Redskins-Packers, The Good, The Bad, Yo’ Fat Ugly Momma

Serge Yurovsky’s Redskins-Packers photo gallery found at flickr.com. 

It’s one thing to to get beat by the other team. It’s another thing to get beat by your own mistakes. The loss to Green Bay, like the loss at home to the Giants, is primarily a loss of opportunity. At 3-2, the Washington Redskins are where most people expected them to be enroute to a 9-7 record. That loss to the Packers, again like the loss to the Giants, was an irritant to the fans and clearly frustrating to the players. And frustrating to write about. So, lets do abreviated points about the Green Bay game and move on. The Good

• Here’s all you need to know about the Redskins defense in the Packers game: Brett Favre’s season QB rating going into the game — 94. Favre’s QB rating for the game — 47. That says it all. The Skins were not beaten by the Packer offense.
• The new defensive scheme works. Joe Gibbs promised that the defense would get more sacks and bring more pressure on the quarterback by upgrading the secondary. He said something about “making the quarterback hold the ball longer” that sounded off base [baseball pun, sorry] at the time. But, that’s just what’s happening. Washington set a record with 12 sacks on the year last season. They have 15 in five games this year. Most of the damage was done by Rocky McIntosh, Marcus Washington and Andre “Sack a Game” Carter. 
• The Redskins are 3-2

The Bad

• Packers 17, Redskins 14
• Packers and Giants have tie-breaker advantage over Redskins 
• You won’t make the playoffs scoring 14 points per game.

Yo’ Fat Ugly Momma Can we quit with the trick plays? The Packers scored the go-ahead touchdown when CB Charles Woodson recovered Santana Moss’ third quarter fumble for a touchdown. But, check it out. Moss was running a wide receiver reverse. The play was going nowhere. The call did not cause the fumble, but Moss as rusher is not the best use of his skills. I’m old school, I guess. Trick plays work best when they are rarely used — once or twice a season. That’s when you go against tendencies. Half the reason trick plays are successful is because the other team has never seen it before. The Redskins seem to run a tricky play or two every game, Randle El run; Clinton Portis pass; Campbell as wide receiver. Is it any surprise the Packers sniffed out that reverse play and stopped it for a two yard loss?   Trick plays only seem to fool the coach who called it. The Redskins’ game is power football. If you are going to rush the ball, rush the ball with a rusher. Leave the sissy plays for Madden.