5 ups/5 downs

[turtle28]

5 ups

1. Swearinger - His 2 ints were huge. Too bad the Offense couldn’t turn them into TDs.

2. Matt Ioannidis - He continues to be our best interior pass rusher and is a good run defender as well. He’s the DL who’s benefited the most off of Tomsula’s hiring.

3. Mason Foster - Mason is so Kent in our defense with sing along calling, communications and his run defense and recognition are excellent. 11 tackles today, one in which he came from his right ILB spot took a great angle and out ran both Zach Brown and the running back to the spot and got a tackle for loss I believe.

4. Montae Nicholson - I realize he didn’t have a great game but he had a nice leaping pass break up - which was nearly an int - and on the next play he took a great angle across the formation to tackle Mack after just a few yards. If he doesn’t make that tackle, Mack has a lot of green grass infront of him.

Both he, Swearinger and Foster, Brown & JHC did a good job confusing the talented Colts TEs after the 1st quarter too.

5 downs 

1. Passing game. Nothing looked good. Alex had way too many pass attempts -46 - because the running game was ineffective. He wasn’t  in rhythm at all, he missed a few open WRs, the OL didn’t protect him and the WRs dropped 3 catchable balls that I counted.

2. The running game  was atrocious and non-existent. It looked like the previous 3 years - sans a few games each year - and nothing seemed to work. The OL got manhand  by Hunt & Sheard on the edge and not giving it to AS a few times on 3rd & short and in the red zone made no sense other than it was Gruden being Gruden.

3. Our run defense was bad to start the game. It got better in the second half but I was extremely disappointed how our front 7 was manhandled on the first drive of the game.

4. Our WRs struggled to get open, our coach was calling plays seemed designed for man to man while the Colts were in a two-deep zone most of the game. As @HTTRG3Dynasty said in the Game Day thread, they needed to run more crossers on routes where they were moving through the zone but it seemed every time we caught a ball there was a defender right there to tackle the receiver. We’ve talked about the WRs disappointments in its own thread.

5. Our OL was atrocious at everything, even Trent seemed to have a down game and then he got hurt, hopefully not too seriously. Lauvao was by far the worst but none of them were as good as they usually are. 

[MKnight82]

Looks like 4 ups 5 downs

[turtle28]

34 minutes ago, MKnight82 said:

Looks like 4 ups 5 downs

Hell, I was reaching for 4. Outside of Swearinger & Ioannidis it was hard to even think of 2 more. I guess CT & Reed were good, but Reeds fumble hurt and neither got much yac and weren’t as great as they usually are.

[Slappy Mc]

24 minutes ago, turtle28 said:

Hell, I was reaching for 4. Outside of Swearinger & Ioannidis it was hard to even think of 2 more. I guess CT & Reed were good, but Reeds fumble hurt and neither got much yac and weren’t as great as they usually are.

I was curious at how you could stretch the “ups” into 5...

Thompson’s run around that lost yards before half made a make-able field goal, still make-able, but more difficult. Had he accepted the 4 yards gained it would have been a 43 yarder instead of a 49.

Reeds fumble broke any will we had left. Even though it was check down after check down. We had no chance after his fumble. 

Unfortunately this is one of those games that late in the season will come back to haunt us “if” we can manage to put ourselves in position to make the post season.

Indy was completely beatable and we dropped the ball. Not only was the ball dropped, it seemed like no one had a sense of urgency about the lack of effort and quality of play out there. I want to see fire. I want players challenging each other to be better. I want “star” players benched when they mess up. Demand more.

[MKnight82]

9 minutes ago, Slappy Mc said:

Indy was completely beatable and we dropped the ball. Not only was the ball dropped, it seemed like no one had a sense of urgency about the lack of effort and quality of play out there. I want to see fire.

Losing to a beatable team after a dominant win is Redskins football 101.  

[Woz]

2 hours ago, Slappy Mc said:

I was curious at how you could stretch the “ups” into 5...

Wasn't just you.

