Game 9: Redskins (2-6) vs. Broncos (6-2)

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Out of the box: The 2009 walk of shame continues as the Redskins host the Denver Broncos, 1pm ET on CBS, they way I figure it Washington has a chance to win this game just based on the law of large numbers.

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Quick jump to

The Story So Far :: Curly R aside :: Oppo Research :: Trainer's Table Gameplan :: My Take in 60 Words or Less :: Preview Generalia

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The Story So Far: The march to irrelevance continues into its ninth game, now with more sideline fights. I saw the same play and replay as everyone else (op. cit.) and what I saw last week against the Falcons after safety LaRon Landry's late hit on quarterback Matt Ryan was two things: cornerback DeAngelo Hall not getting out of there in an expeditious fashion and a lack of Redskins teammates rushing in to bail him out. I would counsel though that the lack of teammates coming to break things up is not so much a comment on how the players feel about DeAngelo, rather it is a comment on how unmotivated the team is to do anything, they are as depressed as their fan base. DeAngelo came in and stirred things up when he did not have too (op. cit.) and then whined about it and the Falcons head coach took a chance to take some bitterness out, both kind of punk moves. Nice move by defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth at the end of the scrum, he came right in and moved the whole pile.

And how does a game like last week's happen? One team, with a week off plays another that was on a short week and gets creamed in the first half, five sacks of quarterback Jason Campbell and it took an epic halftime screaming match by offensive line coach Joe Bugel and head coach Jim Zorn to get them to play like men. All this is so last week, about the last game so why bring it up this week? Because the sideline scrum and the getting pushed around are not signs the team is quitting, but rather signs the team lacks discipline and basic fundamentals. The talent issue is not even really an issue at this point.

And while it seems like meteor sized pieces of the season keep raining down all around Washington, hints are beginning to materialize there may be new management at the end of the season (op. cit.), meaning shadow general manager Vinny Cerrato. And why the hell not, everything over the past two seasons, from Jim Zorn to drafting all receivers last year to the fresh set of eyes this season to handing the playcalling duties to a total stranger, is all traced back to Vinny. As someone once said on HBO's great The Sopranos, someone's gotta go.

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Curly R aside: As the Redskins have continued to spiral downward and inspire nothing but ennui in their fanbase I have seen anecdotally more and more pleas for someone to please take my tickets, or stories of people refusing free tickets or people simply not using their tickets and staying home to watch a real football game on TV. Well one local business is doing its best to turn Redskins tickets back into hard currency, American Service Center is running a promotion whereby if you turn in your unused Redskins tickets, and the team is not called by name in the commercials, ASC will credit you face value of the ticket off the price of a new Mercedes and donate the tickets to Boys and Girls Clubs.

Ouch.

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Oppo Research: This year's Broncos bear at least a passing resemblance to last year's Redskins, a brash and inexperienced head coach coming in to replace a legendary face of the franchise and then getting out of the gate on a hot streak. Will the parallels continue? After coming out of the gate six and oh, Denver has lost two straight, with quarterback Kyle Orton throwing three interceptions against the Steelers last week. The league may be catching up with Josh McDaniels.

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Trainer's Table: Tailback Clinton Portis suffered a painful looking concussion, taking two Falcons helmets right on the hat and knocking him out of that game, in his place tailbacks Ladell Betts, and to a lesser extent Rock Cartwright, did a great job carrying the load, Ladell will be the go to guy this week as Clinton will be out. I wonder if Ladell has a great game behind this same shitty offensive line if we will have ourselves a backfield controversy.

The list of injuries from the Atlanta game goes on, safety Chris Horton suffered a ligament tear in his big toe and is likely to miss the rest of the season. Former 400 pound man guard-tackle Mike Williams also suffered a ligament tear, in his ankle, no word on how long he will be out.

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Gameplan: This game will be all about pass rush, with both the Redskins and the Broncos strong on the defensive line and susceptible to sacks along the offensive line. Down the field the Broncos have two excellent receivers in Eddie Royal and Brandon Marshall which will test Washington's defensive secondary. Somehow the Redskins are currently leading the league in passing defense, I have no idea how that stat is true.

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My Take in 60 Words or Less: Everything sucks. Can't wait to see the demonstrations of fan unrest in the stands.

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Washington Post interactive gameday,


Enjoy the game, at this point I do not even know if there is anyone out there to hear my signal, all appears to be madness, there will be more pain, then stillness.


This is a gameday open thread.



NFL helmet logos from here.

For Those Unclear on the Concept

Doesn't take a rocket scientist

Here is one way I know things are not going well for the Redskins in 2009, forget the record, the turmoil, the fresh set of eyes, the bus that keeps rolling over head coach Jim Zorn again and again and again and the 14.1 points per game offensive average.

