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(photo by Brian Murphy)

Over the last few weeks we ran a two–part interview with Doug Farrar, who authored the Washington Redskins chapter for the Football Outsiders Almanac 2009.

While several interested nuggets came out of that conversation, the most intriguing item was Farrar’s claim that the entire 2008 season unraveled because of the injury to Pro Bowl tackle Chris Samuels.

As a refresher, here’s a quick recap:

“They posted their three worst [defense-adjusted value over average] totals in week eight, when he was out with a knee [injury] and then the last few weeks of the season, once he was done for the year,” Farrar said. “One of our stats – adjusted line yards – tries to separate as best we can, an offensive line performance from a running back performance. Weeks one through seven, they had a 4.86. Weeks eight through 13, it was 4.20. That was with Samuels out one game. Weeks 14 through 17, it was 3.74, meaning it plummeted an entire yard.”

So basically, the stats show the Redskins offense got a yard worse per play with Samuels on the sideline. And that’s not all.

According to Farrar, the Redskins power rank (which measures a team’s success rate in short-yardage situations) went from 86 percent to 50 percent. And running back yards went from 4.78 per play the first seven weeks to an anemic 2.92 the final three weeks of the season.

Armed with this information, we felt obligated to ensure Samuels knew just how vitally important he is to the team’s success.

Hey Chris, did you know the downfall of the entire 2008 season was your injury?

“I tell you what, we’ve got a great group of lineman up front,” Samuels said, attempting to go into ‘player-speak’ mode. “We’re solid up front, in my opinion. We lost some good players from last year, but we replaced them with good players like Derrick Dockery and now with Stephon Heyer starting. So I can’t just take credit for anything like that. Maybe in those particular games they were doing something different on the defensive side with their schemes against us.”

No, sir. When the stats show the Redskins offense basically shut down without you in there, you can’t downplay this …

“The defense had a great game that day,” he said with a laugh.

The Bengals? You’re going to play that card when we’re talking about losing to Cincinnati?

“Yeah, they played great,” Samuels said. “I watched the game on TV when I was injured, and they did a great job.”

We’ll give you a chance to brag about your offensive line because you’ve all looked good this preseason, but we need you to admit, this team is nothing without you.

(Laughs). “You know that you’re not going to get anything out of me of that nature,” he said. “I’m telling you, they must have had a good scheme on us.”
Fine, be that way. Go ahead and talk about your offensive line.

“So far, so good,” Samuels said of the offensive line’s performance thus far. “We’re doing some good things. But can we improve? Yeah, there’s a lot of things we can do to continue to improve our techniques. I think as this group continues to play alongside each other, we’re going to continue to head in the right direction. But, so far, so good.”

Samuels might not admit it, but everyone else knows that for all the talk of whether or not Jason Campbell is the long-term solution at quarterback, he’ll only go as far as his offensive line takes him. And that starts with Samuels, the six-time Pro Bowler.

If he stays healthy, then the Redskins offense should be poised for improvement in year two of the Jim Zorn era. If not, then brace yourself for more letdowns and meltdowns of Bengal proportions.

photo by Brian Murphy

The preseason has come and gone and now there is just one thing left to do before the NFL season kicks off – roster cuts.

The Washington Redskins, like every other team in the league, must tell 22 players they’re simply not good enough in order to get their roster down to 53 by Sunday.

Some choices are easy. Many are not.

Jason Campbell and Todd Collins will remain in town. But Chase Daniel and Colt Brennan both went to bed Friday night hoping that they’d shown the Redskins coaches enough to stick around. Neither Shaun Suisham nor Dave Rayner can know for sure which kicker will survive through the weekend. Dominique Dorsey, Anthony Alridge and Marcus Mason each remain hopeful that they’ll make the trip to New York next weekend to take on the Giants.

While the only opinions that truly matter on the final roster are those that come from the Redskins front office (scary, huh?), we figured we’d add our two cents on some of the few roster spots worth debating.

