Am I The Only One Who Remembers We Were 5-11 Last Year?

[Whiskeypeet]

Gibbs has made mistakes. No mistake about that. We're probably not done with those, either. But, we musn't overlook the tremendous progress he has made with the overall makeup of this team. It seems to be a team on the rise....a team with a collective soul (which you couldn't say about many past teams of the 90's and early 00's).....and a desire to reach the pinnacle.....not just the playoffs. These accomplishments will live on after he is gone..I am sure of that.

Great post. Thanks!

[skinsn24]

That's not quite right...

So far this season:

Game 1: our offense scored 16 points: 1 TD and three FGs

Game 2: our offense scored 20 points: 2 TDs and two FGs

Game 3: our offense scored 17 points in one half: 2 TDs and one FG

Up until halftime our offense was showing a game-by-game improvement. Last season during the first three games?

Game 1: our offense scored 16 points: 1 TD and three FGs

Game 2: our offense scored 3 points: a FG

Game three: our offense scored 31 points: 4 TDs and a FG

Last season our offense was sporadic, no improvement from week to week. We were mediocre one game, abysmal the next, great the game after that, back to abysmal...then back to mediocre. This year, there was steady improvement...It's just that 2nd half that skews the stats. The offense took a complete nosedive during those two quarters, no doubt. But up until then, there was DEFINITE improvement week after week...which was a blessing compared to last year.

Cali, I am not sure how fair it is to site that we scored 17 in one half and act like its still an improvement even though we scored 0 in the second. If you want look at the first 2 games as whole games, then look at the 3rd as a whole game. If you want to break it down by halves, break it down by halves.

However when done by halves it is a little suraddick. I think only looking at the entire game is fair, and agaisnt the gaints the offense did not show any real improvement from the philly game, it actually looked much worse.

Unable to sustain drives. Unable to convert 3rd downs, missing easy field goals, missing short yardage situations...not sure what was good about that game on offense, except for the 2 minute drill besides the final 4 plays.

[RODAN1054]

That's not quite right...

So far this season:

Game 1: our offense scored 16 points: 1 TD and three FGs

Game 2: our offense scored 20 points: 2 TDs and two FGs

Game 3: our offense scored 17 points in one half: 2 TDs and one FG

Up until halftime our offense was showing a game-by-game improvement. Last season during the first three games?

Game 1: our offense scored 16 points: 1 TD and three FGs

Game 2: our offense scored 3 points: a FG

Game three: our offense scored 31 points: 4 TDs and a FG

Last season our offense was sporadic, no improvement from week to week. We were mediocre one game, abysmal the next, great the game after that, back to abysmal...then back to mediocre. This year, there was steady improvement...It's just that 2nd half that skews the stats. The offense took a complete nosedive during those two quarters, no doubt. But up until then, there was DEFINITE improvement week after week...which was a blessing compared to last year.

I believe also we only scored 3 field goals our 1st game

[sens11]

Funny, I remember some stinkers during Gibbs I...let's not get carried away.

I'd suggest if you're looking for perfection, you check heaven out, because there is very little in life or the NFL that is perfect.

We're 2-1, not 1-3 or 0-3. We have a very good defense, three new starters on our O-Line and for all intents and purposes, a first year player at qb.

And a winning record.

I like what I see.

Good perspective! I agree!

It'll be even better to be 3-1 in two weeks!

[tomwvr]

I would not be upset if we had been blown away - like Philly did two a 2-0 team but when you are 2-0 and winning 17-3 at the half, looking like you are going to make it 3-0 (plus I had just gone through a 4th quarter implosion by the terps Saturday) it is very upsetting on losing like they did. I thought they would be 7-9 to 9-7 this year. After this loss I think they may do worse then last year, because they cannot score on offense.

I am not sure if it is from Gibbs over ruling the play calling, or Saunders calling awful plays or what ever. If I was Saunders and Gibbs was not allowing me to be the OC I would resign. If it is Saunders doing an awful Job and I was Gibbs I would fire him.

