Official Game Day Thread: Redskins @ Vikings

.... and if we had Lawrence Taylor on the team, forgetaboutit!

Wait, what were we talking about?

Ax said:

You're dead on the money Henry. Balance on offense got us the lead. And balance is the key going forward. I don't recall the run picking up a single 3rd and long in the first half. And there were plenty of them.

You are wrong, however, for giving our defense credit for two stops.

In both instances, it was the Vikes stopping themselves.
A horrible lame duck gimmie interception.
And a receiver slipping and falling.

Click to expand...

I blame the refs for at least a few of the "non-stops." Should have been a lot more holding penalties, and at least one unecessary roughness penalty. They called Riley for the same thing one of their players did to us, with no call.

I'm never one to blame refs for a loss as I believe good teams will always find ways to overcome bad or skewed officiating. But it's hard not to feel like there are two sets of rules, the ones enforced against us, and the ones that don't seem to apply to our opponents. This is the 2nd week in a row where the officiating has just been embarrassingly bad and definitely the Redskins have been victimized.

I do have to say I was surprised as just how badly our defensive linemen were getting mauled on pretty much every play. That and for all the talk from the league about protecting the QBs they sure let Griffin get knocked around a lot.

Yeah. The holding, while irritating is something I've grown accustomed to. Knocking my QB on his ass, while throwing a flag on us for far lesser hits was... upsetting.

You guys are missing the point. The Redskins are not playing well for 60 minutes and beating teams consistently because the talent level is not there at critical spots. Offensive line is one and apparently defensive line is another.

If you can't anchor the LOS you can't mount a consistent attack which keeps the ball out of the opponents hands.

If you can't pressure the opposing passer even on long yardage downs when the other team has two or three backup linemen in the game, then you give up 34 points.

On offense it is somewhat understandable given what Shanahan has done - Trent Williams is the only real investment the team has made and is today the line's only player that would be a starter anywhere else. The other four guys are all street free agents or waiver wire pickups from other teams where they failed to catch on. And these guys aren't kids, Lichtensteiger is 28, Montgomery is 30 and Chester will be 31. It's not as if we are going to see any improvement here, what you see is what you are going to continue to get.

Up front on defense it's harder to swallow. First round picks on Orakpo and Kerrigan. A second rounder on Jenkins. Fairly pricey free agent deals for Cofield and Bowen. A $1.25M restricted tender for Chris Baker.

And these guys couldn't get to Matt Cassel, an immobile qb, and pressure him at the end of yesterday's game.

This is a guy that was run out of Kansas City on a rail and his replacement Alex Smith is now 9-0.

The problems with the OL and defensive front of the 3-4 are the real issues here not whether Morris gets 18 touches or 26.

Are we still arguing whether one guy, who never steps on the field, is the reason we're losing or not?

No, I don't think the status of Dr. Andrews is in question any longer