Redskins Select CB David Amerson, TE Jordan Reed

I can see hating on Haz before the win streak last year, but the D carried the team at times during that run. And they played very well against the all mighty Sea****s. I still maintain if Griff had been fully healthy, we win that game going away, not close at all.

Anyway, Haz was pretty brilliant last year, scheming around a crappy secondary and a DLine that couldn't get any push. If he craps the bed this year with a healthy DLine and reenergized (I hope) secondary, then I'll be the first one calling for his head.

Rymanofthenorth said:

there are a lot of people who dont hate Haslett, we just dont want him to be our coach is all. I can already see this is gonna be like norv, he will go from horrible, to just decent enough to save his job and we will play out the string because god forbid we try to improve the defence by getting a decent coach, thats too much like what the old administration would do. besides he takes a lot of heat off shanny.

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Ryman, I used to be in this camp too. Then I watched the games.

Over the 7 game win streak this defense only gave up 20 points a game, and that with piss poor Safety play and our best pass rusher on the IR. The Thanksgiving Cowboy game is the only real blip on the radar among those 7 games where we gave up 31 and some of those came on big plays that better Safety play likely would have fixed.

In the playoffs, all this defense did was contain a Seahawks offense that just 2 weeks before had hung nearly 50 on the 49ers defense.

This is not the same defense under Has that guys like me were bitching about the first two years. It is better.

Om said:

Beyond that one negative, the 2013 OL was as good as we've seen around here in many years, and was an integral part of the late-season surge.

They also remained healthier than any OL we've seen around here in many years.

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I think I've mentioned this here. Maybe not. But I think the reason we saw the OL improve over the course of the year and stay so healthy is because our OL was very young, across the board. 29 year-olds Montgomery and Chester were the old men. The last time our line was that young was 2005.

A healthy line plays together longer. And lines that play together longer play together better. It's the nature of the position. This line plays better than the sum of it's parts, and that's why.

It's also worth noting that many of the guys backing up these starters, Hurt, Compton, LeRibeus ... have spent a year or two with our system and in some cases have substantial game experience with it. We have young, experienced depth, which is something we did not have in 2005.

This does not mean everything is perfect. We do seem to be satisfied with a less-than-adequate RT, which continues to puzzle many of us. But overall the line does the job because it's a good cog in the machine.

Heading into 2014 there are three things to watch, then, by my simple reckoning:

1) can we upgrade pass protection from the RT spot?
2) will we stay equally or at least reasonably healthy again, and
3) do we have capable backups if we don't?

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I think that answers 2 and 3.

FINALLY getting 1 taken care of would be nice.