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Is Gruden playing possum?

Solitary Man

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On September 13th at Fedex do you think (as many have started speculating), that we will see the pistol offense, read option, and 2012 RG3?

As far as last night, it is curious as to why Robert was under center so much. Do you buy into the theory that his voicing his opinion on wanting to be a traditional passer is the reason behind this? I find it hard to believe that. If this is going on, wouldn't we hear more rumors that the Skins are running the option more in practice? I also find it hard to believe that they will wait until the end of preseason to start running it.

This has nothing to do with the fact that the Oline was very bad last night.

Curious on your opinions. I'm kind of stumped on this right now.
 
I believe Gruden is using Griffin behind center to test his progress and the Oline. The starters are only in against the other starters for a quarter or so so its pretty hard to squeeze a whole lot. What's disturbing is we have issues on the left if Williams is missing. The Backups looked pretty good.
 
Simpsons quotes will always have a place in my heart!

That is a very interesting thought...Id REALLY like to hope so. Because what we've seen has been putrid and very vanilla. We have had one big play and it was a dropped pass. something has to be going on that we dont know about.
 
I believe Gruden is using Griffin behind center to test his progress and the Oline. The starters are only in against the other starters for a quarter or so so its pretty hard to squeeze a whole lot. What's disturbing is we have issues on the left if Williams is missing. The Backups looked pretty good.

If it was truly starters on starters, I be even more concerned, but look at our line. LT.... second stringer... LG starter, but very dependent on the starting LT. Litch at center just can't hold his ground in pass pro, which is nothing new. RG..... starter rookie RT starter, but might as well be a rookie with his missed time last season and slow development. This against a top D's starters.

That's bringing a knife to a gun fight.

As for the topic.... Gruden seems to be lacking any shred of common sense. Developing a running QB as a traditional one is one thing. Forcing the process is another
 
You assume Gruden possesses the ability to play possum. ;)

We will not see the 2015 Redskins offense, or defense, until Miami comes to down.
 
Playing possum...nah we just suck unfortunately. Though I do have hope that the oline will be a little better this year if TW can stay healthy. if not we're in big trouble.
 
Et tu, GSF? Come on, brother ... preseason is still preseason. We might suck the big one yet again this year ... or we might be smiling in December at the clear reversal of fortunes ... or something in between. But the first two glorified scrimmages we've seen so far won't have been any kind of realistic barometer.

As to the OP's questions--I don't think we'll see the 2012 offense revisited, no, but I do think what we WILL see will incorporate some of those elements, and not look to much like what we've seen out of the offense so far in pre-scrimmage. We'll see gameplans crafted for specific opponents each week, and wrinkles and tweaks we will absolutely not see coming. Same as every team in the NFL plans to do.

Question is ... will it be any good? Or at least good enough to compete? We'll start finding out against the Dolphins.
 
It's fine to say 'it's just the pre-season', because it IS just the pre-season. It's fine to point to the actual facts, that there is nearly no correlation between success in the pre-season and what actually occurs in the regular season. But the problem is, we are coming off an epic failure of a season with a failing QB, hapless OL, and a coach seemingly shaky (and that's being kind) as to how to address any/all of those issues. What you want, no - damn near have to have - is slow, measurable progress. Yes - progress, even though it's a pre-season game.

We are all unsettled - not because of a pre-season game, but because this looks like the same bad, undisciplined, under-performing team we saw last year, the only difference being the names on many of the jersey backs.

I'm starting to understand why McCloughan recently warned us against having high expectations for this team and reminded us that this is a long term process.

As for last night - I'm moving closer and closer to Goaldeje's general assessment, that Griffin is irreparably ruined (or never had anything other than freakish athleticism in the first place) and that Gruden is in way over his head. I don't want to believe those things, but they seem more likely to be true than not to be. Hope I'm wrong.

I'm almost at a point where I wish we'd just name Cousins or McCoy the starter and commit to them for the season, no matter what happens on the field.
 
Et tu, GSF? Come on, brother ... preseason is still preseason.

I'm sorry my friend. You've known me a long time, and I've always been an optimist, but I'm really just not feeling it at all this year. Griffin just takes a pounding back there and looks so unaware and discombobulated back there to me. I've never seen a starting QB look so uncomfortable and take so many hits.
 
As for last night - I'm moving closer and closer to Goaldeje's general assessment, that Griffin is irreparably ruined (or never had anything other than freakish athleticism in the first place) and that Gruden is in way over his head. I don't want to believe those things, but they seem more likely to be true than not to be. Hope I'm wrong.

I'm almost at a point where I wish we'd just name Cousins or McCoy the starter and commit to them for the season, no matter what happens on the field.

Right there with you Boone. I'll just add that I think Gruden's sudden turn around on RG3 this year is more about keeping his job and hoping for a miracle than being honest imo.
 
