Can’t believe the Redskins won in the end; they came so close to letting it slip away. They got that nice lead early, then basically hung on for dear life. One hell of a defensive effort - not only did they hold the Bucs to 10 points, but they scored one TD, and set up the other one. The offense had only one real drive of any length.
I was surprised the Redskins didn’t try more of two things on offense: (1) play action on first and second downs (which would have been believable), and (2) reverses. They did one to Santana Moss, which worked. And there’s no rule saying you can only do one reverse in a game. If the defense continues to give good pursuit, there’s no reason not to keep running reverses to make them stay at home.
And then there’s the two things I don’t understand about Sean Taylor’s ejection. I understand spitting on an opponent is an automatic ejection, and he should have known that. But then, why did the ref just ignore Pittman’s smacking Taylor in the face, when it happened right in front of him? Does the spitting give the spittee carte blanche to do anything he wants in retaliation? I don’t get that.
The other thing I don’t get is, I see worse shit than spitting in someone’s face in practically every NFL game I watch. Hell, grabbing the face mask is worse - you can do nasty things to a guy’s neck that way - and that happens all the time. Or late hits. I remember the play (against the Raiders?) by Ray Lewis when the Ravens were on their way to the Super Bowl. The opposing QB threw the ball, and Lewis had to go about three more steps, at full tilt (loooong steps) before levelling the QB. It was an appallingly dangerous late hit, and it didn’t even draw a flag. But when it comes to spitting, the NFL is on the case. Sheesh.
But at least the good guys won. Now Gibbs has to figure out how to beat the Seahawks without an offense.
Number one defense down; next up, the number one offense.
Some random thoughts:
Here’s hoping Portis and Brunell heal quickly because their injuries have put all the pressure on the defense. That was acceptable against the lowly Iggles and a defense first team like the Bucs, but the Seadogs are going to put up points no matter what, and if the Skins can’t sustain drives and eat up the clock, they’re going to get blown out.
A lot is going to be made of 120 yards total offense, and while they have been struggling offensively the past two weeks, I don’t think enough credit is being given to the Buc’s defense. Even when Brunell had protection, he had no one open. Cooley and Moss were nonfactors, and the run game was all but stuffed.
I’d like to see an end to the run on first down, run on second down, pass on third down cliche next week. Come out firing and use the pass game to open up the run game, not the other way around.
I was really skeptical about Williams’ gameplan to leave the middle of the field open for the short stuff all day, but in the end all the completions and yards didn’t matter so he’s either a genius, or else very lucky. They kept Galloway out of it and kept a short leash on Cadillac, ultimately making an inexperienced QB try to beat them with 5 yard passes. After my stomach settled and I was able to look back at the game as a whole, I’m leaning more toward brilliant gameplan than lucky.
One final thought on the Taylor spitting incident: it was a despicable thing to do. From what I gather the league isn’t likely to suspend him for it, but I almost wish they would. As talented as he is and as desirable as it is to have him on the field in the playoffs, his actions should not go unpunished. They’ll fine him to be sure, and I hope Gibbs and Williams both come down on him hard.
The Skins fan in me is grateful that he’ll likely be on the field next week, but the football fan in me is pissed.
Well, not anything, but to a certain extent, yeah. Spitting on somebody is a big, big deal (see below). If it was a closed-fist punch he probably would have had to be punished, but I don’t think it was. I think what it came down to was that Carey felt that the Redskins should be penalized on the field for the spitting (in addition to the automatic ejection). Since you can’t do it like a hockey penalty and give Pittman a five-yard unsportsmanlike and Taylor a 15-yard double unsportsmanlike, or whatever, the only way to avoid offsetting penalties is to let Pittman get away with one shot.
