The Redskins came into Week 2 riding high off a dominant win against the Arizona Cardinals. Their fortunes changed in the home opener.
The NFL is a week to week league; it’s the brutal truth. One week, a team can look like a future Super Bowl contender. And the next, they can collapse in every facet of the game.
The Washington Redskins never reached either extreme, but that doesn’t change the fact that the swing of quality between Week 1 and Week 2 is alarming, to say the least.
In Week 1, Jay Gruden’s Washington squad had the advantage over its opponent in every possible way. In Week 2, against a young Indianapolis Colts squad with a newly-anointed head coach, it was Washington who played the role of the Week 1 Cardinals. Dominated.
After Week 1, there weren’t many areas in which room for improvement could be suggested. But the Redskins made up for their lacking ammunition in Week 1 with a Week 2 performance that almost doesn’t even need discussing.
Nevertheless, we’ll discuss it anyway. Turn the page and take a look at our Ingredients for Improvement after the second week of the 2018 regular season.
No. 5 – Redskins defensive front needs to play up to their potential
Throughout most of the offseason, pundits and analysts agreed: The Redskins woeful run defense was no more. With Jonathan Allen, Zach Brown, and Matt Ioannidis coming back from injury, and with stout rookies Daron Payne and Tim Settle joining the fold, it was believed that Washington’s defensive line would not only be competent, but consistently productive, a moniker that it eluded willfully in years past.
In Week 1, the Redskins front lived up to that reputation, but in Week 2, they fell short in unspectacular fashion, having minimal impact on the game throughout. Only one player, Matt Ioannidis, managed to log a sack, and the interior defensive line failed to find a semblance of consistency on running downs.
Additionally, edge rushers Ryan Kerrigan and Preston Smith were rendered inert by the Colts’ backup tackles. I don’t even need to elaborate. That’s bad. Getting pressure off the edge is one of the most important tasks for any defense, and Washington has failed to do so in the first two weeks of the season. The offense didn’t do the defense any favors in Week 2, giving them no time to rest, but the point still stands; Pressure was non-existent.
Against the Packers next week, it’s hard to expect anything better; The Cardinals and Colts both have subpar offensive lines, and they managed to fend off what was thought to be a much-improved Redskins front. Time is running short for the revamped defensive line to prove itself. Every game counts, and if the Redskins don’t bring it in the trenches, they’ll feel the adverse effects for a long time.
No. 4 – Offensive line must stick to assignments, impose will
The tale of the tape will tell you that the Redskins’ offense wasn’t befallen by one lone factor. There were a number of culminating causes that led to Sunday’s dismal showing. One particularly impactful factor was the inconsistent play of the offensive line.
The line was outplayed by a surprisingly adequate Colts’ defensive front for much of the day. Players like Hassan Ridgeway and Jabaal Sheard stood out for Indianapolis, and the Redskins’ starters didn’t look nearly as polished as they presented themselves to be against Arizona.
The Colts’ defensive coordinator, formerly of the Dallas Cowboys, used familiar tricks to befuddle the line’s communication, per D.C. sports reporter Craig Hoffman. It was an issue that trickled down to the rest of the offense. Adrian Peterson and Chris Thompson couldn’t find running room. Alex Smith, for what it’s worth, didn’t often have a lot of time to throw.
The game of football is a team effort every week, but it always starts in the trenches, on both sides of the ball. In Week 1, the Redskins were dominant in this department. In Week 2, they got dominated. In a tale of two tapes, it’s hard to tell which line we’ll see next.
No. 3 – Redskins can’t get complacent after big wins
In our Ingredients for Improvement last week, we labeled action and reaction as an important takeaway for Washington in Week 1. The Redskins engineered a brilliant defeat of the Arizona Cardinals, but while their actions in that game proved to hold weight, so too did their reaction, and how they handled the early success.
D.J. Swearinger said it himself; there was a complacency in the building ahead of the team’s 21-9 loss to Andrew Luck and the Indianapolis Colts. The team bought into the hype, and as a result, they failed to accurately measure up the team across from them.
In Week 3, and beyond, for that matter, the Redskins can’t let complacency be a recurring issue. It’s a small factor that can have far too large an impact if it goes unchecked.
No. 2 – Jay Gruden must make better in-game adjustments
In Week 1, Jay Gruden formulated a plan to involve Adrian Peterson and Chris Thompson in a two-headed rushing attack. It worked. And so, in Week 2, he tried it again. It didn’t.
No one should be surprised. The Colts saw what the Redskins did in Week 1, and they prepared for it. Jay Gruden didn’t do enough to change the game plan to keep Frank Reich on his toes, and when the game started off on a sour note, little changed.
Execution of Gruden’s plans proved to be just as big a problem as Gruden’s plans themselves on Sunday. The players, particularly on offense, were sloppy, and consistency was a hard sell. One must not pin this entirely on Gruden; the players have a degree of responsibility, just as the coach. They’re grown men, and they should know better than to grow complacent after a win. It’s the coach’s duty to steer them straight. But who says he didn’t? Very few people have sources at practices.
Whatever the case, and whatever the cause, Gruden needs to improve his game planning next week. The offense needs to find a balance of new, creative additions to the playbook, and old, reliable strategies that are known to work (Example: Jordan Reed up the middle, etc). Creativity is something that got Gruden his job in D.C. And it’s something he lacked entirely on Sunday.
I’ve been a Jay Gruden guy all year. But if he doesn’t get it together, I won’t be.
No. 1 – Redskins QB Alex Smith needs to change when the game demands it
The never-ending debate surrounding the legitimacy of oft-criticized quarterback Alex Smith seemingly ended last year, when the seasoned veteran embarked on an MVP-caliber campaign with the Kansas City Chiefs, notching over 4,000 yards, 26 touchdowns, and just five interceptions.
Once known merely as a game manager, Smith violently pushed away from the notion with Patrick Mahomes on his heels. He added a vertical element to his game, and as a result, Smith was one of the league’s best deep passers last season.
Utter that statistic today, and you might be called crazy.
Smith played well in the season debut, largely due to the fact that the running game remained consistent, and the Cardinals’ weaknesses played to his strengths. But when shouldered with an increased workload, we saw that, against the Colts, he squandered opportunity, and didn’t do nearly enough when the team needed a spark through the air. Granted, options were not always available down the field. But in the NFL, chances have to be taken from time to time. Smith didn’t take them, and thus, the Redskins never entered a position to mount a comeback.
The question was one of the fiercest of the offseason: Which Alex Smith will Washington get? So far in 2018, in two games, the Redskins have gotten both. The savvy, all-knowing field general, and the complacent, complicit game manager. The Redskins need one of these personas to pervade through the next fourteen games. I think you can guess which one it is.
Alex Smith is a workmanlike passer who plays a winning brand of football, in a vacuum. But despite this, Smith must change when the game demands it. Otherwise, his new team might grow tired of him, just as his previous two teams did in due time.