Chiming in late, from the game

[Fear The Spear]

Hey guys. My computer crapped out at the worst possible time. It's been down since before Sunday's game so I havnt been able to post at all.

I know I missed a lot of excitement here, and happy to see that I was correct in my blog prediction that Romo would once again fail at an attempt to rally late in the game, and throw a signature INT for the Skins to seal their fate.

But anyway, the reason I am posting is there is really only one thing about the game that truly surprised me. I dont know if it's been discussed already amidst all the excitement I missed. But why did we seemingly not throw any passes that travelled beyond 10 yards ?

I know the running game was hugely successful, and it made sense to stick with it. But of course, that's also a reason to at least try a play-action once in a while to keep the defense honest. And I was hoping a big strike via pass would be the thing to "put them away" so they wouldnt even have a chance to rally at the end. Not to mention we had huge success with it against them on Thanksgiving. Not only did we hardly throw the ball, but I can't remember any pass travelling more than 8-10 yards. Maybe one at the most ? Just seems very unusual. So, why didn't we take more shots down the field ? Or at least, medium-range shots ?

Was this due to RG3's injury, to limit his need for scrambling in and out of the pocket, and limit his hits ? Even so, we seemed to throw more frequently and further last week, when he was supposedly not as recovered as he was this Sunday

 

[Nobody]

5 of his 9 completions were 11+ yards. But he only averaged 11.1 per completion, so I know what you mean. I kept thinking he might launch one, it just never happened. The longest pass of the game only went for 18 yards.

 

[philemon]

Garcon had catches of 18 yards, 13 yards and 15 yards respectively. Moss had one for 11 yards and Hankerson had one for 12 yards.

RG3 went deep for Moss in the 1st Q. He also went deep for Morgan in the 4th Q. Both were incomplete.

 

[Jimbo]

I think Griff did go deep once or twice but it was overthrown. This may have been part of the design or it may have been that Dallas was playing a deeper zone in order to take away what we did to them on Thanksgiving. We simply replied to that by giving the ball to Morris.

To me, even more surprising was the lack of play-action passes. Perhap that deep zone negated the need but it was still surprising nevertheless.

 

[Goaldeje]

I'm guessing they took what the D gave them. And the D kept giving Morris plenty of daylight to run towards, so they kept pounding him. Jason Garrett made no adjustments on either side of the ball all game (the blitz stupefyingly continued to work because he refused to bring in any additional blockers, or just simply run a couple of screen plays), so why change what's working.

 

[Neophyte]

Yeah, I have to agree with a couple of previous posts about the Skins taking what the D gave them. The talk coming out of Valley Ranch all week was about stopping the big plays the Boys gave up here on Thanksgiving Day. Rob Ryan was totally focused on that in the belief that if they could just stop those their offense could keep up with us.

It looked to me like they told the Safeties to back off, ignore the run and play the deep ball all game. Once that happened, Kyle and Griff just keep feeding Morris and working the underneath stuff.

 

[Fear The Spear]

Garcon had catches of 18 yards, 13 yards and 15 yards respectively. Moss had one for 11 yards and Hankerson had one for 12 yards.

And how many of those included runs after the catch ? Seems like even those completions, if I remember correctly, did not travel far in the air.

 

[Bulldog]

Yep, it appears Dallas decided they would rather get bludgeoned to death slowly rather than shot directly.

Their strategy of holding the safeties and essentially spying the play action passes only resulted in some ugly play up front where at times Dallas gambled and only had 6 players in the box against the NFL's third leading rusher.
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[philemon]

And how many of those included runs after the catch ? Seems like even those completions, if I remember correctly, did not travel far in the air.

I could be wrong, but I don't believe any of them had much YAC. I know at least 2 of the 3 Garcon catches didn't. He went down to the ground immediately after catching.

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

I'm guessing they took what the D gave them. And the D kept giving Morris plenty of daylight to run towards, so they kept pounding him. Jason Garrett made no adjustments on either side of the ball all game (the blitz stupefyingly continued to work because he refused to bring in any additional blockers, or just simply run a couple of screen plays), so why change what's working.

