Saturday, September 11, 2010

Some thoughts on the Dallas game

Dallas will be missing their starting right tackle and left guard.  Right tackle will be filled by Alex Barron, who is frankly terrible.  Their left tackle, Doug Free, has potential but is young and learning the position (he played right last year).  Brian Orakpo and Andre Carter are already set up for success.  But more than that, this is a perfect opportunity to wreak havoc with Albert Haynesworth.  Hopefully he will be used creatively and set up to ruthlessly exploit these three vulnerabilities. 
Furthermore, the Cowboys will be seeing every Redskins blitz for the first time.  Jim Haslett ran a 4-3 in his previous NFL stops and presumably didn't show too much in preseason, so Dallas has no film on this defense.

So Tony Romo is going to get hit on Sunday night.  Repeatedly, I think.  Now every time a new defensive coordinator comes to a team there is talk about how he will emphasize turnovers, but from what we saw in preseason there really appears to be something to it this time.  One or more of those hits needs to be turned into a strip sack or an interception.

At the same time, I'm concerned that Dallas will be able to run on us.  Maake Kemoeatu was markedly unimpressive in the preseason and spent a lot of time getting pushed off of the line. Kedric Golston didn't look that great either.  It looks like the Dallas interior linemen could spend a lot of time blocking our inside linebackers and that's a bad situation.  I think it will be very important to keep Dallas from building an early lead, because if they do they could probably run it down our throats for the rest of the night. 

I picture this as a low-scoring game.  But a DeAngelo Hall interception and a timely strip sack, along with McNabb's ability to make just enough plays while under pressure, could give the Redskins an upset win.

I'm going to go with... Redskins 17, Dallas 13

2 comments:

  1. hopefully Carter can play. isn't he questionable. His ability to convert to OLB is key to Haslett's scheme

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  2. He does talk a lot, but Deangelo Hall just gave us our first defensive score since London Fletcher's pick-six vs the 2007 Cardinals. HTTR, and hail to the defense...but that was too close

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