Bucs Preview
I like John Madden as a guy, as a coach, and as a namesake for a video game. But I’m not a fan of his “boom” style of TV commentary. But he says something on TV often that I think is very wise. He says you have to be careful when you use the phrase “must win game” because if you lose what are you going to do next week? Do you give up?
That said, this is a must win game. Not only because if we lose we fall to a losing record. Not only because if we lose we will allow another team or two to pass us in the wild card standings (the Eagles play the Dolphins, the Cards play the 49ers). Not only because we play only three more teams with losing records and it will take 10 wins to make the playoffs.
But mostly because the natives are getting restless. The otherwise loyal Redskins fans tend to get nasty this time of year and if we slump to 5-6 there is a reason to get fidgetity. When the Bills and Bears come to town the next two weeks, we need the fans to be 100% behind this team. If we win this game, there is every reason to believe we can go on a 3 game winning streak and get right back into this fight. We need that kind of confidence going into New York in December. Lose, and the booing starts. And when the booing starts, we can fall to a team like Buffalo and it could be all over.
To win today we only need to do a few things:
1) Get help over the top to keep Joey Galloway from doing to us what TO did.
2) Be patient on offense against the Cover 2. Run a lot and take what they give you. According to NFL Network, the Bucs give up 3.5 yards per carry in the first three quarters but well over 4 in the fourth quarter. Stay close and we can run on this team to close it out.
3) Hit the intermediate routes on the outside. The place to attack the cover two is past the CBs on the sidelines. Deep outs and short corners are the key. Cooley and Campbell have hit a few of those this year but have also missed a few. If Campbell can make these throws when we need them, we can do some damage.
I think since doing this site, I’ve only predicted one or two Redskins loses. I don’t like to predict them, and I’m not about to change. Redskins 17, Bucs 16.
-DW