When I read through eight weeks, there are only four teams with fewer rushing attempts than the Redskins in 2009, I know things are bad. The Redskins are a running team, it is in their DNA.

When I read through eight weeks, there are only four teams with fewer rushing yards than the Redskins in 2009, I know there is a problem. The Redskins are a running team, have been for decades.

When I read through eight weeks there is only one team with fewer rushing touchdowns than the Redskins, I know we are off track. The Redskins are a running team, line em up and knock em over.

With Clinton Portis still sidelined from last week's concussion suffered against the Falcons, perhaps we will see a little of the Ladell Betts that ran for more than eleven hundred yards on only nine starts in 2006, including a five straight games of one hundred yards or better in November and December.

It is not all on Clinton, it is a terrific example of the perfect shitstorm engulfing the Redskins in 2009: poor blocking up front, deteriorating feature back and playcalling that does not value the run.



Clinton Portis: Getty Images from here.

250,000 Visits

Keeping the spark alive

At 8:29 am ET today, The Curly R welcomed its quarter millionth visitor, a Mac user in Oklahoma dialing in on Cox cable internet, there was no referring uniform resource locator, which usually means our honored guest dialed up the site directly or from a bookmark. In the world of website traffic analysis, lack of referring URL is good, it means the visitor came directly to you and not from another link. Which is pretty much what you want when you have created a site you want people to visit.

Curly R achieved this traffic milestone in 1194 days. We welcomed our one hundred thousandth visitor in 739 days, back in August 2008 just after our second anniversary. Curly R secured one point five times that traffic total in the next 455 days, or two thirds the time. Our curve is still heading upward.

Thanks to everyone for stopping by.


Previous traffic milestones: 100,000 visits



250,000 from here.

Department of Bad News: Chris Samuels

Done. Probably for good.

Redskins fans got some expected bad news back on Halloween, long time left tackle Chris Samuels was placed on injured reserve, the neck stinger he took in game five of this season back on 11 October against the Panthers caused Chris some extended numbness, in short order we learned that Chris had been diagnosed with spinal stenosis, a condition characterized by the narrowing of the spine in the neck, thereby making it more vulnerable to injury.

In the nearly three weeks since that game Chris has consulted with specialists and weighed his options, and there was really no question, with the risk of paralysis looming and a solid NFL career under his belt, Chris decided to shut it down, likely calling it a career.

It was in part due to the stenosis that Chris wore the big neck brace rising from his shoulder pads all this time. This condition was diagnosed while Chris was still in high school and was manageable, Chris eventually became an All-American and Outland Trophy winner at the University of Alabama before becoming the number three overall selection to the Redskins in the 2000 NFL draft, the Redskins having given up two first round picks in that draft, their own and the one acquired from Carolina in the 1998 trade of defensive end Sean Gilbert to the Panthers (thank you Sean).

Chris became the Redskins starting left tackle immediately, replacing Tre' Johnson and has been the team's anchor at the second most important position on the field for a decade. In ten seasons Chris started 146 of a possible 165 games, including playoffs and those he will not be eligible to start this season.

Chris was amazingly durable during his career, at six feet five and better than 310 pounds he continually tangled with the opponents' best pass rushers. He was selected to six Pro Bowls in his ten seasons, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006 when the team was 5-11 but propelled backup tailback Ladell Betts to 1100 yards on nine starts, 2007 when Chris and Pro Bowl teammates tight end Chris Cooley and long snapper Ethan Albright all wore jersey number 21 in honor of fallen teammate safety Sean Taylor and last season in 2008 when he ended the season on injured reserve with a torn triceps.

Redskins success in the 2009 season was to be largely premised on aging veterans Chris Samuels and right guard Randy Thomas staying healthy, and now both are on injured reserve. Right now Redskins fans are stuck in the void loop of this season, forced to watch it play out slowly and painfully.

We will not fully realize what it means for this team to be without Chris Samuels ever again until the offseason when as expected he announces his retirement and then the team faces a serious rebuilding.

Thank you Chris, you were a hell of a left tackle and did your part to keep quarterback jerseys clean all these years, and Redskins fans will never forget it.


Curly R's Department of Bad News previous announcements on Chris Samuels: 2008



Chris Samuels: AP photo from here.

Jason Campbell's Quarterback Slide

Is like a seventh grader asking a hot girl to dance

Danny Rouhier keeps us engaged with his week nine video in which he learns Chinese, the better to communicate with his Redskins Stadium overlords and excerpts game commentary from last week's debacle against the Falcons.

