Redskins vs. Dallas 2nd quarter game review

The first quarter review got posted earlier today.

As before, the parts in bold are the play by play taken straight from the NFL Gamebook, then my commentary is added in it's own font.

On with the second quarter.  I think you'll like how this one ends.

SECOND QUARTER

Dallas Cowboys continued.

3-4-WAS 6 (15:00) (Shotgun) T.Romo pass short right to M.Austin to WAS 5 for 1 yard (P.Buchanon, R.Doughty). PENALTY on DAL-D.Bryant, Offensive Pass Interference, 10 yards, enforced at WAS 6 - No Play.

Dallas line up in trips right for a screen to Austin with Bryant and Roy Williams as blockers. But Bryant blocks Rogers downfield immediately rather than waiting for Austin to receive the ball, leading to the PI call.

3-14-WAS 16 (14:31) (Shotgun) T.Romo pass incomplete deep middle to J.Witten [R.Doughty].

Orakpo and Lorenzo Alexander are lined up side by side on the offensive left in a nickel formation with only one down lineman (Holliday). That’s right, it was a 1-5-5 defense. Alexander is initially stymied by the LG, but Orakpo is beating the LT to the inside so Alexander slips around him to the outside. Romo is forced to throw high because of the LT being driven back into his face, then Alexander puts a hit on him for good measure. Two of those five LBs dropped back coverage and a total of four men rushed, so this was an excellent job by Haslett of creating pressure without sacrificing coverage.

Redskins vs. Dallas 1st quarter game review

Here it is - the first game review of 2010.  These tend to be pretty long so I usually do them one quarter at a time, but I hope to have the second quarter up tonight.

The stuff in bold is the raw play by play info taken directly from the exceptionally handy NFL Gamebook.  I have added my own commentary under each play (or most of them at least).

As always, these are just my opinions and interpretations.  If you have the game recorded, I encourage you to play it back and let me know if you see things differently.

Here we go...

Game reviews are coming

There seem to be more people hanging around this site than last year, so I want to give the newcomers an idea of what to expect during the regular season.

From here on out the vast majority of the posts on this site will be my play by play game reviews.  Basically this involves me playing back the game on my TiVo and trying to identify what went right and what went wrong.  I don't write up quite every play, but probably at least 75% or more.  If you're the type who prefers NFL Matchup to the Fox pregame show, you might enjoy these.  Partly because it's the part of football I find most interesting, and partly because it's what the TV view shows us, much of the focus will be on the offensive line vs. the defensive front seven.

Because these take a long time to do, and I  have a day job, they will generally go up one quarter at a time.  I try to get the first quarter posted either Monday or Tuesday night, but either way the four game review posts tend to get spread out over the course of the week.  So this isn't really going to be a site for immediate reactions, but that's not really what I'm trying to do anyway.  Occasionally on a Sunday night, if the Redskins were away so I'm not recovering from the stadium experience, I may post some of my initial thoughts.  But since you really can't tell what happened on a football play by watching it once (especially at full speed), my real evaluation won't start until I spend some quality time with the TiVo throughout the week.  After completing the game review posts I will sometimes, though not always, put up one more post of wrap up thoughts to summarize what I learned.

I'm off to FedEx now, so enjoy gameday and check in tomorrow so we can start digesting what happened.

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.

My NFL predictions

Just for fun, here are my very brief predictions for the NFL this year:

NFC EAST

First Place - New York Giants
Second Place - Philadelphia Eagles
Third Place - Dallas Cowboys
Fourth Place - Washington Redskins

I know, I know.  Sorry.  But I see the Redskins as a 7-9 team.  With a whole lot of things going just right it's not hard to picture them finishing higher up in the standings, but there's just too many things that need to fall into place.  I am inclined to set my expectations relatively low and be pleasantly surprised if proven wrong.

The Redskins final(ish) 53 man roster

The cuts are in, and at last the Redskins 53 man roster is not just hypothetical. 

It may not be entirely final though... alot of players have hit the street today and it would not be at all surprising if some of these survivors get bumped for newcomers (there is already speculation about T.J. Houshmandzadeh).

So for now at least, here are Your 2010 Washington Redskins:

Rating the Redskins by position

Back when I was doing my position previews prior to the preseason I assigned each position group a confidence level on a scale of 1 to 10.  These are entirely subjective, but even after everything that's happened in training camp and the preseason I think they still pretty much approximate how good I feel about each part of the team.