Ignatius J. Posted September 10, 2001 Share Posted September 10, 2001 the drunk man sitting next me told me repeatedly "this is going to be a long afternoon for YOU" I don't know where to begin really. Smoot looked amazing. George didn't. Charger fans all wear a jersey with the number 55. On the way to the stadium we saw a man in a car with a red jersey that said 28 on it. We tried to scream out to him, but he drove past. As we got closer, more and more 28's appeared and 24's and 44's, and 9's. If I knew how to count i'd say that at least 1/10 of the people inside qualcom were wearing burgandy of some sort. Most redskin fans liked my shirt. I found a deion jersey on sale at the local sporting goods store. I crossed out sanders and wrote smoot overtop. It went over well. I can't thank you guys enough for telling me to go. My seats were all the way up at the top of the stadium, but you could see everything. I was expecting much worse. As charger fans settled in around me you could tell that you were in hostile territory. There was a giant patch of vurgandy across the feild, but up here, we were in charger country. After that, well, you can imagine that things went south and got uncomfortable, and after every turnover that same drunk guy would turn to me and say it was going to be a long afternoon for me. So I'll just give you some impressions from the game. 1st. Smoot is excellent. I don't mean shawn barber, i'm a playmaker sometimes excellent, i mean truly excellent. I'll go further, our entire cornerback squad is excellent.... at MAN coverage. When we were in man to man, no reciever got a step on our cornerbacks. All day long, no balls were thrown at our corners, and the ones that were, they were intercepted. We shut down their recievers, period. But our zone was terrible. Norv can pick apart a zone coverage, and every pass into a zone was complete and big. I'm gong to take a little leap here and say that it's probably due to poor safety play. We've known they were inadequate, but when you compare them to our corners, they are just lacking. Aside from the excellent coverage, he also has shown that he has a nose for the ball with the fumble recovery. 2nd The westbrook interception. Jeff george throws a deep ball into the endzone and westbrook hits it, it bounces up, and then the chargers get the ball ont he 20. I don't know how it looked on TV, but that ball should never have been thrown. Westbrook was NOT open. AS soon as i saw that pass i lost all faith in george. everything they said was true, he'd throw it to a covered man in desperation without a second thought. Bye bye NFL career. 3rd The offensive AND defensive lines. they got the job done. Maybe the offensive line was very good. They came at us pretty hard and you could see the pocket collapse around george, but they almost never got a hand on him. I don't know about the run blocking though, we were behind the whole game and simply never tried to run. The defensive line got pressure often with little to no blitzing. Kenard Lang is a better run stopper than stubby or wilkinson. He has a motor and he can really blow upfeild, he doesn't do it on every play, but the point is that he can. 4th The linebackers were terrible. LaVar made some nice stops, but he would just as often find himself tied up by ONE blocker. In the open feild he's a monster, but he has yet to figure out how to truly shed blocks in the NFL. I forsee this as a problem down the road.... BArber looked bad. I mean real bad. 3 and inches barber either missed or got run over when he was in position to make stops. It was not good. Too many runs for 9 yards. Linebackers need to stop him after 3 or 4. Anyway, that's all for now. It was a great experience. Are there any other west coast games that aren't sold out? Dallas? Denver? Arizona? -DB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC_Clone Posted September 10, 2001 Share Posted September 10, 2001 I definitely agree with you on the linebackers. Barber will be gone after this year and it will not be much of a loss at all. He makes an occasional great play but he is undersized and is useless when the team runs up the middle. Mitchell is average at best. I like Lavar and I do think he will be great but the people who are saying how awesome he looked must not have been seeing what I was seeing. He gets blocked too easily and for the most part as soon as the lineman lays a paw on him he is out of the play. He didn't have a very good game. ------------------ <IMG SRC="http://www.ideaspot.net/nfl/NFC_East/medium/wash1-med.gif" border=0><IMG SRC="http://www.ideaspot.net/nfl/NFC_East/medium/noboys-med.gif" border=0> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest fuji869 Posted September 10, 2001 Share Posted September 10, 2001 Hey DrunkenBoxer, I am all familiar with watching my first Redskin’s game in hostile territory. It was 3 years ago (during their 0-7 start in 1998) in the King Dome against the Seattle Seahawks, as you know the King Dome is know for being a very loud place. Similar you in San Diego with Tim Dwight punt return; the Seahawks Steve Brusard returned the opening kick-off for a TD and the Redskins offense was ineffective with key turnovers. There were a lot of Redskins fans at that game I would say about 20% of the crowd were wearing Burgundy and Gold. As I got harassed by Seahawk fans on the way out I reminded them that we had won 3 Super Bowl to their 0. I hope you did that to the Chargers Fans! Oh yea nice gesture with the Sanders / Smoot Jersey! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin West Posted September 10, 2001 Share Posted September 10, 2001 DB- I'm thrilled that you went to the game and hope you had a great time. Trust me, Arizona tickets will not be problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.