Cowboys at Redskins: Once You Learn To Quit, It Becomes A Habit

Dallas Cowboys (9-5) vs. Washington Redskins (4-10)
8:20 p.m. FedEx Field
There are things that Redskins fans have to face about last Monday’s game. The Redskins, as a whole, gave up. I’m not saying every player quit on the team. But the majority did. The entire secondary quit. The receiving corps quit. Most of the offensive and defensive lines quit. Most of the coaching staff quit. It’s embarrassing. That’s all there really is to say.

Now is it the most embarrassing loss this season for an NFL team like Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden would have you believe. No. I think the Tennessee loss to New England will take the distinction for 2009. It wasn’t even the most embarrassing loss of the year for the Redskins. I’d argue that the losses to Detroit and Kansas City were much worse, since the they were still meaningful games at the time. But make no mistake about it, that game was brutal. At home, against a division rival, on national tv…yikes. I’m actually proud to say I watched the entire game. When the team eventually bounces back, the fans who forced themselves to sit through that mess can say they were there when things hit rock bottom. The team may have quit, but I didn’t.

Most of the attention has been focused on the fake field goal at the end of the first half. The more I watched that play, and the more I thought about it, it was actually a decent call that was executed horrendously. I’m not really here to defend the execution, but more so to defend the decision. It was 24-0. A field goal, if Graham Gano converts, makes it 24-3. Ok, big deal. “Experts” have argued that the Redskins needed some kind of momentum going into the half. Would a field goal to make the deficit 21 really have made any difference? I highly doubt it. Conversely, if the Redskins try the fake, get a touchdown, and know they have the ball first in the 2nd half, a successful TD would have actually changed some of the momentum. That’s why the play was called in the first place.

The design of the play was pretty good as well. Watch the whole play. The Redskins weren’t trying to throw the ball to the left side of the field where there were six Giants players. The play was designed to go to Todd Yoder. Yoder was the center on the play, and he was supposed to slip to the right side of the field unguarded after the snap and a chip block. The majority of the team on the left side, and Malcolm Kelly going across the field to the left side, was supposed to distract the Giants defense. And it worked! The only Giant covering Yoder on the play was a backup linebacker. Unfortunately, neither Yoder or Kelly chipped their defender. So instead of one Giant having a free rush at Hunter Smith, three Giants had a clean shot. If Yoder and Kelly chip their men, then Smith can roll right, has Yoder one-on-one with a linebacker, and an empty field to lob the ball in. Since Smith had no time, he panicked and lobbed the ball to the left side. He knew he’d have two receivers near the endzone, but of course, half the Giants defense was already there as well. Again, it obviously wasn’t executed correctly. But take another look at the design of the play before you start saying how massively retarded it was. Also remember that this team has executed two other fake kicks this season for touchdowns. The one against Denver basically won the Redskins the game. Neither one of the successful plays got close to the attention that the failure did. The only thing that puzzles me is that the Redskins chose to run the play after they showed it to New York, and the Giants called a timeout. According to postgame comments, it seemed most of the players wanted to run it anyway. So Jim Zorn let them. That’s not something I would agree to…I may have sent my offense on the field if I wanted the touchdown instead of the field goal. Still, I see what Zorn was trying to do.

That play was really the least of my concerns. Seeing Laron Landry, Carlos Rogers, DeAngelo Hall, Kareem Moore and Reed Doughty quit as a unit was distressing. Only Fred Smoot was making any sort of effort out there. It’s just embarrassing. The whole Albert Haynesworth fiasco after the game and then later this week is also tough to stomach. However, what Haynesworth said after the game what I’ve been saying since Week 1. The defensive scheme is terrible. Greg Blache is one of the real problems on this team. Eli Manning throws poorly every time an opponent breathes on him. So why did the Redskins blitz Manning on less that 10% of the passing plays? It makes no sense. I said as much after the Redskins loss Week 1 to…Eli Manning and the Giants! The same strategy failed the Redskins that week as well. Why in the world would Blache try the same thing again? Instead of bashing Haynesworth as a malcontent, maybe the media should start analyzing the Redskins blitz schemes. It’s not hard. There aren’t many blitzes to analyze. It wouldn’t take that long. As talented as the Redskins are defensively, there is no reason that they shouldn’t be blitzing near the league average of around 33%. As was the case last season, the Redskins are dead last in attempted blitzes. They blitz less than 20% of the time. Not only is it bad strategy, it’s tough to watch. I’m sick of watching the Redskins hold opponents to 2-3 yards on 1st and 2nd down, then give up 3rd and 7’s or 3rd and 8’s again and again. Haynesworth, in his own convoluted way, is absolutely right. Thank God I only have to watch two more games of a Blache-coached defense.

On to Dallas, who have once again become the media’s darlings after winning a December football game. Against the previously undefeated Saints no less. Meh. It was a good win, don’t get me wrong. But are the overall problems in Dallas washed away? Not even close. The Cowboys are still 1-2 in December, and have still yet to win a January game with Tony Romo or Wade Phillips in charge. Heck, it’s been more than a decade since they won one. A win over a Saints team that certainly did not play very well, doesn’t change that. I said at the beginning of the month that Dallas was likely to go 2-3 in their final five games, and I still stand by that. If I’m any one of the other five teams in the playoffs, Dallas is the team I want to play (unless I’m Minnesota…then I’d rather see Green Bay). The overwhelming pressure to win a playoff game, along with the incompetence of the head coach and quarterback, are pretty much going to lock the Cowboys into a one-and-done situation. If they even make the playoffs. It’s likely they will, but they are far from clinching a spot.

So that’s how both of these teams come in to the 100th meeting of this rivalry. This game will not be decided by anything Dallas does. I don’t care that they had two extra days to prepare for it (thanks NFL). It all depends on which Redskins team shows up. If it’s the one we saw from November to Mid-December, the Redskins win this game. I’m going on record right here. If this game is close, the Redskins will win it. However, if the team really has quit, and the Giants game was more of a sign of things to come instead of a blip on the radar screen, then this game is going to get as ugly as it did on Monday. It would be really nice to see the team put forth any sort of effort and make the Cowboys fans’ lives a little more painful.