Shocker that the Redskins were shut out of their first preseason game of the 2009-2010 season, 23-0, just a shocker. I mean, when you have one of the most unproductive offenses last season and just pray that the players you have get better…well this is what you’re going to get. I’m not even discussing the offensive line, which surprisingly played adequately, I’m talking about the skill positions.

No Clinton Portis meant the Redskins had to hope that Ladell Betts looked like the betts of 2 seasons ago. The Redskins had to hope that Rock Cartwright could start to be anything else than a mediocre kick returner and look like an actual running back. They had to hope that, with Santana Moss sitting this one out, one of their 2nd round draft picks would step up to the plate and play up to their draft position. They had to hope that Antwan Randle-El could be something more than a nice guy and a #3 receiver…or at the very least he could be productive in the slot. Finally, they had to hope that one of the veteran receivers and inexperienced running backs they signed could make a big play and prove they belong on an NFL roster.

Not at all surprising but, none of that happened. The timing was off between receivers and the QB. The running backs were unproductive carrying the ball. Receivers couldn’t get themselves open and when they did, they couldn’t hold on to the ball. Is this what happens when you stubbornly pray the decisions you make work out better than previous evidence suggests instead of facing the reality that you have no idea what you’re doing and you need to get some help in? Who knows…but lets hope so.

Yes, I know, it is too early to cast a final grade on how the Redskins will look this upcoming season, but all the problems that existed last season existed in this game, minus the broken down offensive line…and that is not good that all the same problems are happening with a healthy and productive line instead of what they had in the 2nd half of last season. Hail to the Redskins? More like, Hail to the Redskins Defense…they might be the only hope this team has.

Dear Vinny, Danny, Jimmy, et al.

Don’t do it. Its not worth it to start over again. Not at the price that will be asked. The amount of draft picks that you will lose this year and next is not worth it. You will be starting over with a new quarterback and no one else to go with him except players that all the other teams in the NFL didn’t want.

I dunno about the way you run businesses Danny, but in the NFL the proven way to win is to have a team that fields young talent that can do the job of older guys but for way less money. You draft players, lots of them, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Load up on cheap players, keep the ones that stick and drop the ones that dont and do it again and again year after year. Once you have depth and a base of young talent, you then use free agency to compliment the talent you have cultivated…not the other way around.

What I am trying to say is, cut this crap out and just leave Jason Campbell alone. His numbers from last year were actually quite fine. Sure he had just a few touchdowns, you would as well if your #1 WR was a #2 and your #2 is a #3 and your #3 should be retired, and your #4 and #5 rookies couldn’t get on the field. That and having no red zone target to throw to makes it tough to be a quarterback in the NFL. But hey, he also had just a few interceptions and a really high QB accuracy. Sure he made his share of mistakes, but so did the wide-receivers who couldnt run the right routes or get open when they did.

Plus, the line was beat up last year, kid didn’t have a chance with the overmatched youngsters getting beat like a dusty old rug. Portis’ second half numbers suffered because of the line play as well, its not a coincidence. The injured line was a huge detriment to this offense and for some reason, there’s no talk about trading up to grab a RT to replace the ineffective duo of Heyer and Jansen. How does that make any sense?

So, I’m begging you, as a life-long Redskins fan, don’t do it. Don’t carelessly dump the QB we have, who should finally be comfortable in an offense after playing in it for 2 years straight, for yet another project. Instead, get him some more help so he can succeed. Get him some linemen to block for him. Give him time to throw, time to grow, time to be the quarterback you knew he could be when you traded back into the 1st round to draft him those years ago.

Seriously, I already hate you guys for what you’ve done to this once great team, don’t make it any harder to root for the Redskins.

The Cutler to Washington rumors start … now. Denials plus no extension for Jason Campbell means 7-9 next season. Maybe Jim Zorn can install a new offense before training camp while he’s at it. Jason Campbell plays better when he’s unsettled.

