The Takeaways – Week 2, Colts at Redskins

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September 18, 2018

by Steve Thomas

The Washington Redskins laid an egg on Sunday against a team that they should have beaten.  Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the Redskins came out flat against an inferior opponent the week following a big victory, one more time.  This game against the Indianapolis Colts was a depressing affair, in that essentially none of what worked well in Arizona worked today.  It was a golden opportunity to start the season off on a great note with a 2 – 0 record, and the Redskins blew it.  There’s no other way to say it – the Redskins blew it.  Washington looked bad in all phases on Sunday and made an opponent with mediocre talent and quarterback who’s played 1 game in over a year and a half look more competent than the home team.  It was a sad, embarrassing effort all around and the Redskins should be ashamed.  I’m warning you now, The Takeaways this week aren’t positive, but you knew this was coming.

Jay Gruden had a bad day

Redskins head coach Jay Gruden deserves to be called out first this week for his performance against the Colts.  His play calling was bad and his team looked unmotivated and unprepared.  Somehow, Gruden thought it was a good idea to get away from what worked last week, against a team whose defense, on paper at least, did not look as strong as the Cardinals.  The Redskins should have tried to impose their will on the Colts by letting Adrian Peterson do what he does best, which is to run north-south through the gaps.  Instead, what did we see?  Play one was an end around to Jamison Crowder.  Granted, it worked, but gadget plays don’t win games in the 1st quarter.  Peterson, who had all of three carries at halftime, needs to not run plays to the edge on any sort of a consistent basis.  Chris Thompson is not a first and second down runner; he’s a third down back who is better on the edge and in space. He’s less effective running between the tackles on first and second down.  Maybe this week nothing would’ve worked on the ground, and I’ll get to that below, but the bottom line is that Gruden needs to put his run game in a position to succeed, and he didn’t do that on Sunday.  Furthermore, when you are in middle distance to go on third down, Jay, try running a play occasionally for which the primary read doesn’t have to get significant YAC to get the first down – Gruden’s play calls in that situation are as predictable as the sun rising in the east.  Also: Jay, buddy, the end zone fade pass just doesn’t work for you, dude.  Give it up.  Gruden appeared to out-think himself this week, and the result was a disjointed mess of a game plan that looked like it was straight out of 2016, not 2018 week one.  Jay Gruden = fail, at least this week.

This is what happens what you can’t run the ball

It was no accident that the Redskins looked fairly dominant against the Cardinals, and bad against the Colts.  The most important difference was that Washington was able to consistently move the ball on the ground in Arizona, and they were terrible at it against Indianapolis.  As I said, I blame Gruden for some of it, most particularly not playing to his running backs’ strengths, but it almost doesn’t matter where the blame should be placed.  The bottom line is that, unless you are the Patriots or the Packers, teams that can control the tempo of the game and the clock usually win.  The Redskins were great at that last week and utterly failed this week, so the final score from week two really isn’t surprising.  It’s not just the fault of Gruden and/or the running backs – the offensive line is to blame as well, as you’ll read next.

The game was truly lost in the trenches

The offensive line utterly failed to live up to its billing as one of the better lines in the NFL.  They were outplayed and manhandled at times by the Colts’ defensive line, and it can’t be blamed on health.  Granted, Morgan Moses, Brandon Scherff, and Trent Williams all went down at various times throughout this game, but they were doing a poor job even when all five starters were in the game and healthy, and they came back in the game.  It was a total bust against a team that didn’t have a particularly strong defensive line.  I don’t want to hear that an offensive line featuring two Pro Bowlers was fooled by a bunch of stunts.  Less gimmicky dress shirts at practice and more actual performance, please.

Defensively, the supposedly new and improved defensive line allowed somebody named Jordan Wilkins to gain 6.1 yards per carry.  The Redskins are lucky that the Colts didn’t feature him more.  Washington did not get significant and consistent pressure on Andrew Luck, which I said in our game preview materials was a key to the game.  Luck didn’t have a particularly great game, but he and his teammates were able to do just enough to score three touchdowns behind an offensive line that was supposedly banged up.  Not one Redskins defensive lineman made an impact on this game outside of Matt Ioannidis’ sack in the first half.  They repeatedly allowed big running lanes and didn’t start to make Luck uncomfortable until late in the game.  Trench game was a total failure this week.

Josh Doctson and Jordan Reed didn’t step up

I recognize that Gruden pointed out after the game that the Colts’ secondary was playing a soft zone for most of the game in order to take away the deep balls, but all the same Josh Doctson is going to quickly run out of time to carve out a place on this team.  This is the second game (of his third NFL season) that he was unable make a significant impact.  He is theoretically Washington’s #1 receiver, and has been given every chance in the world to make that role his own, but thusfar the results have been underwhelming to say the least.  There’s still time, and I was preaching patience as late as last week, but the clock is going to strike midnight for him sometime soon.  Along those lines, Jordan Reed was a surprising no show for the first half of this game, and then made a critical fumble late in the game.  Reed is Washington’s most talented ball handler not named Adrian Peterson, and the offense’s capabilities are significantly reduced when he’s not there, literally or, as was the case today, figuratively.  I haven’t watched the All-22 film yet, so I don’t know exactly what was going on, but the Redskins desperately need him to show up.

The real story is the attendance

I must say that I was truly shocked by the report that the announced attendance this week was just 57,013.  I never expected it to be that bad.  I can’t blame the fans for not showing up, necessarily – it’s your time and your money and it’s not my place to tell you how to spend either – but I never envisioned things getting this bad.  It’s one thing to have the first game in 50 years that wasn’t sold out, which is bad enough, but if the team was 24,000-something tickets short, then the level of fan apathy is even greater than I thought.  This was the home opener following a nice victory to start the season, and I’d have bet the house before the preseason started that it would have sold out.  It gets worse, too:

Did you know about a pep rally?  I sure didn’t, and we’re a media outlet that covers this team.  If the team decided to have a rally, did it occur to someone that it might be a good idea to let the media help spread the word? We didn’t get a press release announcing a pep rally that I recall, but even if it was sent out and I just missed it, and the event actually was properly publicized (which it wasn’t), is anyone in the front office really so dense as to think that it was going to sell 24,000 tickets?  That’s just incredible to me.  It demonstrates a level of delusion and tone deafness that I didn’t think was possible.  Overall, this whole attendance issue should be alarm bells for the front office, as in five-alarm fire type of alarm bells.

I wish I could be more positive, but the Takeaways are what they are.  This is the NFL, and sometimes things don’t work out.  The Green Bay Packers visit Washington next week, so let’s hope for a better result when Aaron Rodgers and company come to town.