First of all, if it were up to us, Daniel would make the team over Brennan. Nothing personal against Colt – we’ve just liked what we’ve seen from Chase this preseason. He’s a tough guy, who can move around in the pocket and make tough throws. Brennan’s biggest problems these days, for whatever reason, seem to be in his head. He’s a very likeable kid and could very well one day be a legitimate quarterback at the pro level, but this preseason he’s doing his best Patrick Ramsey impression – getting sacked routinely and throwing mind-numbing interceptions.

The play that sealed it for us was Daniel’s touchdown pass to rookie wide out Marko Mitchell in the final minute of the game at Jacksonville. Having just seen the referees take away what appeared to be a touchdown pass to tight end Todd Yoder, Daniel calmly jogged back out onto the field on fourth down and threw a perfect four-yard touchdown pass that only Mitchell could catch. The Redskins, as anyone familiar with the recent years can attest, struggle mightily in goal line situations. But Daniel and Mitchell made it look easy. With points being so hard to come by over the last year or so, stuff like that can’t go unnoticed.

As far as the kicking situation goes, if it were up to us, the job would go to Rayner. Not because of anything we’ve necessarily seen from him – after all, he’s only one for one on fieldgoal attempts (and it was just a 26 yarder). But we’d give the nod to Rayner because we’re of the mindset we’ve seen what Suisham has to offer and it’s simply not good enough. Yes, he converted a 48 yarder last night, but how many Redskins fans were honestly confident he’d put it through the uprights as he lined up for the attempt?

Last season, statistically speaking, Suisham was one of the absolute worst kickers in the league. And that’s just his fieldgoal attempts. Last night, we watched his kickoffs drop around the 10 yard line, which made it all too easy for the Jaguars to start each drive with good field position. Suisham is a likeable guy and we’ve enjoyed talking hockey with him, but the truth is the Redskins don’t have a large margin of error, and this guy is too much of a liability to trust heading into another season.

As for the running backs, we went into the final preseason game pulling for Alridge. And then he coughed up a terrible fumble in the early stages of the game that was returned for a touchdown. Instead of trailing 3-0, the ‘Skins were suddenly down 10-0 before the offense ever took the field. Again, the Redskins aren’t good enough to be able to overcome many of these avoidable mistakes.

It would have been nice to have a speedy little change-of-pace back in the mold of Darren Sproles or Leon Washington, but we simply don’t trust Alridge to hold onto the ball. For that reason, we’d give the final spot to Mason. It’s impossible not to like the kid and he’s going to give everything he’s got every time he touches the ball.

One player who wasn’t on the bubble, but who we’d feel obligated to address is Mitchell. The seventh-round pick looked absolutely dreadful during minicamp as he dropped pass after pass. But he’s consistently improved since then and ends the preseason with three touchdown catches (which, if we’re not mistaken, matches the last decade of James Thrash’s career). Sure, the guy will enter the season as the fifth receiver, but we’re here to say this kid should be active on gameday.

In the immortal words of the Worldwide Leader, “All he does is catch touchdowns.” Even if you can only get him on the field for a handful of offensive plays, Mitchell should be rewarded for his steady progress and his ability to haul in touchdowns. Good teams and good coaches find ways to use players like Mitchell. Let’s hope that’s the case for Jim Zorn and the Redskins.

Now that we’ve said all of this, we fully expect the team to stick with Brennan, Suisham and others we could make an argument against. They very well might feel that Brennan and Daniel played to a tie this offseason and preseason, and if that’s the case, the tie goes to the guy with tenure.

The chief reason a player should make the final 53-man roster is because he gives the Redskins the best chance to win football games. If Vinny Cerrato and friends think Brennan, Suisham and Alridge fit that description, so be it.