The cowpies continously dropped 2 safeties deep, however this opened up the run game bigtime, we didnt have any guys running free down the middle but we did get a lot of mid range outs and the stretch runs were really there because we basically have to "freeze" the DE /olb as he makes his read and once morris got past that he was banging off some serious runs. the scheme will do very well against teams with "upfield" guys on the edge, its the stay at homers that give us a problem.

we did the best job we have all year of staying sound in the secondary, we didnt try to cover the coverage so to speak, thats where our holes came from the past 3 years, we would get to cute disguising coverages and get burned, against the pies, we just blitzed from angles and only used zone on the backside with man on the front side mostly, and it worked very well., but its omething you cant do all the time or teams will eat you up.

 

[McD5]

This is a few weeks old, but will likely surprise many here. Don't take this the wrong way--RG3 is great. But the following paragraph may give a better picture as to why Griff's completion rate is so high, and why some believe Luck should win the ROY.

Those numbers agree with Brian Burke’s data at Advanced NFL Stats, which show that Griffin has thrown only 14 percent of his passes 15-plus yards past the line of scrimmage, the lowest rate in the league. Luck has thrown only 11 percent of his passes at or behind the line of scrimmage, while Griffin is in an offense that has let him throw 44 passes at or behind the line, accounting for 23 percent of his attempts.

We've seen a few bombs to Robinson, and a few medium passes to Garçon and Moss.

But the truth is, RG3 doesn't throw the ball down the field. He makes the shorter, easier throws, and lets the WRs do the rest.

Part of this is Kyle working to his strengths. And that's a great thing. But to be fair, it also pads his stats.

 

[McD5]

And more, from the same article:

Jeff Bennett of ESPN Stats & Information, in a telephone interview, was able to help explain why Luck was not only the best rookie quarterback this season, but also perhaps the most underrated quarterback in the N.F.L.

It’s a gross generalization, but Luck plays in a vertical offense while Griffin plays in a horizontal one. Griffin ranks first in completion percentage while Luck ranks 32nd, but that has as much to do with the throws they’re asked to make as each quarterback’s accuracy. Luck's average pass attempt has traveled 10.2 yards past the line of scrimmage, the longest average pass distance in the league (this was before “Monday Night Football”; Jay Cutler was second at 9.9 entering the game). Griffin averages 7.9 yards downfield per pass attempt, slightly below the league average of 8.2.

And Luck’s long average pass distance isn’t simply a product of throwing lots of incomplete passes down the field. His average pass distance on completions is 8.6 yards past the line of scrimmage, also highest in the N.F.L. (Cutler was fourth at 8.3 entering Monday night). Griffin’s completions come an average of 5.8 yards from the line of scrimmage, well below the league average of 6.5.

 

[Lanky Livingston]

So, we're supposed to punish him for the offense he runs? West Coast Offense is built on shorter patterns & WR-YACs. Is it smarter to force things downfield & throw 20 interceptions, or take what the defense is giving you and win 7 games in a row?

 

[McD5]

No disagreement here. We have a great running game, and shorter passes.

Indy's running game is far below average, and Luck is responsible for carrying his team with longer passes.

 

[Goaldeje]

Either turnovers hurt or they don't. I am beginning to think that the fact that Luck has four times as many INTs as Griff is being purposefully overlooked by many in the media. Luck is an excellent QB who feasted on one of the easiest schedules in the league. Griff submitted a year for the ages, a year QBs DREAM about, as a ROOKIE.

There is no comparison.

 

[GSF]

I was wondering the same thing during the game, but now watching the replay and having some time to reflect here's what I think about that:

1. Clearly the cowboys did not want to get burned with the big play like they did on Thanksgiving. They played deep safeties all game, and never really loaded up the box.

2. The Redskins coaches game-planned to run the ball heavy. They wanted to hold the ball as much as possible, wearing down Dallas' defense, and making romo desparate to make a play when he finally did get on the field. When the Skins recognized that the Cowboys were not going to move up to stop the run, they were more happy to just kept pounding the run. The fact the RG3 was a little off with his throws early just re-enforced this.

The Redskins staff straight up out coached the Cowboys staff in this game on both sides of the ball. This game reminded me of the some of the old Gibbs I games in a lot of ways. The Redskins were more prepared, had a better game plan, and just wanted it more.

 

[GSF]

Either turnovers hurt or they don't. I am beginning to think that the fact that Luck has four times as many INTs as Griff is being purposefully overlooked by many in the media. Luck is an excellent QB who feasted on one of the easiest schedules in the league. Griff submitted a year for the ages, a year QBs DREAM about, as a ROOKIE.

There is no comparison.

Both RG3 and Russell Wilson had better seasons and are more deserving of ROY than Luck imo.