You assume Gruden possesses the ability to play possum. ;)

We will not see the 2015 Redskins offense, or defense, until Miami comes to down.

With potentially the best defensive line in the league. Sports talk hosts on the radio here this morning were absolutely giddy at the thought of the Miami d line vs our o line. They opined that if the Skins score more than 6 points it would be a travesty.
 
I'm sorry my friend. You've known me a long time, and I've always been an optimist, but I'm really just not feeling it at all this year. Griffin just takes a pounding back there and looks so unaware and discombobulated back there to me. I've never seen a starting QB look so uncomfortable and take so many hits.
No argument on Robert ... I just wrote about that in the "Development Tracker" thread. Sigh.

As to whether or not Gruden is in over his head, I hold on to hope that the signs of offensive life we see from time to with the other guys are signs that his O really can work given the right bodies on the field. Which I hold out hope will continue to get better now that we have a GM. I may join "Gruden is a moron" chorus by midseason, but I'm still of the mind that his star has so far been hitched to Robert for all kinds of organizational and not performance-based reasons, and that once that plays out, he'll be able to at least put a competent and competitive NFL offense on the field.

Then it'll be about whether or not Barry's Boyz can stop anybody and we start learning to win games again.
 
With potentially the best defensive line in the league. Sports talk on the radio here this morning were absolutely giddy at the thought of the Miami d line vs our o line. They opined that if the Skins score more than 6 points it would be a travesty.

Yeah I didn't even think about the fact that we play Miami in the first game. Yikes you know those guys are licking their chops.
 
Yes Om I think you're right about Gruden. He's very limited as long as RG3 is his QB imo.
 
Yeah I didn't even think about the fact that we play Miami in the first game. Yikes you know those guys are licking their chops.

Having our pass-catching tight ends injured could be a blessing in disguise.
It could finally be an excuse, or should I say, "force" them to use the seemingly obvious logic of bringing in more guys to block, besides the O-line, i.e. Tom Compton as blocking Tight End, maybe Matt Jones or Young to block as well ?

As for Griffin, you can't blame it all on preseason, or Gruden, or the O-line.
Multiple batted balls, 2 Fumbles by Griffin, one of which NOBODY touched him, and so on. All those mistakes cannot be totally or even mostly attributed to the 3 factors I mentioned. A lot of it is on Griffin.
He looks confused, lost, scared, and discoordinated back there. When any pressure comes, he makes really, really bad decisions, gets happy feet, happy hands with the slippery fingers, etc. Seems no different than the RG3 of the 2013 and 2014 regular season.
 
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As for Griffin, you can't blame it all on preseason, or Gruden, or the O-line.
Multiple batted balls, 2 Fumbles by Griffin, one of which NOBODY touched him, and so on. All those mistakes cannot be totally or even mostly attributed to the 3 factors I mentioned. A lot of it is on Griffin.
He looks confused, lost, scared, and discoordinated back there. When any pressure comes, he makes really, really bad decisions, gets happy feet, happy hands with the slippery fingers, etc. Seems no different than the RG3 of the 2013 and 2014 regular season.
I agree 100%
 
I don't know if Gruden is playing possum, but I do know that what I've seen so far in the pre-season with Griffin in the game is brutal. Last night, I felt sorry for Griffin. Not because of his play, but because of how much of a beating he was taking. As a person, you don't want to see anyone getting hit like that (unless they play for the cowboys).

The more I thought about this today the more I realized they just need to go back to the offense Griffin is comfortable with. He's taking more shots sitting in the pocket than he did running the read option style offense. Right now, he looks like a tackling dummy. Why not open up the offense to do what he does best?
 
On the pre-season.......the third game has always traditionally been the game to play the 1st unit. I don't think Robert should play, I would like to see Kirk in there with the 1's. Sounds like Gruden is waffling on Robert, using the word "I imagine he will remain starter". Imagine????

On returning to the pistol......we can't go back to the pistol, Robert gets killed in open field and actually his limbs probably will give out again without being hit. He must learn to play under center, we are committed to the run game, he must learn the art of play action, and learn the art of picking up the tempo. He is too slow to read and act in the pocket. Way to slow. Even Romo said that his best strength was his ability to think quickly with his decision making during the play.

On Goaldeje's general assessment...... what I'm talking about and have been on board with all along. Robert was ruined in 2012 and Gruden not up to the monumental task of bringing this team together. Won't take long to lose a lockerroom.
 
The more I thought about this today the more I realized they just need to go back to the offense Griffin is comfortable with. He's taking more shots sitting in the pocket than he did running the read option style offense. Right now, he looks like a tackling dummy. Why not open up the offense to do what he does best?

He no longer does that best. He's not the player he was before. You can see it when he takes off running from the pocket, or attempts to.
 

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