We just hope that if Daniel gets cut, the rumors are true and he’s already lined up his next career move – playing Ben Roethlisberger in a made-for-TV movie titled “Church Ladies Gone Wild: The day God sent a minivan to gun down an NFL quarterback.”

photo by Brian Murphy

Last week we brought you part one of our conversation with Doug Farrar, who authored the Washington Redskins chapter of the Football Outsiders Almanac 2009. Most of our conversation in part one centered on Jason Campbell and the quarterback situation, but that wasn’t all we talked about. In part two, we focused more on the rest of the offense and what to expect in 2009.

One of the things that really stood out in this year’s Football Outsiders Almanac was just how high the Redskins receivers ranked in dropped passes. When you watch a guy like Braylon Edwards, you notice him dropping a ton of passes. But it was definitely surprising to us to see Santana Moss and Antwaan Randle El ranked so high on the list. Were they as bad as the numbers seemed to indicate?

“I think, when you’re talking about dropped passes, it really depends on the offense,” Farrar said. “We don’t want to say that Campbell would automatically be a Hall of Famer if he was in the perfect circumstances. There are things he needs to work on still. One of the things I saw when I watched film was a tendency to bail on a play and not stick with it until its logical ending. Meaning, basically, there are times when he makes a throw before he should. For example, one stat we tracked was he averaged 5.86 per attempt on third and eight or more. That’s obviously not going to get the job done.

“One of the things that separates the great quarterbacks is the ability to stay in the pocket for that extra second or that extra touch they can put on a pass so that the ball is in the perfect location when that receivers turns, with the ball right over his back shoulder,” he continued. “Campbell’s not there yet. I don’t blame him entirely, because this offense is all about time and rhythm and was new to everyone last season. A bulk of the dropped passes were the receivers’ fault, but some of them were Campbell’s fault as well.  Yeah, the amount of drops was a problem, but it doesn’t stand out as much as a guy like Edwards or Terrell Owens – where a team has one marquee guy who does it a lot.

“The one thing I’d like to see more of from Campbell and the Redskins offense is him in the shotgun. Last year, Campbell had a DVOA of 9.1 under center and a 35.6 in shotgun,” Farrar said. “And we’re not talking about a small sample size. There were over a hundred shotgun attempts. The Patriots, Chiefs and Cardinals all ran over 50 percent of their offense from the shotgun last year and it would help Campbell a lot. He seems to be able to progress in his reads better when things aren’t so much in his face and he can get a sense of what’s going on down the field.”

We talked about the passing game. Now let’s switch gears and focus on the running game. Do you guys still believe Clinton Portis is one of the league’s elite running backs?

“He is, in my mind, by far the best pass blocking back in the game,” he said. “It’s not even close. He can still catch. He can still run. He led the league in rushing yards through the first eight games last season. But now, because they can’t fix the offensive line, the team has said that Ladell Betts will be the third-down guy. Even though the numbers show Portis was more effective than Betts was on third down. But it’s easier to say you’re addressing the problem by making changes to one position instead of half the offense.

“As far as I’m concerned, Clinton Portis is one of the top 10 running backs in the entire NFL,” Farra said. “There were going to be possible overuse issues, had he stayed healthy. He was on pace for 374 carries, which is a bit much for anyone. And he’s going to be 28, which is when running backs begin to trend downward, for the most part. But to me, he has always been and continues to be, one of the best in the game.”

If you had to put money on just one of the three second-year pass catchers – Devin Thomas, Malcolm Kelly and Fred Davis – succeeding, who you got?

“I would think from a tools standpoint it would be Thomas,” he said. “But we really didn’t get to see a lot from all of them. The thing about this offense is that you don’t need that one elite receiver to make it go. That’s why I thought the Redskins might have overcompensated by drafting all of those guys. Brett Favre, when he ran this offense during his Super Bowl years, did not have Sterling Sharpe anymore. He had Antonio Freeman and a bunch of other guys who were good, but not great. When the Seahawks went to the Super Bowl in 2005, Matt Hasselbeck’s lead receiver was Bobby Engram. The receivers don’t need to be great. They just need to get the timing of the offense down and run the right routes.”