Danny is one of the best things Redskins fans have going for them right now.



YouTube from here.

The Dread Bye Week Post

Battle stations

While not exactly coinciding with the Sunday of the bye week when Curly R generally publishes the Dread Bye Week posts, I thought it important to put up a few notes on the state of the team at the middle point of the season.

And it is not hot. In fact it is a complete reversal of fortune from last year.

The Redskins are 2-6 and have beaten two teams, the Rams and Buccaneers, teams with two wins between them and Washington's margin of victory over the two teams was a combined five points. An offensive consultant was brought in as another set of eyes which led to head coach Jim Zorn being stripped of playcalling duties, which were handed to Sherman Lewis, the offensive consultant that had been with the team less than three weeks at the time of his first game.

Most decisions have been bungled, case in point the playcalling. When the decision was made to hand playcalling duties to Sherman Lewis, the original thought was plays would come from Sherman Lewis to Jim Zorn to the quarterback.

And while I thought that was a bad idea at first I have changed my opinion. One day later the team announced that the playcalls would come from Sherman Lewis to offensive coordinator Sherman Smith then out to the quarterback, with the head coach listening in. To make things more interesting, Sherman Smith gets to call the run plays, that's two playcallers and neither is named Jim Zorn.

Turns out I think this revised process is a mistake, coach Zorn has been the playcaller, leaving the management of the offense as a whole to Sherman Smith, who has never called plays. Now Sherman Smith is out of his element, relaying plays to the quarterback and calling his own running plays when Sherman Lewis says it's ok to run the ball. Sherman Smith may be a good running game playcaller, he has simply never done it before and was suddenly doing it seven games into the season. This is not the sign of solid NFL strategy and decision making.

Meanwhile coach Zorn is supposed to be managing the offense as a whole now, something he has never really done in a season and half with the team. Like Sherman Smith and the play relay, coach Zorn may be a good motivator and in game strategist, it is simply not something he has had to do as part of a game.

Put in a new playcaller and flip the two highest ranked offensive coaches in gameday duties and two games into the new process the team is scoring 17.0 points per game, 3.8 more than the 13.2 per game average before the switch. So I have no idea what that means, it seems to tell me though that the playcalling was not the problem in Washington.

If there is a problem with Jim Zorn it is not the playcalling, it is a lack of urgency in practice, a softness that translates to getting pushed around on Sundays, this Redskins team is a bunch of cagey veterans and young guys looking for inspiration and they cannot even tell they are soft.


Quarterback Jason Campbell is getting the shit beat out of him, eleven sacks in the last two games as the offensive line deteriorates into a shivering pile of jelly. Twice in last week's game eight against the Falcons Jason had to leave the game injured, both times he managed somehow to return.

And yet somehow Jason is having a career season, if you believe the passer rating system is an accurate measure of a quarterback's performance.

Jason's career rating, parts of four seasons, is 81.4. His rating for the 2009 season is 86.5. His passer rating has risen every season. Within this season his rating has been above 90 four times and above 100 once.

This with so little help from his receivers and his offensive line. Devin Thomas and Malcolm Kelly are not making a difference, Antwaan Randle El and Santana Moss look perfectly average and Jason's favorite target, tight end Chris Cooley, is out at least another three weeks, possibly more. Chris' replacement, second year tight end Fred Davis, let a catchable ball bounce off his hands and be intercepted, that pass as returned for a touchdown.

If the passer rating system matters then it is pretty obvious to me at this point that Jason Campbell is not the problem with this team.


The front office continues to weather a storm that began after game two, a weak win against the Rams. Inactive list dweller rookie linebacker Robert Henson tweeted after the game that fans could kiss his ass and most make less money than he does. It made the front page of the nation's capital newspaper and to make matters worse, other players hopped on top, saying the fans needed to get behind the team and the booing was a quote shame unquote (op. cit.).

Some of us tried to remind the team that winning cures all ills and the team seemed not to be listening as the Redskins lost five of the next six, along the way we saw Jim Zorn and Sonny Jurgenson get in a fight, a fan try and sell his allegiance on eBay, after three games and a 2-1 record the way 2009 would play out would become obvious to some of us: it was basically over, that we were going to pile on the coaches and players for another couple of weeks and then the spotlight would turn where it has not been on a national scale for a decade, on owner Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato.

Which is exactly what happened. Former players, TV pundits, football cognoscenti and commenters from across the spectrum turned their open attention to to the open secret the national media has largely ignored for a decade and that is the Redskins are a very poorly run team. Here is just one example featuring Bill Cowher, Shannon Sharpe, Ron Jaworski, Mike Ditka, Keyshawn Johnson and Tom Jackson all laying into how the team is run. When you have Keyshawn looking down on you, you know you are in the bottom of the barrel.