So in my mind Saunders should be gone. But it will not happen.

Tom

[Whiskeypeet]

I would not be upset if we had been blown away - like Philly did two a 2-0 team but when you are 2-0 and winning 17-3 at the half, looking like you are going to make it 3-0 (plus I had just gone through a 4th quarter implosion by the terps Saturday) it is very upsetting on losing like they did. I thought they would be 7-9 to 9-7 this year. After this loss I think they may do worse then last year, because they cannot score on offense.

Please. If the Redskins had been "blown away" at home by the Giants this board would have been imploded. No player or coach on this team would be safe.

The Redskins choked away a game they easily could have won. The team was competitive but failed down the stretch. This loss is not nearly as bad as many here would have you believe.

The Redskins are not a great team. They seem to be a lot tougher than last year and are improving but still have a long way to go. Games will be lost this year and each loss does not signal the end of life as we know it.

[chipwhich]

1) What injuries have cost us wins?

2) Only one high-dollar player is not getting playing time, and who really cares how much a player makes if his play is subpar?

I said we haven't rectified anything with regards to depth, injuries, etc. I know injuries haven't cost us games.

Springs was on the bench in game one, so was lloyd. Fortunately for us the smoot injury kept the drama from redskins park from continuing after week 1.

My point was, the team hasn't rectified anything since gibbs return.

An offense that consistantly can't break 20 points. Constant drama from the park. Media questioning everything. I had hoped at least under Gibbs we wouldn't appear disfunctional.

:2cents:

[REDSKINFANSINCE72]

That's not quite right...

So far this season:

Game 1: our offense scored 16 points: 1 TD and three FGs

Game 2: our offense scored 20 points: 2 TDs and two FGs

Game 3: our offense scored 17 points in one half: 2 TDs and one FG

Up until halftime our offense was showing a game-by-game improvement. Last season during the first three games?

Game 1: our offense scored 16 points: 1 TD and three FGs

Game 2: our offense scored 3 points: a FG

Game three: our offense scored 31 points: 4 TDs and a FG

Last season our offense was sporadic, no improvement from week to week. We were mediocre one game, abysmal the next, great the game after that, back to abysmal...then back to mediocre. This year, there was steady improvement...It's just that 2nd half that skews the stats. The offense took a complete nosedive during those two quarters, no doubt. But up until then, there was DEFINITE improvement week after week...which was a blessing compared to last year.

Cali...thanks...but the fact remains we are only averaging 17 points a game. We play the Giants who had one of the worst defenses and came up with only 17 points. Quite frankly, I thought that as well as we were playing in the first half that we were on our way to scoring at least another 2 touchdowns. Thus as for the first half of the Giants game, I agree with you hold hardly, but we simply can't ignore what happened in the second half.

Lets hope that our coaches and players correct their mistakes and we play well and beat the Lions.

BTW...where are you in California? And do you go to Champs at the Specturm in Irvine?

[FuriousD]

SoCal...the lovely and intoxicating San Bernardino lol :laugh:...

Oh jeez, I used to live there too. :puke: Get out while you can, man. Run Forest, run!

Sure there are going to be losses. I had this team pegged anywhere from 7-9 to 9-7. That is not really a good team. But we always start each year as eternal optimists.

The problem for everyone is the nature of the loss when 3-0 was so close. A good team would have closed the G-men out.

We are not a good team yet. Same old, same old.

:helmet:

[Califan007 The Constipated]

A beautiful part of the state. I've driven through it often. :laugh:

Here's something I posted earlier today in another thread. I think it fits here as well. Sorry for the length, but I was on a roll.

I held off checking out ES on Monday morning for the simple reason that I was afraid to see what people were saying. I was fearful of knee jerk reactions from sofa quarterbacks......like myself. I instead decided to let the game resonate and percolate just a bit before I posted. Frankly, I wish more people did that.