What can we reasonably expect from the 2009 Washington Redskins?

“That’s a tough one,” Farrar said. “That’s a real tough one. I’d feel a lot better about this offense if they’d addressed the issues on the offensive line. We added a new stat to the book this year, and we talk about it in the St. Louis Rams chapter, teams that draft offensive linemen – specifically tackles – totaling 1,200 on the draft value chart, whether it’s one lineman or two combined, have major upswings in offensive DVOA the next year. And it makes sense because you’re increasing your protection.

“Well, Vinny Cerrato has opted not to upgrade that offensive line through the draft, even though it’s cheaper and a more long-term solution,” he said. “You could say he originally drafted Derrick Dockery, and now he’s brought him back, but otherwise, I’d feel a lot better about their chances if they’d done more to add offensive line depth.

“As long as Moss, [tight end Chris] Cooley and Portis all stay healthy, they should be okay,” Farrar said. “I think they’re going to be wonderful defensively. They forced the most three-and-outs of any team in the league last year, and there’s no reason to think that won’t happen again this year. I think their front seven could be fairly dominant. If they’re going to get anywhere in that brutal division, it’s going to be because of that defense.”

There are some folks in town who are convinced we’ve seen the best we’re ever going to see from Campbell and that when he’s finally run out of town, he’ll never be a starter again. What say you?

“I don’t see that at all,” he said. “Campbell doesn’t have any real problems in his release, delivery or dropbacks. There are no mechanical issues that would keep teams away. His biggest problem has been that he hasn’t been able to stick in one system for any extended amount of time. I’ve always thought that quarterback is the one position people hold the least amount of patience, and it’s ironic, because it’s the position in all of sports that requires the most.

“If Campbell were to go to a team with a good offensive line and a couple of good receivers, he’d be fine,” Farrar said. “I mean, what happens if this is Kurt Warner’s last year and the Cardinals lose complete faith in Matt Leinart and they signed Jason Campbell? Do you really think Campbell is going to fail with Anquan Boldin, Larry Fitzgerald and Steve Breaston as his receivers? I don’t.”

photo by Brian Murphy

In what is quickly becoming a weekly segment at this point, we found ourselves standing in front of Washington Redskins cornerback Kevin Barnes in the locker room after the 27-24 loss to the New England Patriots Friday night.

You may remember it was just a week ago that Barnes said he made such a good read on an otherwise ordinary play that he was going to go home and dream about it that night. We could only guess what his reaction would be after the rookie recorded his first NFL interception.

“Coach put us in a great situation,” he said. “Playing two-man, and basically, my job is to be between the quarterback and the receiver. The receiver ran this funky route – an out, up and comeback – I had a safety over top, so I just stayed underneath the play. The receiver broke, the quarterback threw it and I just snuck in underneath.”

Be honest, how good did it feel to get the interception?

“It felt good, but I was kind of too excited,” Barnes said. “I ran down the sideline another 20 or 30 yards, then I ran back inbounds and spun the ball. They say you’re supposed to keep the ball, but I don’t even know where it’s at now.

You said a week ago that cornerbacks like yourself enjoy the spotlight. You keep making plays like that and people are going to notice …

“I mean, I’m a hometown guy, so I gotta make the hometown fans happy, you know,” he said. “I promise you, the more opportunities I get, the more plays I’m gonna make.”

What did the guys say to you on the sidelines after the play?

“They told me I should have scored,” Barnes said. “They were just picking on me a little bit, but everybody congratulated me on my first pick.”

How long are you allowed to enjoy this moment?

“For the night, I guess,” he said. “We get back to work on Sundays, so then it’s time for Jacksonville. This next week is really the big test because us young guys are going to have to play to win the game. The older guys aren’t playing, so that’s gonna be a real test.”