*This is a pretty stream of consciousness rant…but I need to get all this off my chest*

A season that started out so promising at 6-2 has essentially come to a close with 2 games left and a mediocre record of 7-7 that, at this point, looks to be better than it should be the way the Redskins have played the last 6 weeks. The most brainwashed of Redskins fans will take the glass half full approach. They will say “Before the season started, we would be happy to have this record, quit your whining”. That is sad if someone thinks that.

Personally, I am not ever happy with a team I am a fan of being average at best. How did it get to this point? In my youth this team was a three time champion, now as an adult, this team is a joke…and why? Well, here’s why.

Daniel Snyder, he of good intentions and a full pocketbook, has no idea how to actually run a football organization. He may or may not know this and that is scary. What is even more frightening is that Daniel Snyder doesn’t hire good football people to run his organization either. But, you say, he hired Joe Gibbs! Who is more of a football person than Joe Gibbs? I have an answer for that…Joe Gibbs when Snyder hired him wasn’t a football person anymore, he was a NASCAR person so shut the hell up. People don’t leave the game of football for 15 years and suddenly jump right back in and know what the hell is going on, its impossible, and that was proven as he slowly hired people to do his job for him in his tenure here.

Snyder then makes Vinnie Cerrato the GM and allows him to run the draft. What happened there? Disaster. 3 picks in the 2nd round has turned into 3 receivers who have caught a combined 18 passes for 127 yards. Awesome. What other receivers could we have taken in the 2nd round? Jordy Nelson ( 30 catches, 330 yards), John Carlson (51, 601), Eddie Royal (75, 847), or Desean Jackson (53, 775). We picked 3 receivers, none of them combined are as good as any one of those rookies. You have to try really hard to fail that bad.

The offensive line is old, they knew it would be old, it was old everywhere. They picked 1 tackle. The defensive line is old, they knew it would be old, it was old everywhere. They picked 1 end…in the 7th round. They picked 1 cornerback who couldn’t even be effective on special teams, they picked a punter in the 6th round that was cut in the middle of the season, they picked a quarterback they didn’t need, as a matter of fact, the only pick that apparently was a steal was Chris Horton, their last pick, which looks like pure dumb luck since they were so bad at the previous 9 picks.

So they didn’t fix any problems from the previous season in the draft. They also signed their running back who has more wear than 95% of the other backs in the league to a multi-year extension. They have 1 good wide receiver and 1 good tight end who both get double teamed because they have no other threats. They have no pass rush because their line is old and slow, which puts too much pressure on their surprisingly solid linebacking corps, which in turn puts a ton of pressure on their corner backs to play man defense, neutering their best defensive player Laron Landry because he has to play center field all day to cover for anyone’s mistakes. And they hire their rookie offensive coordinator to be their rookie coach.

That might still be a good move but right now Zorn has much to prove, the hiccups in the installation of his offense are quite apparent. Right now, the team isn’t build for the Zorn version of the “West-Coast” style of offense. It was built to be a power running/play action team (and wasn’t good at that either). On top of that, after Zorn surprised the league with his play calling in the first 8 games, the league caught up to him like a rookie pitcher the 2nd time around. It is almost like everyone know what play is coming except the Redskins’ since they’re always offsides, lining up wrong, blocking in the wrong protection mode, or running the wrong routes.

The team is not very disciplined right now, the offensive playcalling has been stagnant and if Greg Blache wasn’t such an amazing defensive coordinator, the Redskins would never, ever have a chance in this year’s NFL.

So since everything is wrong with the Redskins, what needs to be done? More pain and misery before the gettin gets good. The team needs to take a hard look at the players on the team and make some cuts…a lot of them. This team needs to be gutted, the front office and scouting department needs to be fired and a real football mind needs to take charge. Veterans need to be traded for draft picks if possible or cut if there are no takers. This team needs a complete overhaul and it has to be done as soon as possible because putting it off is not the way to have sustained success in this league.

Yes, i’d rather lose with a bunch of promising rookies and found talent than lose with these high priced has-beens. At least one way, you can see the future growing, right now, the only thing growing is my discontent.

New head coach, new offensive scheme, new play-caller, new defensive coordinator, similar but different defensive scheme and playing without the teams best defensive back in Shawn Springs…could Redskins fans really have expected anything better than the dismal and disjointed 16-7 loss that ensued?

