Our League Loves Us

Our League loves us! It is the only rational explanation why it continually serves up such entertaining product! And for free.

Of course, the beat on this Blog is the sorry NFC East. So I will leave the Colts/Steelers aside. No Eagles’ fan watching the Panthers was surprised. To be candid, we totally have seen a Fox team play a sharp road game totally within themselves- two years ago in Philadelphia. I am wholly sold on John Fox as an NFL coach. That franchise was a bigger on field disaster then, say, the Jets. In 2001, they were a sporting 1-15. In 2002, Fox took over. They were in the Super Bowl in 2003.

The Bears also played defense more then a little soft yesterday, right? Almost Manning soft. Almost- dare I say it?- Harrison soft. One might think Dungy was coaching the defense- had he not been messing up yet another play-off game. Even a mediocre defense won’t allow a team to come in their building- and be a missed extra point away from hanging thirty on you! Carolina’s offense simply outhit & outhustled them. Smith, who I just love, wrestled that pass away on the goal line. (By the way, it took Smith three full seasons to be a good NFL player, and five before he was a real good one- so maybe we ought not be killing Reggie Brown yet?) Proehl, who has no tangible NFL skills left except “want to” and “catch it”, was obviously "trying" harder than the people "trying" to cover him.

But you can’t kill the Bears too much. The offense did darn well- up against it. Again, the Panthers have gone on the road and won big games before with this same sort of smart, competent offensive performance. I’d be real nervous if I was Seattle.

Particularly since the Seahawks were kind of a mess Saturday. They were not sloppy exactly- but the definitely weren’t crisp and certainly weren't emotional- which is what you would expect from a good team with a bye at home.

Fortunately for Seattle, they drew the Redskins. The Redskins are a pretty okay team. To their credit, for once they are playing probably at the limit of their potential. Still, the team is probably a .500 group on paper- somewhere in the great middling of NFL teams- capable of winning ten only in a year where a lot more goes right then wrong.

Here was a game probably for the taking- if just on turnover margin alone. Get “+3” and NFL teams win 85% of the time. Gregg Williams has done an outstanding job this year- the first guy to actually impose a sense of urgency and professionalism on a group that for years had been soft in any big spots.

But the Redskins can’t get further than this sort of mediocre product as long as this 1980's style approach colors their offense and Brunell is the quarterback. Brunell is a pretty shot property for about a month now. I think you can really state categorically Brunell is incapable of a dozen NFL starts anymore. He still can get the ball downfield- but his arm is not a plus on those routes- and so don’t ask for too many and don’t ask for it thrown on a rope. Since Brunell's "injury", teams don't fear him hurting him outside a 25-yard or so bubble from where he stands.

The second is this approach. The have the seventh best rushing attack in football- and still average a little more than two offensive TDs a game. Even when they play well on offense, execute to a "T" everything Gibbs expects- they can't possible hope to score three touchdowns consistently. It is hard to win when even if you everything right, 14-17 points is your expectation against a good defensive team.

Nobody good runs more then they pass anymore. So either Gibbs is a super-genius, or he's wrong. Rushing the football, in and of itself, categorically does not equal point production in this league. It moves the clock when you’re ahead- and helps (some) in the red zone- but that is it. Second, unless you can use your superior rushing attack to generate big plays in the passing game- you are better off moving rushing snaps to the passing column- to give yourself more chances to generate the sort of 20+ yard plays that do flip field position and generate scores in this league.

Brunell is not incompetent. But he isn't a scary quarterback either. And he catagorically is not a big play producer per snap- so he needs more snaps. So the Redskins are stuck with a nice running back on a team that cannot score 23 in a play-off game ever.