Washington can use some good news before the Seahawks fly in

Hog Heaven hates Giants, no matter what coast they hail from. The Nationals can’t score more than three runs in 27 innings of trying. To make the NLCS, the Nats must win three of three from the baseball Giants. We’ve read this script before.

That Thursday night beat down by the football Giants feels as fresh as yesterday. No fan in Washington believes with conviction that the Redskins will beat the Seattle Super Seahawks on Monday Night Football. Few marked the game as “winnable” before the season began when all still seemed hopeful. We thought this would be the RGIII revenge game from the 2012 postseason contest. The Redskins’ train ran off the rails for 12 months after that game.

We can use some good news and it is this. The Redskins are not terrible at everything. Our team ranks well on some of the quality stats tracked by Cold Hard Football Facts.

Real Passing Yards Per Attempt. Rank: 6^th. The Cold, Hard Football Facts use passing yards per attempt as a way to measure the effectiveness of each quarterback at getting the ball downfield. Real Passing Yards Per Attempt includes the impact of sacks. We use only NET passing figures to determine yards per attempt. This is gross passing yards, minus yards lost via sacks. This formula yields a team’s TRUE average per pass attempt, its Real Passing Yards Per Attempt.

Defensive Hog Index. Rank 6^th. The Defensive Hog Index is our effort to quantify which team has the best defensive front in football. The top defensive front is that which posts the highest average rating across the board. The Defensive Hog Index is based upon these criteria: YPA –Yards Per Attempt. This rates a defense’s ability to stuff an opposing ground game; NPP% – Negative Pass Plays, expressed as a percentage. This is how often an opponent’s pass plays end in either a sack or interception. 3down% – Opposition success rate on third down. The lower the percentage, the higher the defensive success.

This echoes Richie Pettibon’s statement that he only cares about two defensive stats: Turnovers and Third Down Stops.

The Redskins ranked 26th in the Offensive Hog Index. That’s embarrassing considering how “Hogs” originated in an NFL context, but it confirms what we already know. The defensive line rates higher than the offensive line.

Total Team Yards. Rank 5th. This is a roll-up of offensive and special teams yardage.

Time of Possession. Rank 1^st. Self-explanatory.

31:51

These are feel good stats. (Don’t you feel better?) The cold water to this story is that Cold Hard Football Facts does not see these ranks as predictive of wins. CHFF’s three quality stats that best correlate to victory are: scoreability and bendability; the difference between real passer rating and defensive real passer rating, and the difference between offensive and defensive real yards per pass attempt.

Seattle built a super team in the Seahawks. They rank better than the ‘Skins in nearly all the quality stats tracked by CHFF.

The Jacksonville and New York games do not paint a true picture of the Redskins. Our team is not as good as shown against the Jaguars, nor hardly as bad as the Giants made us out to be. Seattle doesn’t know that. The Redskins could be a perfect trap for the Seahawks.

It’s the Rozelle Rule and I’m sticking with it.

Washington’s best hope is that Seattle is looking past us to Dallas.