And, it’s the darndest war you’ve ever heard. On the eve of battle between teams coached by three-time Super Bowl winners, Joe Gibbs and Bill Belichick open the conflict by making nice. Joe Gibbs commiserated with the press Monday
“We’ll probably be the biggest underdog in the history of sports. Has anything held up against them? Do you have a game plan that will work against them? If you do, leave it here. Because I don’t think anybody else has got one right now. We’re going to struggle hard.”
Adds Clinton Portis
“Their quarterback has thrown for 27 touchdowns, and we don’t even have 27 touchdowns. We’ve just got to find a way to exploit our talent.”
Belichick escalated the niceness with
He [Gibbs] is a Hall of Fame coach, Belichick said. Hes already been recognized for his career to 92, and now hes tacked on more to that with a good team this year. Belichick added “hes the coach that took the one-back offense to a level far above what it was when he started there in Washington.
Gibbs would go on to call the Redskins “the biggest underdog in the history of sport.” Washington is 16 point underdogs to New England. Belichick did give up an assessment of the Redskin offense.
They have definitely evolved [from the 1980s], and Im sure Saunders coming in there has had a big impact on that, Belichick said. They are a much more multiple team than the Redskins were back in the 80s when I was with the Giants. They really only had two running plays. They didnt do a whole lot of things, they just did them very well. They are much more multiple now. They have always been a big formation team, and they still are, but they have multiple plays now.
Gibbs’ and Portis’ comments are from an Associated Press article and Belichick’s quotes are from Rich Thompson’s story on bostonherald.com. Ah, coach-speak. On the verge of a classic great offense vs. great defense game, the head coaches are blowing smoke at each other. Conservative to a fault Coach-in-chief Gibbs acknowledged that he and deputy coach Al Saunders throttled back the offense in the second half of the Cardinals game after watching how well the defense was doing early in the game.
“We wanted it to make it as short a game as possible and let the defense play football” ~~ Al Saunders
A short game meant running the ball to keep the game clock moving. There were two problems with the tactic and they were big ones — the Redskins started ball control too soon and were inflexible as became apparent that it wasn’t working. In the third quarter scoring drive, Jason Campbell threw three short passes and scrambled eight yards from the shotgun, the backs ran seven times before Clinton Portis’ one yard touchdown run to put the Skins up 21-6. Shaun Suisham missed an earlier field goal attempt that would have made the score 24-6. Portis’ score came with 5:51 left in the third quarter. The Cardinals then went on a 12 play, 72 yard drive to score a touchdown that brought them within eight points of a tie. At this point, Gibbs should have changed direction to put points back on the board. They did make some attempt, poorly executed, to move the ball through the air. The Skins got the ball back with 14:47 left in the fourth quarter. On this drive, Clinton Portis ran up the middle for no gain, then caught a five yard pass from Campbell. That gain was negated on the next play by a five yard false start penalty on Chris Cooley. Campbell’s eight yard toss to Mike Sellers was short of the first down. The Skins held the ball for less than two minutes. The defense killed Arizona’s subsequent drive with its sack of Kurt Warner and recovery of his fumble. The Cardinals had driven to the Washington five yard line, but with a Cardinal penalty and the fumble, the offense took over at their 13 with 7:14 left in the game. Deep in their own territory, the Redskins ran twice to the middle and threw a short, incomplete pass to the middle to Randle El. They punted after holding the ball 1:18. The defense again stopped the Cardinals with 3:38 left. The Skins took a deep shot to James Thrash sandwiched between two runs to the left by Clinton Portis. Normally reliable Thrash could not control the ball as he went out of bounds. Derrick Frost punted a 58 yarder that was returned 11 yards to the Cardinal 29 yard line with 2:37 left. What the Cardinals did in that two and a-half minutes caused the Redskins to clinch every bodily orifice. Said Gibbs, “In hindsight, yeah, absolutely if we could replay things . . . .” Looked at in isolation of down and distance, the plays called don’t look so out of whack. The Skins did try to move the ball through the air, most in passes to backs. Only two passes were directed to wide receivers and one of them, to Thrash, was deep. The running game was ineffective, perhaps because the Cardinals by then expected the Skins to run left and were waiting for them. In that last possession, the coaches were likely more concerned with protecting the ball more than moving it. So, yes, in the heat of battle, play calling was a little too republican, but the execution wasn’t good enough for it to work either. Fortunately, the defense restricted Arizona to the Washington 37 yard line on that last drive. Any closer and we would be lamenting a 3-3 record now. And the lesson learned? In the NFL, there is no such thing as a safe lead. The Lions came back 34 points on Chicago. Dallas was down 11 to the Bills before winning. We’ve watched leads of 10, 7 and 15 points evaporate in the Giants, Packers and Cardinals games. In the second half, scoring is more important than clock. Bet you a buck that Bill Belichick won’t sit on a second half lead against the Redskins. Want proof? Read Belichick hates you. So, lets save that “running the clock” s[tuff] to the back half of the fourth quarter — if you have a two touchdown lead.
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