Sure, but you’re talking about stuff that’s more physically dangerous, which I don’t think is the issue. The issue is context. Which is “worse” in real-world terms, tripping somebody or sprinting up when they aren’t looking and levelling them with your shoulder? In a football game, it’s the opposite – the harder a tackle or block, the better, while tripping could very well get you kicked off the field – and that’s because tripping isn’t an accepted and expected part of football, even though you could arguably hurt a guy much worse on a regular tackle than you could with a trip. Stuff like a late hit or facemask almost has to happen sometimes with all the contact that defines the sport (besides which, that stuff is illegal anyway, and usually earns the same penalty, so it’s not like the NFL condones hits like the late hit you referenced [incidentally, might that have been Siragusa bellyflopping onto Gannon? That happened in that game, too]).
Anyway, I’m sure you realize all this, but the reason that spitting in somebody’s face is a big deal is has nothing to do with football. Bill Romanowski didn’t spit on JJ Stokes accidentally in the course of trying to defend a pass. You have to remember that we’re talking about professional athletes, whose nature it is to be prideful to a fault, so going out of your way to degrade a guy who earns his living being tough and, dare I say it, “manly,” is asking for trouble. The NFL recognizes that and treats it as a serious offense, probably more as a form of riot control than anything else.
All season, when one area of the Giants game was struggling, another would step it up and pick up the slack. Today was simply a matter of everyone sucking at once.
However…
As I look back at this thread I started in preseason, I can’t complain:
Six out or eight goals met, so I guess I gotta be happy.
Okay, I will now exhaustively list every single thing that was good about any Giant in today’s game:
Strahan got 2 sacks
Coughlin didn’t use any of his 3 timeouts inside the final two minute warning
And we’re done.
The Panthers defensive line spent the entire game in the Giants backfield. Tiki made poor cuts, on those occasions when offensive linemen weren’t actively slowing him up. Eli threw awful passes off his back foot. Plaxico ran lazy routes. Special teams turned over a punt return, and negated the only good return with a penalty.
Old man Buckley – who was on the couch several weeks back – was manned up against the league’s #1 receiver, with predictable results. On the precious few occasions where linebackers were in position to make tackles, they attempted arm tackles, which is never a good idea. The safeties both had horrible games; soft in pass coverage and poor tackling in the running game.
It was the worst Manning loss at Giants Stadium since the Jets smoked the Colts 41-0 in the wildcard round. And that was Peyton’s second playoff game. Let’s hope Eli doesn’t take 6 seasons to get his first playoff win like his older brother did.
My god that game was an embarassing trainwreck.
At this point? Well, I’m so disgusted with Big Blue…
Hail, to the Redskins!
Hail, victory!
Braves on the warpath!
Fight for ol’ DC!
C’mon, ‘Skins, win it all for pride of the division. I’m rootin’ for ya.
Well Giants stunk today. I willing be rooting for Bears and New England for the remainder of the playoffs.
Defense had their worst game and offense had their worst game. Great Combo.
Kudos to Fox, he out coached us thoroughly.
Good season overall, exceeded my hopes.
Looking at my post from Hal’s thread:
We did fine, I guess I got 3 out 5 goals I was hoping for and we did pummel the Skins on Oct 30th. Manning did not show as much improvement as I hoped but O Line was much better this year and WR were much improved. Until today Defense was much better than I expected.
My condolences to the Giants fans. I was kind of pulling for them, as much as I can get interested in NFC teams. So it isn’t to take a jab at them that I make this point, but rather to make a final point about Plaxico for the year. Cedric Wilson, brought in to play the position vacated by Plaxico here in Pittsburgh, today: 3 catches for 104 yards and one touchdown. Plaxico: I’m not sure, since I didn’t watch and he didn’t show up on the stats sheet, but apparently 0 for 0, with three balls thrown his way, no catches, and two of them picked off. I’m very willing to believe Ellis Dee’s assessment that he ran lazy routes, since that was more of his MO while he was here in Pittsburgh.
Don’t be so hard on them. For those of us who had other things to accomplish on Sunday, finishing well under 3 hours was also good. Less time to watch the ineptitude.
ISTM that the ejection should have sufficed as the non-offsetting part. I mean, Taylor drew a 15 yard penalty and got tossed, with the latter being the far more serious sanction. Hitting Pittman with 15 yards seems to hit exactly that hockey balance - penalizes him for a genuine infraction, without putting the two infractions on anything like a par.
