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Monday night: film review in progress, gamewrap should be complete tomorrow
Takeaway drill: going into a division rival's house and shutting them down, playing from behind and taking the lead, surviving without top players, crushing the league's top rushing defense, that's stealin.
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Monday walkthrough: on a perfect Philadelphia day the Washington Redskins take another step toward the top of the league, defeat the Eagles 23-17 to move to 4-1. The passing game played in its comfort zone while the ground game kept the chains moving and the clock ticking. In the toughest division in football the Redskins have completed their NFC Beast road schedule with 11 games to go.
First quarter (quarterly reports: Washington Post / Washington Times / Official Redskins Blog)
Second quarter (quarterly reports: Washington Post / Washington Times / Official Redskins Blog)
Third quarter (quarterly reports: Washington Post / Washington Times / Official Redskins Blog)
Fourth quarter (quarterly reports: Washington Post / Washington Times / Official Redskins Blog)
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Soapbox: I am in almost unknown territory for a Redskins fan in recent years, the team is now 4-1 and has played the toughest part of its schedule, by all objective measures this is a really really good football team. The Cowboys are good. The Eagles are good. Arizona beat the crap out of Buffalo, the Bills are a pretty good team. With the four upcoming games on the schedule, the Redskins can make some hay.
Being at the game it looked different than it did on TV and I will watch the broadcast as soon as tonight to get a different look. From where I was sitting the Redskins continued an established pattern, on defense to give up points early and lock down. On offense stay with what works and adapt. Santana Moss was basically absent, didn't catch a pass, the team found Chris Cooley instead. And grind it out. Total rushing yards: 203. Time of possession: 34:45, nine and a half minutes longer than the Eagles. And the Eagles are the league's top run defense, after starting the game with the pass the Redskins settled down into a run pattern and just wore down the Eagles defense.
I am seeing a patient team.
At 4-1 the Redskins have utterly obliterated expectations for band one of the 2008 season.
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Chattering class: lots of solid pro Redskins, pro team growth writing in the chattering class, I have seen a couple of themes form. First, the 1996 Redskins team casts a longer shadow over the 2008 team than that of the 1999 team. The 1996 and 1999 seasons were the last times the Redskins started 4-1, in 1996 the team had a bye after the fast start and came back with a 5-6 record to finish 9-7 and out of the playoffs. In 1999 the team finished 10-6 and lost in the second playoff round to the Buccaneers. Mike Wise (op. cit.) and Tom Boswell (op. cit.) both invoke the 1996 team in today's coverage.
The second theme, somewhat at odds with the first, is that of building momentum, of a team that seems to be getting better and looking downhill at most of the league. Mike Wise at the Washington Post uses the freight train analogy and Tom Boswell goes with the 18-wheeler.
The Washington Post's Jason La Canfora, with his columnist's hat on, writes about the Antwaan Randle El receiver option pass to Chris Cooley in the third quarter, Jason is getting to be a pretty damn good and pretty damn wonky football analyst. Antwaan's pass play is important for a couple of reasons and neither of them has to do with Chris Cooley's touchdown catch: they ran that play in practice once meaning that coach Zorn does not have beat these players to death with drills, once he saw they got it they did not need to keep with it; and also that coach Zorn is conscious of the effects of unpredictability in play calling on other teams, how going against the grain in certain situations can multiply your positive results.
Taking the usual place of Les Carpenter the post ironic Barry Svrluga has the front page A1 piece, nestled up in between a story on how pre presidential election voter registrations are like massively favoring Democrats and how Nebraska is suddenly a presidential battleground state, if you have lost Nebraska you have lost the race.
And this week it is not just the WaPo that reserves precious front page real estate to the Redskins win, the anti-WaPo across town, the Washington Times goes front page A1 with a piece by Tim Lemke, socked in between an exclusive piece on how Barack Obama sought a HUD grant last year for a housing project in Chicago, a project whose development team included one of Barack's supporters who is also a giant developer in the Chicago area and how president Bush evidently had no problem when it handed out the competitive 20 million dollar grant none of which ended up in the pocket of the Obama supporter, and how defeatist socialist EU countries continue to ignore American leadership by not responding to massive financial failure with wholesale government subsidization of financial markets. Freedom Fries.
Ryan O'Halloran also at the WashTimes comes right out with it: it is time to declare this season a disappointment if the Redskins do not make the playoffs.
Rich Tandler cannot help but notice the Redskins still have not turned the ball over and that this is not just lucky.
Matt Moseley at ESPN can't believe it's not butter, and also that the Redskins were not in the NFC Beast picture to start the season, praises Jason Campbell's adherence to Jim Zorn's cult of concentration. The game looks like it is starting to slow down for Jason Campbell. Matt also quotes cornerback Carlos Rogers saying the Eagles' first 15 plays put Washington off balance and then after that the play calling fizzled. The notion that all these west coast offenses start the game with 15 scripted plays is beginning to look dated if so much planning goes into that script that the rest of the game suffers. Matt also has some harsh words for Donovan McNabb's postgame press appearance where Dono said no offense but the Redskins are not as good as we are.
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Omnibus: the Redskins have now won two in a row in Philadelphia for the first time since 2000 and 2001, a span of six years. Jason Campbell is 2-0 as a starter at Eagles Stadium. The Redskins have won back to back NFC Beast division road games for the first time since 1987 (ibid.).
It is of note that pseudonymous Eagles blogger Bounty Bowl was almost perfectly upside down in his prediction of this game: 23-16 Eagles. John Keim at DC Examiner had predicted 23-21 Redskins.
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I know Zorn when I see it:
Shooter:
Coltrolled:
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Washington Post / AP recap, box score, play by play, photos. NFL recap, box score, full play by play, Gamebook (PDF), photos. Washington Times Redskins grades, ups and downs.
Other recaps: Tony Brown at Hog Heaven, Michael Farnham at Hog Heaven; Rich Tandler thinks this win is sweeter than the Dallas; Mark Newgent grades the Redskins; at Hogs Haven Will says Hail to the Redskins while regular contributor mmford10 puts the NFL on notice. David Wagner at Riggo's Rag is so ecstatic he is in danger of drawing a penalty for excessive use of bold font. Over at Redskins AOL Fanhouse Enrico Campitelli does not let Donovan McNabb get away with the the Redskins are not a better team than the Eagles while Sportz Assassin writes about the dominant team the Redskins are becoming, finally Michael David Smith finds video of a pumped up Redskins owner Dan Snyder after the game, this pairs well with last week's show of emotion.
Next up: the Redskins return home to play the 0-4 St. Louis Rams, a team coming off the bye with an interim coach and a 700 page playbook.
Clinton Portis: Getty Images from here. Al Saunders: Getty Images from here.
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