The team's reaction? Take it and lump it? Thank the fans for their loyalty and ask for another? Accept even the possibility of a notion that they are not doing it right?

Nope, their reaction was to tighten down. Displays of fan dissatisfaction and outrage were suppressed, the shadow general manager threw the coach under the bus with comments of handing him a playoff roster, this right after a vote of confidence in the coach that was more than a week after anonymous senior players asked for it in the media.

The owner, clinging to a horseshit policy of not commenting during the season, when the stage is supposably only for the players and shadow general managers, sent out his attack dog lawyer as a proxy to blame the media and take on every story with fantastic plausibilities about how sorry if you got kicked out for wearing a Snyder Sux t-shirt or if you got tricked into a club seat contract and then almost got sued, mistakes were made.


And we have eight straight weeks of this left.


The 2009 season so far has been nothing but a complete trainwreck.




Vinny Cerrato: Getty Images from here.

A Picture of Neighbor Bill Looking at a Picture of Him Looking at a Picture of Him Looking at the Redskins-Eagles Game

Back when we watched the Redskins

The Redskins futility has managed to depress even me, I watched the Falcons game and cached all the post game links, I have simply not had the energy to write it up, I can barely get out of bed.

I finally finished the Eagles gamewrap btw, done and linked up and stuff. So I've got that going for me.



Photo by me.

Game 8: Redskins (2-5) at Falcons (4-3)

at

Out of the box: A week off for a team that needed it, sadly though the problems left behind last week did not go away as the Redskins travel to Atlanta for a game against a playoff contender. Finger crossing is now a sanctioned fan behavior.

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Quick jump to

The Story So Far :: Curly R aside :: Oppo Research :: Trainer's Table Gameplan :: My Take in 60 Words or Less :: Preview Generalia

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The Story So Far: The play of the Redskins has long ceased to be the main story of the 2009 season with the focus placed squarely on the management of the franchise, it has been an open secret for a decade that the Redskins were not helmed by a bunch of guys with deep and wide football knowledge and rather by a bunch of guys that do not know how to manage a team, and others afraid to tell those guys the truth.

Now that the Redskins are cratering out of the bye with a 2-5 record and the hardest stretch of football still to come, it seems like the floodgates are open and the national football attention has turned to owner Dan Snyder and shadow general manager Vinny Cerrato, and it is not pretty. In one piece alone the Washington Post's Len Shapiro rounded up remarks critical not just of how the team has played but mainly of how the team is run, by the likes of Bill Cowher, Shannon Sharpe, Ron Jaworski, Mike Ditka, Keyshawn Johnson and Tom Jackson.

Last week it was the New Yorker, this week it is Rolling Stone, when you have these types of publications piling on the Redskins and Dan Snyder then you know it's bad.

Throw in remarks early in the second half of the bye week by Jim Zorn's last employer, former Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren about how bothered he was by team management's treatment of coach Zorn and maybe you can cross Mike and Bill Cowher off the list of prospective head coaches after Jim Zorn is inevitably fired in January.

In other not football news, the team appears to have altered, without warning, the stadium policy on signs made and brought in by fans. Sign making is a hallowed tradition in football, from the D-fence to the Next On SportsCenter, and signs have been permitted in Redskins Stadium and its predecessor RFK Stadium for decades. No longer, if you bring one in now, even one that purports to send well wishes to your husband stationed in Afghanistan, you will not be permitted in with it, and if you do get in with it you are likely not to see the security guard rushing up behind you to knock it out of your hands. This policy was obviously altered to ensure there was as little fan dissent displayed as possible and the team's new chief operating officer David Donovan even had the courtesy to gin up a wholly bullshit excuse that pointy signs were a danger of head poking. You cannot make this stuff up.

You should be embarrassed you embarrassment of a football team owner and by the way nice touch getting in front of the microphones and cameras at a charitable event held way away from Redskins Park or Redskins Stadium and attended by only a few local media members where you could be fairly certain you would not be put on the spot too seriously. Nice accountability.

It is all ceasing to matter though. Redskins fans have lost faith that their team can ever be good under this owner. At this rate team management will not need to put up with those fuckers in the stands much longer.

In football news, second year tight end Fred Davis canceled his bye week trip to southern California to stay in the Washington area and work with tight ends coach Scott Wachenheim on blocking, it was great new to hear how conscientious Fred is and how seriously he is taking his move to primary tight end in Chris Cooley's absence. It is not exactly heartening to hear that coach Wachenheim and Fred went back to quote Pop Warner unquote basically to go through all the fundamentals of blocking. So in other news last year the Redskins used a second round draft pick on a player in a position where they had no need and where blocking large men is a big part of the job, on a guy that did not have strong blocking fundamentals. It would be hard to be a worse blocking tight end than Chris Cooley, it would appear Fred has managed that feat simply be getting out of bed.