In 40 years of watching football, I must’ve seen someone ejected from an NFL game sometime, but I honestly don’t remember an instance. And I’ve certainly seen a number of tripping penalties.
I agree about the context, but part of the context is that when the play is over (or in the case of the QB, when he’s chucked the ball downfield), you aren’t supposed to have to worry about getting hit by human missiles anymore. That protection isn’t going to be instantaneous (and what is/isn’t a late hit is a judgment call at the borderline), but once the player’s had time to relax because the play’s over (or his part’s over, in a QB’s case), hitting him at full tilt isn’t part of the game anymore; it’s a mugging.
I’m not thinking of the borderline stuff in either of these cases; I’m thinking of the egregious stuff. We’ve all seen times when a guy has plenty of time to pull up after the throw/whistle/out of bounds, but flattens an opposing player after that point anyway. We’ve all seen times when a player grabs an opponent’s facemask and quite knowingly jerks it for all he’s worth. I can’t recall ever seeing an ejection for these things.
Nah, I’m talking about Lewis. The Goose couldn’t move nearly that far, that fast. This was in the open field - Gannon had rolled out way to his right and thrown it, and Lewis came from more or less in front of him. Lewis wasn’t close enough to Gannon for Gannon to have expected a hit after the throw; no one was, IIRC.
Well yeah. It’s disgusting and degrading, and people who spit in one another’s faces aren’t members of anything like polite society. I guess part of it is that I don’t regard the NFL as anything like part of polite society. Maybe it’s because I read Paper Lion when I was a kid; IIRC, the players’ descriptions of what went on in the trenches made spitting-level stuff look normal.
I’ve got to confess ignorance here.
I remember the game in late 2000 where a Cowboys player was dragging a Redskin around the field. It was either away from the play, or after it. When it comes to humiliation, this was far more visible than any spitting incident; tens of millions saw it happen on national TV. I don’t think it even drew a flag. If you’re going to toss people for spitting for those reasons, it seems like this call would be automatic. And maybe the refs on the field somehow missed it, but the guy in the booth damned sure did.
The reality is that the NFL players are constantly playing games to try to build up their own manhood, and insult their opponents’. If the league is going to say, “OK, we draw the line at spitting,” it should be ‘spitting, and everything more brazenly humiliating than that’ - and not just ‘spitting, and spitting alone.’
I’m trying to place spitting in the context of the NFL’s broader policy on what constitutes an ejectable offense, and coming up with no context, at least in terms of interactions between players. (Obviously, players bumping refs, opposing coaches, etc., is a whole 'nother thing.) AFAICT, there seems to be no policy - just this one specific kind of offense that, gross as it may be, still doesn’t seem to me to stand head and shoulders above everything else that players do to one another outside of normal game-related contact.
As someone who can definitely get interested in NFC East teams, I was rooting for the Giants too.
As a Redskins fan, my outlook on the other teams in the NFC East is like this: we’ve been playing the Giants and Eagles since the dawn of the league, and the games always seem to bring out basic, elemental football. Sometimes we win, sometimes they win. But they’ve always got my grudging respect, and I’ll usually root for them in situations where their winning doesn’t hurt the Redskins’ prospects.
Dallas, OTOH, is a whole 'nother story. A Cowboys loss, wherever and whenever, is always a Good Thing. The Redskins-Cowboys rivalry just has a whole different quality than the ‘Skins’ rivalries with the Giants and Eagles.
Exactly this Giants fan’s feelings about the Eagles. Now that we’re done, I’ll be pulling for the Redskins. The Eagles, however, if they had a 1-15 season, I’d still be pissed that they bought off the refs to get that one win.
The line for Saturday is Seattle by 9 1/2, the same margin that Indy is favored over Pittsburgh. Winning this one ain’t gonna be easy, but it can be done, as long as Washington doesn’t lay an offensive egg like they did last week. I think it’s going to take 28 to beat the Seahawks.
For me it is Dallas I hate most followed by Eagles. Skins, just a rival not a deadly rival.
I am rooting for the Bears, at least one of my old friends can have his team move on.
