Eking Out Another Win

Here we are at the midpoint of the season and the Redskins are 6-2; a winning record for the first time since about 2000 I believe. Now I know it's much to early to get excited about anything at this point because the team has gone 6-1 before losing the remaining nine games of the season but while the team is standing on top of the mountain at the moment, is it wrong to savor the moment and enjoy it. Redskins fans haven't had too much to celebrate over a sustained period for a long time and it certainly is something worth enjoying to have a winning record for a change. Sure the team has made it to the playoffs a couple of times since 1991 but those times were not only based on wins, but a great deal of luck as well.

That's not to say that this current roster doesn't have it's share of luck as well. Try as they might, the team looked to be on the verge of letting the game slip away from them on several occasions yesterday. Indeed, after seeing the Redskins opening drive, I was anticipating a very high scoring afternoon with the team going all out and running up the score against the then (and still) winless Detroit Lions. But after being denied entry into the end zone the Redskins settled for three and then settled for three almost the rest of the afternoon. Now it's true that teams like Baltimore (during their Super Bowl run) won due to their defense and their field goal kicking. The Redskins aren't quite that unproductive on offense, they have the tools but why they aren't prone to use it all the time is something I fail to understand and it sort of explains why the team was in the situation it was in for a good deal of the afternoon yesterday.

One of the highlights of this year's offense is even though the west coast offense that Jim Zorn was supposed to bring is very pass heavy, the Redskins (particularly Clinton Portis) has been extremely productive with the running game. Now I don't think it's a mystery to anyone else that the Redskins are running as well as they pass but you would think that when the running game is going so well, an opponent may be better prepared for it and indeed that showed as the Lions goal line defense was rather solid considering they were a winless team. Even when looking to be productive on the offense, the team was using both the running game and the passing game but why not use more of the passing game which seemed to move the ball farther down the field more efficiently? Sure you want to eat up the clock and have a higher time of possession but field goals alone aren't going to win games. Indeed, until Santana Moss's game clinching touchdown punt return for 80-yards, it was looking as though the Lions could come back and win it.

Even after Moss's run, a scary moment came when Clinton Portis made a fourth quarter run (which again set up a field goal) left him writhing on the ground in pain. As the NFL's leading rusher, Portis has helped keep the Redskins offense very diverse in the sense that it probably more resembles the team that Joe Gibbs used to coach back in the 1980's and 1990's rather than during his second iteration. This was the team that he wanted when he started and now it's there and it nearly went away again until Portis got up and walked off the field. I think the diversity the team has been showing lately is what is setting them apart. They have shown that even though they have a west coast offense, they aren't going to get rid of the run as some of our past coaches have done. Why break something that works? Add to it. By doing so they have kept the game multi-dimensional rather than one-dimensional. Isn't that better? Next week the Skins face the Steelers of Pittsburgh in what will undoubtedly be a major test. Their game last night against the Giants was indeed a preview of what they will face. Here's hoping that they step up and deliver the way they did against the Cowboys and Eagles.