[e16bball]

14 hours ago, MKnight82 said:

Losing to a beatable team after a dominant win is Redskins football 101.  

Absolutely true. 

The team bought into their own press clippings and they got whipped by an inferior team that wanted it more than them. 

While I defend Gruden in lots of ways, allowing that to happen is on him and the staff. And the player leadership. They better be on these guys’ ***** like glue all week reminding them that they have proved nothing and have earned nothing and will get nothing other than what they take from their opposition. 

When you think about the gameplan, you also see that inexplicable overconfidence. They were running stuff to try to get the WRs involved in a downfield, outside the numbers way. Why? That’s not the offense and it’s not what we do well. It’s what Josh Doctson does well, but the idea that we were running stuff specifically with an eye towards just getting him untracked is ridiculous. And it’s hubris. We’re not nearly good enough at this point to be running stuff that isn’t our best just to “try to get someone involved.”

We took the Colts lightly, but hopefully it’s the reality check we needed.

[Slateman]

Ups

1. The Redskins admitted they can't sell out the stadium.

2. Sweringer didn't drop the ball.

3. Reed didn't get hurt

4. Chris Thompson got me some nice fantasy points

 

Downs

1. Smith is exactly who we thought he was. This team has no offense. You put eight in the box and dare Smith and his wideouts to beat you. They can't.

2. The offensive line sucks. I'm pretty tired of hearing it being blamed on Lauvao. It's pretty obvious that Trent Williams is a shell of his former self and Brandon Scherff isn't going to be an All Pro, HOF guard.

3. Edge rushers are MIA. Guess Kerrigan decided to cash out and Preston Smith isn't worth a damn. All that cap money they saved by getting Smith and they didn't use it on something they needed.

4. Richardson doesn't get open. He is not a true deep threat at this point in his career. He didn't run these routes in Seattle.

5. Doctson doesn't get open and doesn't catch the ball.

6. DeSean Jackson has 9 catches for 275 yards. But hey, we saved money ....

7. The defensive line can't stop the run. The Colts don't have an overpowering offensive line, nor dynamic running backs. Honestly, David Johnson ran well the first couple series against the Redskins.

8. Secondary can't cover receivers. Hilton got open all day.

9. Still can't cover tight ends.

[turtle28]

I agree with a lot of what slateman said, but not sure what game he watched on some of it. We struggled to cover the TEs in the beginning of the game and got run on in the first quarter, but after that both were shut down except for a few completions, their two good TEs only combined for 5 completions all game.

No one can cover Hilton, he’s the only main issue the defense had and he creates the same issues for ever corner in the entire NFL. Outside of him, Grant and Rogers only combined for 5 catches. Last week Grant had 8.

Richardson got open enough, for the 2nd straight week he was our most productive wr, so I’m not sure he’s the problem Slateman is making him out to be. 

The Colts ran a zone most of the day with two high safeties, so with that and with 7 usually dropping into coverage -because we couldn’t run the ball - most of the areas were covered. I can only think of one play where Alex missed a wide open wr and that was when he over threw Crowder for what should’ve been a TD. Doctson dropped two catchable balls, one should’ve been a TD and Richardson dropped one.

Doctson has been the biggest issue with our passing offense through two weeks - last week I gave him a pass besides the 1 drop (sense a theme?) - two drops this week don’t help his QBs confidence in him to make tough catches for him when he needs them.

The OL clearly had a bad game, will it continue? It’s anyones guess. They’re probably not as good as they were at run blocking in week 1 and probably not as bad as they were in week 2. Most likely, it’s our running game is somewhere in the middle.

I don’t think we’re a team that’s going to rush for 182 yards a game like we did in week 1.

In week 2, we didn’t extend drives, run enough RPO or zone read and Gruden abandoned the run rather early. I don’t think we’ll see too many games in the future where CT will only rush for just 1 yard. I don’t see too many games where the running backs only rush for 21 yards between AD and CT and only a 2.1 avg per carry.