The Takeaways, Week 10: Redskins at Buccaneers
November 13, 2018
by Steve Thomas
The Redskins scored an important victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday afternoon, successfully rebounding from last week’s disaster against the Falcons. 6 and 3 is 6 and 3, no matter how a team gets there. Quibbling with this game too much isn’t my intent, but I’d be remiss in not giving an honest accounting of the takeaways from this game, because it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. The Redskins did do some things right today – obviously enough to win – but there were also a pretty significant number of negatives, and a slew of things Tampa Bay managed to do to themselves to ruin their chances. In fact, if the Buccaneers had made a few fewer mistakes, if could have actually been a pretty big win for Tampa Bay. Amazingly, I could not find a record of another game in the history of the NFL in which a team scored 3 or fewer points while gaining over 500 yards of total offense; not only that, there’s only been 1 game in which a team scored 3 or fewer points while gaining even 400 yards[1]. So, history was made on Sunday, in a good way from the Redskins perspective. At the end of the day, though, all that counts is the W. Here are The Takeaways for week 10.
The defense was more lucky than good
The Buccaneers had their way with the Redskins all day long on Sunday, consistently driving up and down the field on Washington and dominating the action in every way except the only measure that matters, points. Although there were some fine individual performances (see below), the truth is that the Tampa Bay offense was able to do anything and everything they wanted do to. What stopped them was principally drive-killing mistakes, made repeatedly, some being unforced, at the worst possible time. The truth is that Washington’s defense didn’t do much to stop Tampa except capitalize on turnovers. That last part is great – the fact that the Redskins found a way to win is awesome – but stopping the Buccaneer passing game and not allowing someone named Peyton Barber to average 4.7 yards per carry would be better. The Redskins should be applauded for the turnovers, which they’ve been getting all season, but if Tampa had an even marginally better quarterback playing on Sunday, the final score would’ve been an entirely different story.
The offensive line did a decent job, all things considered
We all know the outright trauma that the offensive line went through this week in order to even be able to line up and play, so all things considered this group did fairly well. They did surrender three sacks, and the rushing lanes were sparse at best, particularly on the edges. All in all, though, they avoided disaster and that’s all that we could have reasonably expected. Jonathan Cooper mostly did his part to prevent quarterback Alex Smith from becoming a human lawn dart, which was a good thing. It didn’t look like an All-Pro front five, for sure, but live, at least, without the benefit of rewatching this game yet, I was pretty pleased with what this group did on Sunday, even moreso given that they were facing the likes of Gerald McCoy and noted Redskin-terrorist Jason Pierre-Paul. Don’t look now, but it isn’t impossible that that the Redskins offensive line may actually survive barring any additional injuries. We saw Ty Nsekhe go out briefly during this game, and Morgan Moses looked to be in a constant state of pain, so stay tuned for next week, but for now, at least, Washington’s thrown together on the fly line gets a decent grade.
The offense failed to capitalize on turnovers
The Redskins defense handed the ball back to the offense on turnovers 4 times, but Alex Smith and company were only able to produce 3 points. This is fine when the opponent is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who were inventing new ways to lose, but Washington can’t afford to not capitalize on turnovers against better teams. Washington just isn’t talented or good enough to not get touchdowns in short field situations and still win football games. This is going to sound like a broken record, because we at The Hog Sty and most other outlets and fans have been saying it since the beginning of the season, but the Redskins offense needs to be able to score points at a significantly greater clip if this team expects to go anywhere this season. Kicking field goals instead of getting touchdowns, or getting nothing at all, on possessions resulting from turnovers is a sure way for bad to happen.
Josh Norman lived up to his billing
Although the Buccaneers did gain over 400 yards in the air, one Tampa Bay player who was not a major factor in the Bucs offense on Sunday was their best player, Mike Evans, and the credit for that goes in no small part to Josh Norman, who followed Evans for the majority of the game. Evans only had 3 receptions for 51 yards on 6 targets, didn’t have any big plays, and didn’t make a significant positive impact on the game. Norman has played up to his billing for a good bit of the season, certainly in the past month, in spite of facing some quality opposing receivers over the past few weeks. Without having gone back and watched the film, my inclination is to say that this might have been Norman’s best game of the season. Congrats, Josh, on a job well done.
Tress Way is a punting demigod
Tress most likely isn’t going to make the Pro Bowl this year, because going into this week’s game the Redskins were only ranked 23th in net punting yards, but he’s had some very big kicks this year and has repeatedly pinned opponents deep in their own territory. He did it again this week against the Bucs. Way has more than done his part this year, and its well past time that he starts getting some love in the national press. This is a good punter, football media, and he deserves to get a little bit of recognition. #TressWayProBowl2018 – let’s get that hashtag going, people.
That’s it for The Takeaways for this week. The Redskins are squarely in the driver’s seat in the NFC East and control their own destiny with multiple huge division games come up in the next month. Before they get to that, though, Washington needs to get through the Houston Texans, who’ve done nothing but win their last 6 games in a row. It’s never easy in the NFL, folks. See you next week.
[1] St. Louis Rams @ Green Bay Packers, October 16, 2011. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/201110160gnb.htm