Screw The First Half We Lost This Game In The 3Rd...

[mitchellvii]

Down by a mile, entire 3rd quarter played full huddle, full clock, no urgency at all?  I sensed Shanny was beaten and just wanted to escape without any major injuries.  The 5 minutes they wasted strolling around in the 3rd would have come in handy in the 4th.

 

Regardless of that horrible coaching decision, there was a valuable lesson here and I hope Shanny learned it.  It is NEVER over and we are NEVER out of it.  If you are down by multiple scores in the second half you go no huddle and HURRY THE HELL UP. It is one thing to get beaten by a better team that day or just to have a bad game, but there is NEVER an excuse for the coaches giving up.

 

It was so bad at one point the ESPN Commentators even wondered why the Skins were playing so casually.  Luckily my movie room uses an HD projector against a wall or I might have broken my TV with my shoe.  I mean, receivers were WALKING back to the huddle, not even jogging. The fact we showed we could run a hurry up very effectively in the 4th made the performance in the 3rd all the more unnerving.

[fordranger76]

I have no problem with the way they ran the offense at that point. They had literally did nothing up until then. They had to build some momentum and the best way to do that was come out and just run their offense. It could have gotten much worse had they tried to force things.

[dahibachi]

Yeah I did not like the pace in the 3rd quarter but it isn't the first time I've had a complaint about the Redskins pace when they've been behind.

[Ludomaniac]

Yeah sometimes i wished they would have showed more urgency because in the end what beat us was the clock, we scored 20 straight points and if we had just a few more minutes we could have came back and won the game

[PlayAction]

OR, the Skins could have rushed the pace and wound up having to punt the ball back to Philly.  I think the Skins were still wary of putting the Defense back on the field without any rest.

[TheGreek1973]

What beat us were the THREE turnovers in our own 50 side of the house, the safety and Kai missing the FG.  Think about it, safety 2-ponts, FG 3 points, extra point which we didn't go for and went for the 2 point conversion 1 point.  the game is tied.

 

it just shows you as bad as we looked that first half, the game was decided on a couple of plays.

[mitchellvii]

Agreed we played like sh*t the first half but my point is we looked resigned to the loss in the 3rd with our casual use of the clock.  That's on the coaches.

 

The good part in this is that I hoped they learned the lesson we can come back on anyone so get some urgency.  The fact that we went no huddle after we scored confirms to me Shanny did not think we could win and that is why he was slow playing us.  The thinking was "Ok this game is done, let's get RG back in a groove with some high percentage plays and take our time.  If we hurry we may put the defense back on the field and lose by 50 at home ..."  That makes sense actually but it is not the attitude of a champion.

[cphil006]

At that point it was too early to panic and get sloppy in a two minute offense... I think they were trying to get in sync.  Calling a play and concentrate on executing it...  Seemed to work as they got into a rythm...

Eagles kept us out of sync the entire first half... their offense wore our defense down... then did it again after we returned a fumble for TD... Morris' fumble and safety were catalysts that kept us out of sync the entire frist half...

[RandyHolt]

+1

 

We refuse to run hurry up when its the rage across the league for many years now, if not a decade.  

It does not matter what the score is. We  have no urgency on offense no matter how much we are losing, the opponent we are facing., nothing.  

 

And almost predictably last night, we ran out of possessions at the end. Opting for an onside, instead of trying our damnedest to get the score closer in the 3rd quarter.  

 

When we finally did run a few plays in hurry up, it was a train wreck. having to call timeout on 3rd and 2. Dink and dunk. Refusing to get out of bounds. Barely able to avoid delays. Sloppy. We have been practicing our 2 minute drill for years. Eagles in their new offense seemed twice as fast to the LOS and twice as effective. How is that?  

 

Will a lurking reporter ask Shanahan why he abhors HU yet says he prefers up tempo? 

 

Teams open in the 2 minute drill and then lay off the gas. The exact opposite of what we do. Our offense while it can be effective if Morris can run for 100, is dated. Kyle wants a slow methodical approach that cannot  even get started with just 1 turnover. Then we are forced into pass pro, where we suck. 