To begin with, I think a distinction needs to made. There is a difference between blind loyalty and blind optimism. I am now and will forever be a Redskin fan. No number of wins or losses will ever change that. It's part of who I am and I will remain steadfastly loyal and faithful to this team.

That being said, while an eternal optimist at heart, I am not overwhelmingly blind to what takes place both on and off the field. I see some disturbing patterns of disorganization and play. I, like you, am upset by watching the team - time and time again - make their own jobs harder by making ill-timed mental mistakes. They have the talent to overcome many of these mistakes (please refer to the sequence at the close of the first half of the Eagles game) but will sometimes dig themselves a hole too great to climb out of (please refer now to the close of the Giants game). My great hope is that as Jason Campbell gains more experience and thus more (pardon the cliche) field generalship many of these types of mistakes will simply go away. I would also hope that the coaching staff, for their part, would mitigate those mistakes by being succinct both in their instruction and in their implementation. There is, in my experience, some value in LOOKING as if you know what you're doing even if you don't actually. That, alone, would probably eliminate many of the cries we hear today.

While I, like many of you, am disappointed in the fact that Joe Gibbs did not return us to glory sooner in his second run....I also recognize just how in disarray this team was when he took over. I do not pretend to think that he, Snyder and the entire staff have made no mistakes at all. Certainly they have. Scouting, talent evaluation...play schemes.....all are to a great degree hit and miss. For every Cooley you draft there's a few Tyler Eckers. For every Santana Moss you trade for there's a few Brandon Lloyds out there to bring in. If it were really as easy as we ALL sometimes come to think (or wish) it was, then football would simply be no fun. Everyone would be doing everything right and the whole game as we now know it would cease to be interesting.

The simple truth is, Gibbs took over a team that had a for a long time perpetuated a losing and mistake-prone environment. A team that had either swung for the fence or settled for the status quo....neither strategy proving to be a successful one. From 1969-70 (when Vince Lombardi came to town) to 1992-93 (when Joe Gibbs left), the Redskins had evolved into a franchise that not only promoted success in both play and attitude, but expected it. That same team, over the subsequent fifteen years or so had de-volved into a team that had come to expect defeat and didn't - for the life of it - have any clue about how to reverse that trend. Nothing had worked. Nobody knew how to fix it.

Turning things around after so long a drought doesn't - we have all come to learn - happen overnight. Yes, four years in the life of the NFL can seem like a long time...and it is....but in the life of a lost and forlorn franchise four years to turn things around can be an eternity. Just ask the Detroit Lions...or the New Orleans Saints.....or the New York Giants, for that matter.

Gibbs has made mistakes. No mistake about that. We're probably not done with those, either. But, we musn't overlook the tremendous progress he has made with the overall makeup of this team. It seems to be a team on the rise....a team with a collective soul (which you couldn't say about many past teams of the 90's and early 00's).....and a desire to reach the pinnacle.....not just the playoffs. These accomplishments will live on after he is gone..I am sure of that.

Jason Campbell, the new face of the team, is still a young quarterback. The Redskins are still a work in progress. One loss does not a season make. The optimism we all felt leading into the season and after the first two wins should not be diminished. It is not time to be calling for anyone's head......yet.

I don't think we should ignore the facts...but I think we should at least look at the situation globally.....at the big picture......and then see how we feel. There's a lot more season to go.

I, for one, am looking forward to it.

HTTR

Nice :applause: ...Here's hopin'

[RODAN1054]

Cali...thanks...but the fact remains we are only averaging 17 points a game. We play the Giants who had one of the worst defenses and came up with only 17 points. Quite frankly, I thought that as well as we were playing in the first half that we were on our way to scoring at least another 2 touchdowns. Thus as for the first half of the Giants game, I agree with you hold hardly, but we simply can't ignore what happened in the second half.

Lets hope that our coaches and players correct their mistakes and we play well and beat the Lions.

