players dropping like flies with injuries they never quit, never gave up, never rolled over and played dead but kept fighting to keep themselves in a position to make winning thie game a real possibility.

I haven't seen that in two years.

I've missed it, too. Bad.

So even though we fans might raise hell with you guys on the Redskins coaching staff I'd like to say thank you for this one very important thing.

Thanks for bringing that back.

Besides if you're gonna re-build a team, that seems to me to be a damned good place to start.

I have to agree that this is probably the most impressive win I've seen since the beginning of '08. It's odd to say that considering that the score looked exactly like those of all our other wins this year, but this win was the first one all season where I didn't feel like we sort of lucked into it. We definitely earned this one.

It will be interesting to see if that fortitude holds up against the Vikings. They've got the weapons to beat us if they actually feel like it, and I expect Favre to have one or two more last gasps before the vikings completely tank it. They may roll over and die for us, but they might also give us a game. And if they do, I hope we're ready.

Henry said:

I have to agree that this is probably the most impressive win I've seen since the beginning of '08. It's odd to say that considering that the score looked exactly like those of all our other wins this year, but this win was the first one all season where I didn't feel like we sort of lucked into it. We definitely earned this one.

It will be interesting to see if that fortitude holds up against the Vikings. They've got the weapons to beat us if they actually feel like it, and I expect Favre to have one or two more last gasps before the vikings completely tank it. They may roll over and die for us, but they might also give us a game. And if they do, I hope we're ready.

Click to expand...

If the Childress firing can inspire the Vikes like Wade's firing inspired Dallas, we could be in trouble. Too bad Zygi couldn't wait one more week.