How’s your confidence these days?

“I mean, my confidence is always high,” Barnes said. “But it doesn’t really mean anything because now this game is over and I have to go out and prove it again next week.”

Was this your biggest test you’ve faced at the NFL level?

“Not to say anything bad against the last two teams we’ve played,” he said. “But I felt the Ravens, maybe because it was my first game, were the toughest and most physical team we’ve played so far. But I did idolize Randy Moss growing up, so seeing him in pregame warm-ups catching the ball with one hand and everything, it kind of hit me like, ‘This is real. This is my life now.’”

And while Barnes admits he’s still adjusting to his new career, his teammates say he’s beginning to make a name for himself on the field.

“Every week I can see he’s developing and he’s getting better,” said safety Chris “The Predator” Horton. “That’s what they want to see from these young guys – every week they want to see development. He could definitely be a player in this league. Obviously there’s still some stuff he knows he needs to get done. He’s got to start learning splits and things like that, and understand how receivers are trying to set him up. But once he gets a handle on that, he’s going to be alright.”

Game 1: Get on the field and don’t embarrass yourself. Check.
Game 2: Make a play worth dreaming about. Check.
Game 3: Pick off your first NFL pass. Check.
Game 4: If you get your hands on the ball again, for the love of god, don’t lose it celebrating.

photo by Brian Murphy

It goes without saying that football is a physical sport.

Roughly seven minutes into the game Friday night, this was emphatically reinforced when Washington Redskins linebacker London Fletcher delivered a crushing blow to New England Patriots running back Laurence Maroney (as seen above).

Our initial reaction when we saw the photo was – damn, all that for a two-yard gain? But then we got to thinking – how would Redskins players react to the image? We decided to have a little fun in the post-game locker room. We simply walked up to a player, showed the photo and asked him to describe what he saw.

“I see a hit like that and I think it’s fantastic,” said defensive end Andre Carter. “That’s just fantastic. As Marcus Washington used to say, ‘That’s Riddell on Riddell.’ And on that play, the Redskins’ Riddell got the best of the Patriots’ Riddell.”

Naturally, offensive players had a different reaction.

“I’m just praying for the guy that he’s okay,” said tackle Chris Samuels. “That looks crazy, right there. I’m just gonna pray that he’s okay.”

Some players saw the hit as a possibility of things to come.

“I see a very hurt Patriot and a very happy Redskin,” said cornerback Fred Smoot. “That’s the image we want to have for our defense – very physical. We don’t care about all the other accolades. We just want to be very physical. We want offenses to know that when they play us, they gonna get hit.”

Is the body meant to bend that way?

“No, man,” he said. “That’s what football does. You get bent in ways the body can’t go, but we bounce back. We’re athletes.”

Some players saw the play as a missed opportunity.

“That play, the ball actually came out,” said safety Chris Horton. “I tried to get it, but he somehow stuck his arms out there and got it back. But that was a great hit by London, and it shows why he’s our leader on defense.

“He’s a smaller guy, so he can get up under a lot of these running backs,” Horton said of Fletcher. “When he brings it, he definitely delivers a nice blow. That picture right there, it says it all. And I’m sure that guy is going to be feeling that hit on the plane ride home.”

And what was Fletcher’s reaction when he saw the image of Maroney being dumped on his head? He laughed.

“Well, it looks like he’s definitely not in a great position,” Fletcher said. “It was a big collision. I wish I could have kept my feet under me even better. It was a big collision, and that’s a great picture. I just try to use my leverage and deliver a big hit. I wish we had recovered the football though.”

And then there’s safety LaRon Landry.

“Dang,” Landry said. “Ass all up in the air. Head all in the ground. Can I really say what I want to say?”

Absolutely.

“He got fucked up,” Landry said. “That’s what I see.”

Yes he did, LaRon. Yes he did.