BTW...where are you in California? And do you go to Champs at the Specturm in Irvine?

probely took strahan 2 weeks to get ready and we got his best game

[PCS]

Whoa whoa. Waita minute. 5-11 last year? Damn.

[Whiskeypeet]

I'm seriously considering starting the "cut Campbell" thread now so we have it going in advance of the next loss. Will save everyone some time.

[Califan007 The Constipated]

Cali, I am not sure how fair it is to site that we scored 17 in one half and act like its still an improvement even though we scored 0 in the second. If you want look at the first 2 games as whole games, then look at the 3rd as a whole game. If you want to break it down by halves, break it down by halves.

I did it that way because those two quarters were more an anomaly to me than they were evidence of exactly where this team is...to show that the offense, and the scoring, was going up each game...until that 2nd half collapse.

Now, whether or not we as fans want to focus on the 2 quarters of offensive ineptitude as being indicative of how this team is doing on that side of the ball, or whether we want to concentrate on the 10 quarters that came before it, is an individual choice. It's the same as on the defense...holding opponents to 1 TD in 10 quarters is damn impressive, something NOBODY would have expected this defense to do after last year. But they did...now, they allowed THREE TDs in the next two quarters after that...Are the 10 quarters allowing a grand total of one TD more indicative of how this team's defense performs, or is the 3 TDs allowed in 2 quarters more indicative?

However when done by halves it is a little suraddick. I think only looking at the entire game is fair, and agaisnt the gaints the offense did not show any real improvement from the philly game, it actually looked much worse.

I'm not looking at this season in "halves"...I only segregated those two quarters because they did not resemble the rest of the season offensively one iota. Just as a reminder, we had a whopping 15 yards of offense in the 2nd half by the middle of the 4th quarter...you'll have to show me how the Skins showed the same ineptitude offensively over a 22 minute mark at any point prior to that this season in order for me to NOT separate that 22 minute stretch from the other 128 minutes they've played.

Unable to sustain drives. Unable to convert 3rd downs, missing easy field goals, missing short yardage situations...not sure what was good about that game on offense, except for the 2 minute drill besides the final 4 plays.

Which game are you referring to here?...And for the record, we were converting OVER 50% of our 3rd down attempts, which ranked us near the top of the league...well, UNTIL that 2nd half against the Giants. Not to mention that NO "easy field goals" have been missed by Suisham.

And again...this was a 5-11 team last year...raise your hand if you realisticallyl expected the improvement on this team to be instantaneous instead of gradual over the course of the season...I know I didn't. But I DID expect more wins, far more wins, this season than last season. I still do.

[Califan007 The Constipated]

Whoa whoa. Waita minute. 5-11 last year? Damn.

You'd never know it lol...

[Califan007 The Constipated]

I'm not eating crow on this bump lol...

[Califan007 The Constipated]

BTW...where are you in California? And do you go to Champs at the Specturm in Irvine?

I missed this last time...I'm on SoCal, and nope, never been to Champs at the Spectrum. I'm almost never in Irvine...

[Chachie]

People we are going to win some games that we were suppose to lose and vice versa

Exactly. I've said this a lot lately. It's a looong season. Let's not count chickens from unhatched eggs.

[ALLWORLD]

Ahhh... If everyone were only as smart as they thought they were...

5-11 last year, lets see did anyone NOT get suprised how bad we were?

Our Offense is suspect and our Defense had 2 bad quarters....

So I couldn't care any less about last year, because if we were still living last year then the Chargers, Bears, Saints, etc.. are the teams to beat right?

This team had, has more talent then the record/records showed. Thats why people are not still living in last year.

So yes, Califan if we blow a game we will be disappointed, next question?

[Warhead36]

Football is dynamic. The league changes every year. Just because you sucked last year doesn't mean you shouldn't be optimistic if your team starts this year off well.

Now that we're 3-1 and look to be playing strong football I'd be a tad bit disappointed with 8-8 or less.