I actually expected the Redskins would lose this game, but what I did not expect were these things:

1) Lack of a passing game

I’m not talking about expecting Jason Campbell to become the 2nd coming of the mighty Matt Hasselbeck, I just expected that the Redskins would actually get a passing yard before the last 2 minutes of the 2nd quarter. Campbell didn’t complete a pass until there was 1:19 left in the first half and luckily his 2nd completion was for a TD.

Here’s what my armchair quarterback coach self saw. Jason Campbell was not in sync with any of his receivers. He was either waiting for a route to be run right or waiting for the one receiver he was, for some reason, locked in on to get open or not reading the defenses correctly to throw the ball to where they weren’t since they were blitzing a lot or his line was breaking down around him, partly because he was holding onto the ball for too long. All of this happened, sometimes they all happened on the same play.

I’m not saying its all Campbell’s fault, receivers do run bad routes and linemen do miss tackles, but on numerous occasions in the 1st half there were open players right in the middle of the field to pass to while Campbell was locked into Moss or Randle-El on the sidelines. Why didn’t he throw to his tight ends more? Cooley and Yoder are perfect safety outlets and would have saved Campbell on numerous occasions.

2) The Defense bent a lot…but luckily only broke once.

This is not last year’s GGGregg Williams defense. The exotic blitz packages are gone and it showed. If the Redskins thought they could get pressure with a 4 man front that was the same as last year plus Jason Taylor, who is looked like Bruce Smith II in this game, then they are going to get beat like a rag all season.

This was a defense without its best player, Shawn Springs, so why did they not do more zone coverage to help cover up that huge hole? It appeared to me at least that there was single man coverage on most the receivers, especially Plaxico Burress who beat them repeatedly. With all that man coverage, the Giants were able to dink and dunk slants and curls all over the joint since there was no, from my vantage point, underneath coverage. It was like the Redskins were playing a Man Prevent the entire game. The cushions the Giants receivers were given were ginormous and they took advantage the entire game.

And what the hell is up with Brandon Jacobs? Redskins D line turned him into Christian Okoye out there. London Fletcher had more tackles than the entire D line did. That will not win football games.

By the grace of God, the Giants offense couldn’t take full advantage of any of this and only got 1 touchdown, giving Redskins fans everywhere the false hope that they could actually come back.

3) The Head Coach is awful new at this

Why did Zorn not get the Redskins in the hurry up offense starting with the start of their 2nd to last possession with 6 minutes left in the game? They were down 2 scores and weren’t moving the ball all that quickly before, but the coach kept them huddling up and even ran the ball twice when the clock was under 4 minutes.

I’m also going to question the decision to go for it on 4th and 13 on the 43 yard line with 2 minutes left and down by 2 scores. That is hardly a gimme field goal and I guess Zorn didn’t think that Suisham could kick a 55 yarder with great success, the flip side is that if they did kick and make it, they would only need 1 score and could probably get the ball back (which they did when they didn’t convert the 4th down) and try to score again. See, by going for it on 4th down though Zorn pretty much ended the game.

If you miss the kick or not get the first down the result is the same, the game is over. If you make the 1st down, you have 2 minutes left, 4 more time sucking plays and all your time outs to score from 30 yards out, give the ball back to the giants, and try to stop them with time left to get another score. That is an awful lot to ask, but if you make the kick, you’re down by 1 score with just under 2 minutes left, you give the ball back and need a stop with all your timeouts left to try to get time to get another score. With those two scenarios, the one that would give the Redskins the most time on the clock to get the 2nd score is kicking the field goal.

So what to expect in the future? Luckily, all of this is correctable. Its all just practice and scheming at this point. The players are just as talented as most teams in the league. The coaches need to work harder to game plan better (the D’s halftime adjustments were quite good) and the players need to practice more to get their act together. The Defense looks mediocre right now and on offense they don’t even look that. They should at least strive for being average.

Zorn photo (AP Photo/Bill Kostroun); (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Campbell photo(Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Jacobs photo (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)