 

I hope Kelly opened the Shanahai eyes as to the potential benefits of a proper hurry up. Including against teams like us, that are simply not built to come from behind. 

[TD_washingtonredskins]

I'll go with the 26-7 first half, not the 7 points we gave up in the third quarter. I see your point, but I think we were just trying to sustain some offense and get something going.

[WarpathHitchhiker]

Here's what I will say.  I'm not sure how many posessions we had in the 3rd quarter or anything like that.  But for the first posession in the third quarter, we NEEDED to run a huddle up offense.  We had been gashed every which way on defense and made terrible terrible decisions on offense.  We needed to establish our offense and we aren't a hurry up team. 

 

Once we scored our first offensive touchdown I will admit we should have displayed more urgency. In the NFL you are never out of a game.  After we showed we could drive the field and score we needed to speed things up. 

[RandyHolt]

I agree Warpath, to open the 3rd we had to be who we were, and establish a drive. We are too far into the play action offense to change mid game. 

 

But I ask, why is our two minute drill always so sloppy. I can see why we don't use it, its ugly. Any successes seem to be from RGIII magic, Yet it seems all the other teams I see run hurry up simply look more organized. All of them. I am alone in my observation?  

 

Talking about III taking risks, maybe its in our lame HU / 2MO where he is at most risk. Think Ngata. Having to do things himself to win the game. 

 

We are a team that does not go pass happy. But I do not know why we cannot change to a team that can go pass happy when needed. Going to hurry up only when a team is in prevent / up big, it will always be a dink and dunk affair. We will never develop a hurry up only using it against prevent. 

 

How about this radical approach, go hurry up when a defense is not expecting it. Practice it. When Morris runs for 100 we win. Its like 1983 still.  The league is changing and has been for a decade. 

 

Are there any other teams that never run hurry up? 

[bowhunter]

I was most disappointed with the way the second half ended. We had 50 seconds to move down the field to score something and end on a positive note. No hurry up, no urgency. After the first false start penalty Shanny seemed to throw in the towel. Coach to win

[Warhead36]

We're an awful no huddle/hurry up offense.

[Zazzaro703]

This is one of my biggest complaints. Even when we go to the hurry up its still not that fast and I see 5-7 seconds run off each play that shouldn't. Not sure if that's Griffin and just not getting to the line of scrimmage and calling the play quick enough or it's just the entire team, but it's still slow and when we are losing by more than one score in the 2nd half we never go to it quick enough. Always mid fourth quarter it seems.

[ChampSkinsFan]

RG3 can't run the hurry up. It was excusable when he was a rookie but in year two he should know the offense well enough by now.

[jpoer]

I had posted this in another thread back in August:

 

I see alot of the 2006 opener in this game. 

We came off a playoff season, where we lost to the Seahawks, thanks again Carlos "Stone Hands" Rogers.

Portis suffered an injury in the Preseason against the Bengals.

It was the 5 Year Anniversay of 9/11 and there were alot of pregame festivities for the Monday Night Opener vs the Vikings.

And what happens we come out flat as hell!!!

We give Brad Childress his very first win in his very first NFL game as a HC.

The BIG difference is that of course we have RG3 and not Mark Brunell.

Bottom Line: We have to win this game because we get the Packers the very next week on the road...

 

What beat us were the THREE turnovers in our own 50 side of the house, the safety and Kai missing the FG.  Think about it, safety 2-ponts, FG 3 points, extra point which we didn't go for and went for the 2 point conversion 1 point.  the game is tied.

 

it just shows you as bad as we looked that first half, the game was decided on a couple of plays.

 

I was screaming this exact thing while watching the game last night!!!

[Dirt]

The way I saw it, we lost the game via exactly two runs from Vick.  I couldn't believe he kept just chugging downfield.  It was the only thing they did in the second half, and it was the difference in points.

[Murphs56]

RG3 can't run the hurry up. It was excusable when he was a rookie but in year two he should know the offense well enough by now.