[Mania]

People we are going to win some games that we were suppose to lose and vice versa

Hopefully that game comes against the Cowboys and the Patriots. However, when the season began I had the Skins at 4-0 going into the Packer game with our first loss coming against the Patriots in week 7 and an 11-5 or 12-4 record.

Yes, I'm a it of an optimist, but I knew there would be a ton of improvement from last season based on Fletcher, Campbell, the improved secondary and most importantly the 2nd year of Al's offense.

[ALLWORLD]

Football is dynamic. The league changes every year. Just because you sucked last year doesn't mean you shouldn't be optimistic if your team starts this year off well.

Now that we're 3-1 and look to be playing strong football I'd be a tad bit disappointed with 8-8 or less.

:applause: I agree 101%

[skinsn24]

Before the season started, if anyone in the media predicted an 8-8 or 9-7 record for the Skins, 99% of us responded with "That sounds fair...we WERE 5-11 last year afterall".

However, now that the season has started, we lose ONE game--a game in which we lead at the half 17-3...and suddenly that 8-8/9-7 record prediction is irrelevant? How, exactly, did anyone expect the Skins to be 9-7 and NOT lose games? lol ...Or did we expect every single loss to be a nail-biter with the opposing team kicking a 57 yarder into the wind with 2 seconds remaining?

If you thought 9-7 was a good prediction for our beloved team, then at some point, somewhere, you HAD to know the Skins were gonna lose a game like this. At some point, somewhere, the Skins were gonna show a bit of what made them 5-11 last year...it was inevitable. Before the season started, we ALL expected that to happen, every single one of us...yet when it actually DOES happen, we act like it never occurred to us...as if the ONLY way the Skins could lose a game is if the coaches/players/owner are ridiculously inept...because it can NOT be that the Skins are that 9-7 team we all said sounded "reasonable" before the season started.

Put another way, we could be Saints fans, looking at their team full of Pro Bowlers pathetically going 0-3 after reaching the NFC Championship game last year...or we could be Skins fans, looking at their team of ONE Pro Bowl alternate going 2-1, and surprisingly almost 3-0, after going an abysmal 5-11 last year.

Yeah, I was frustrated as hell that the Skins seemed to take the 2nd half off and could VERY easily have been 3-0 right now...but I'm not losing sight of the fact that we were 5-11 last season, and were not very good. However, I'm not gonna let one half of bad football erase the fact that this team HAS improved noticeably. Nor am I gonna lynch the coaches responsible for that improvement because of 30 non-productive minutes of play. They're the same ones we were more than fine with after the Monday night manhandling of the Eagles. And should they return to that form and do the same to the Lions, I'm positive we'll all be fine and dandy being 3-1.

As things on the field change, expectations change. For example the Rams in their superbowl year were 3-13 the year before, but when they were 10-2 or whatever do you think there fans were say "well whatever happens its cool cuz we sucked last year" or do you think they wanted that superbowl?

We were 5-11 last year, yea we sucked. Now we are 3-1 so the 5-11 doesnt matter, the 11 losses dont count toward this years record.

[skinsn24]

Originally Posted by skinfan2k

People we are going to win some games that we were suppose to lose and vice versa

What exactly is a game a team is "supposed" to lose. I dont think any football goes into a game saying "we are supposed to lose this game" Isnt the purpose to win the game, thus every game is supposed to be won?

Maybe some "experts" expect certain teams to win or lose certain games, but each team is always supposed to win.

[Califan007 The Constipated]

Ahhh... If everyone were only as smart as they thought they were...

5-11 last year, lets see did anyone NOT get suprised how bad we were?

Our Offense is suspect and our Defense had 2 bad quarters....

So I couldn't care any less about last year, because if we were still living last year then the Chargers, Bears, Saints, etc.. are the teams to beat right?

This team had, has more talent then the record/records showed. Thats why people are not still living in last year.

So yes, Califan if we blow a game we will be disappointed, next question?

Maybe you didn't notice the date of when I created this thread lol...which would point to why I created it.