The Takeaways – Week 1, Redskins at Cardinals
September 11, 2018
by Steve Thomas
Welcome to another year of Redskins football! For those of you who weren’t with us last year, The Takeaways is a regular feature we started halfway through the 2017 season in order to cover some of the big-picture items that came of the Redskins game – the things you’ll need to know when you’re talking about the most recent Redskins game around your workplace watercooler in the coming week, whether they are good, bad, or otherwise. So without further ado, let’s get into The Takeaways for this week.
I honestly couldn’t have dreamed up a better scenario for the Redskins’ week one contest than what happened in Glendale, Arizona this afternoon. The Redskins absolutely dominated the Cardinals in every phase of the game, which was unexpected, to say the least. Some predicted a win, but almost nobody had the Redskins winning in this fashion. It was the first week one victory of Jay Gruden’s Redskins career, and the best possible way to start the season. It won’t happen every week, because that’s just football, but at least for this week, things came up aces for our Washington Redskins.
Adrian Peterson and Chris Thompson played like studs
The running game ended up being the dream scenario for the Redskins. The team ran out of wide variety of formations and schemes, with gap runs out of the I formation, zone runs, sweeps to the edge, even power runs at the goal line, which is something we just haven’t seen much of from Gruden here in Washington. Peterson, in particular, looked years younger and was strong throughout the game despite 26 carries, and gained 96 yards and 1 touchdown. Peterson showed that he still has his vision, good burst, and that stop on a dime agility that made him great. Thompson was used to max effectiveness, with only 6 carries but each one gaining significant yardage. I don’t know if it’s realistic to expect Peterson to have 26 carries each week, but if he can, it allows Thompson to fall into that secondary back role that he fills so well. Thompson would not be as effective if forced to take on the feature back role.
Jay Gruden rode the hot hand
Kudos to Jay for continuing with the run game when it was working and resisting the urge to move to a more pass-oriented offense. Today, what we saw was Gruden recognizing that the run game was rolling in a way that we’ve rarely seen over the past 4 years, and continuing to feed it. I said this over the offseason: I think Jay has always known that his offense needs a quality running back to work properly, but he just didn’t have one who could be consistently effective in past seasons. As long as Peterson stays healthy, expect Jay to follow this same pattern as much as possible. It might have been a bit more run-heavy this week that we’ll see in every game, but believe me when I say that we’re going to see less of pass-happy Jay and more of run the ball Jay this year.
For the first time, the offense looked like the real west coast offense
Along those same lines, the Alex Smith-led Redskins offense looks more like a typical west coast offense than it did under Kirk Cousins’ stewardship. Smith is a master at the quick strike short passing game. He’s great at quickly scanning through his reads and finding the open option. He rarely drove the ball downfield for much distance, only doing it a handful of times, but didn’t make mistakes and took the yardage that was available. Smith is also athletic enough to make the RPO, which seems to be all the rage in the NFL now, work, and we saw it this past Sunday. Much like was the case with the run game, I got the impression that this was how Gruden always pictured his offense. Let’s hope we see more of what we saw today.
The defensive line passed its first test
For the most part, the new and improved defensive line did a good job in filing gaps and making tackles, which prevented the Cardinals’ All-Pro running back from running wild, because – let’s be honest – that’s what would’ve happened last year. Their performance was most definitely light years ahead of where they were even before the injuries started happening last season. They were not able to put a ton of pressure on quarterback Sam Bradford, and that needs to improve in the future, but they at least did enough to make him uncomfortable at times. This was a very promising start for a position group into which the front office has sunk a significant amount of resources; job well done, guys.
The secondary kept one of the NFL’s best in check
Larry Fitzgerald had 109 catches last season, and while his final stats from week one (7 receptions, 76 yards) don’t look awful, the fact of the matter is that he didn’t have much of an impact on this game. The bulk of the credit for that goes to the Redskins secondary, which collectively had an outstanding game, not committing any mental errors, making 5 pass defenses, and generally limiting the Cardinals receivers. It was a strong statement game for a group that some doubted because of the youth and inexperience behind the starters, but for one day, at least, it didn’t matter.
That it for The Takeaways for this week. The Redskins face the Colts next week for their home opener in Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, so we’ll be back for another edition in 7 days.