And thank god Antwaan Randle El is finally off punt return duty, the guy fair catches everything except the ones he should and the ones he drops, saying quote the situation has changed, head coach Jim Zorn announced Monday that DeAngelo Hall will take his place as primary (op. cit.), with Santana Moss in there as well though the team wisely does not want to risk injuring Santana on punt returns. DeAngelo has not returned punts with any regularity since college but for cripes sake he cannot be worse than Antwaan.

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Curly R aside: From the department of Bus Undertossing we have the best story of the week, back on 14 October anonymous senior players with the Redskins asked through the media for team management to issue an endorsement of head coach Jim Zorn, the better to what was becoming and still is a regular distraction to the players, basically it was the roster asking for the team to shot or get off the pot, either say you are going to keep him or get rid of him so we can move on and focus on playing football.

The team did not and then magically nine days later shadow general manager Vinny Cerrato held an impromptu press availability where he weakly endorsed coach Zorn for the rest of the season, saying coach Zorn would be the head coach of the Redskins for the rest of the season, and here is the best part, quote and hopefully into the future unquote. Setting aside the disingenuity of these comments given all that has happened with the other set of eyes, the stripping of the playcalling, the cornering and flashing of the contract terms, now we are to believe Dan Snyder is going to hold fire on canning Jim Zorn until January.

That is not the story though, everything above is old news, the story this week, heading into the bye week, was Vinny Cerrato's interview with reporters from Tuesday 27 October wherein he affirmed his belief that team management handed Jim Zorn a playoff capable roster.

Clearly at 2-5 the Redskins will not make the playoffs without some sort of divine football intervention and as such submitting these comments for public scrutiny is therefore by definition team management stating openly that the head coach has failed to hold up his end of the bargain. And there are other examples of internecine warfare inside the Redskins, between the team and management and between and among players.

Now we can argue all day about whether this roster is playoff capable, I guess at some level they all are, right? But this latest development speaks to two factors very much playing into the resolution of this disastrous 2009 campaign: 1) No matter what they say, they hate Jim Zorn and he is gone and they will undermine him every chance they get; and 2) The front office is in such deep denial that they are unwilling to execute their duty as partners in the process of building a winning team.

There can be no progress with an attitude such as this from the front office.

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Oppo Research:

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Trainer's Table: Going into the bye week there were a number injuries, the most severe of course being left tackle Chris Samuels' neck, the team had been posturing for some time that he would be heading on the season ending injured reserve list and the trigger on that move was pulled on Halloween. Game five against the Panthers was in all likelihood the last time we will have seen Chris Samuels in a Redskins uniform.

Linebacker HB Blades and cornerback Byron Westbrook both suffered knee meniscus tears in the Eagles game seven, they both had surgery this week and will be out of this game (ibid.), Stephon Heyer tweaked his knee and was in a brace to start the off week, meaning newly signed off the street tackle Levi Jones got some additional work with the first team at left tackle (ibid.). There was a laundry list of others (op. cit.), the bye week arrived at a good time for players to heal, as it always seems to.

Tight end Chris Cooley will miss his first NFL start ever with a broken ankle, leaving a huge void in quarterback Jason Campbell's target environment, Fred hopes to step it up (ibid.) and I hope so too, Chris was initially expected to be out for the season, now after surgery he is expected to be out a month. The promotion of rookie seventh round pick Eddie Williams from the practice squad (op. cit.) was really about another option to replace some of Chris' production. Eddie is technically listed as a fullback though he played tight end in college, he has never really been a lead blocker so he is not a threat to fullback Mike Sellers, which Mike needs right now, his play has been very sub par.

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Gameplan: The defense, featuring a much improved linebacker Rocky McIntosh, is carrying this team which is good in the sense that there is a high performing unit but bad in that every mistake the defense makes is magnified because the offense cannot make up for them. Gameplan hard on defense, realize you will win the game, and try not to be nonsensical (op. cit.) in playcalling on offense, Sherm.

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My Take in 60 Words or Less: When you are talking about very average center Casey Rabach as the stabilizing force along your offensive line then you are fucked. Casey's a good guy and all, in the past eight games the Redskins have lost three ten year veterans along the line, the fall has been short and the landing hard for this offense. The end.

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Washington Post interactive gameday.



This is a gameday open thread.



NFL helmet logos from here.