 

Hard to Practice these things during the offseason when you had no offseason and were extensively rehabilitating your knee.

[Diehard Otis]

Hard to Practice these things during the offseason when you had no offseason and were extensively rehabilitating your knee.

 

Agree.  I won't lie, I was screaming at the tv in the mid 3rd Quarter too.  But ya know, something hit me during that point of the game (yeah, it did seem like Shanny was willing to concede it): Coach has a plan.  He's got a plan man, & then I started to get excited!  

 

If we're still not running a credible 2 Minute Offense by the twilight stages of the season, then something is definitely wrong & The Head Coach can rightly be vilified for it.  

 

But Old Man Shanahan did say give him 5 years.  This is only Year 4: Year 2 of RGIII's development (and he spent the entire off-season rehabbing to boot).  I get a sneaking suspicion that ol' Coach is easing him into Top Notch Quarterback status.  The man's bona fides truly do speak for themselves.  He knows Quarterbacks.  

 

There just might be a method to the madness.

[garyclarkforhall]

I think everyone's comments about needing to slow the pace to sustain drives and to rest the defense are pretty accurate as to why there was no "no huddle" in the 3rd.

 

They had the ball on the Eagles 40 with 6 minutes left down 13.  If that drive goes, they have two timeouts and about 4 minutes left to win.

 

Had we not missed the FG and that drive resulted in points, we probably wouldn't have this conversation.

 

That said, I think perhaps this demonstrates how much hand-holding the Shannys are doing with RGIII on the offense.  I read a lot about how he did not have a lot of read progressions at Baylor so this is still very new to him.  In hurry-up when everything is a read, this may be an issue.

[TexasSkinsFan]

IMO the game was decided when we missed the FG. We make that and instead of going for it on fourth down in an impossible situation we would have just kicked another FG and been down by 6. Had nothing else changed once Hankerson catches his second TD pass we would be talking about winning and feeling good today

[TheGreek1973]

IMO the game was decided when we missed the FG. We make that and instead of going for it on fourth down in an impossible situation we would have just kicked another FG and been down by 6. Had nothing else changed once Hankerson catches his second TD pass we would be talking about winning and feeling good today

No question about it that miss by Kai was HUGE. As the safety was HUGE.  Honestly if you are an Eagles fan that knows football you should be worried why your team came out totally flat in the 2nd half against a team you were beating like a drum in the first half.

 

Lets hope Kai get his stuff together, we can't afford misses on a 40 yard FG.  And certainly we are not THAT good of a team to turn the ball over 3 times in our own end of the field with one resulting in 2 points immediately.  remember how we got the division last year.  As bad as our D was, he had a huge + on the turnover ratio.  In this game along RGIII threw almost half the INTs he threw all last year.

[Diehard Otis]

I think everyone's comments about needing to slow the pace to sustain drives and to rest the defense are pretty accurate as to why there was no "no huddle" in the 3rd.

 

That said, I think perhaps this demonstrates how much hand-holding the Shannys are doing with RGIII on the offense.  I read a lot about how he did not have a lot of read progressions at Baylor so this is still very new to him.  In hurry-up when everything is a read, this may be an issue.

 

Yes.  They appear to be easing him into taking full command of all aspects of Pro Quarterbacking.  I do not expect to see RGIII being handled with kid gloves once we near the midpoint of the season.  This was the guy's 1st game back from serious injury.  It bugged me at the time not seeing The Offense go into Hurry Up Mode, but I'm sure they are progressing him according to a sound plan (not that I would know what it is).  I trust the Shannys.  These guys know Offensive Football.

[TD_washingtonredskins]

RG3 can't run the hurry up. It was excusable when he was a rookie but in year two he should know the offense well enough by now.

 

With all those reps he got between year 1 and year 2?

 

Like anything, those things will improve with experience. If nothing else, we got a lot of practice with the no-huddle on Monday night. I also recall a couple pretty decent late-game comebacks last year (@ Tampa, @ New York, vs. Baltimore) so using the term "can't" seems a bit of an overexaggeration.