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Preseason game 4: Panthers 47, Redskins 3, OUCH

--Henry Hill

 

 What do you say about last night’s 47-3 rout?  Quite a bit.  The game got ugly early and got worse when Jason Taylor went down with a knee injury. Right now, it is officially a sprain, but it looked to be much worse.  When Joe Theismann says a knee injury looks bad, he knows what he’s talking about.  

 

I joined Rich Tandler for his live blog of the game and the thumping did make for some interesting conversation. On Friday Jim Zorn was talking about what he “wanted” to do in the final dress rehearsal for the regular season. Saturday night, it was all he could do to salvage some positive yardage and keep Jason Campbell upright. The Panthers dominated the Redskins in every aspect of the game, most disturbingly their front four made physically owned our offensive line. You’ve heard Doc Walker’s color commentary during ACC football games—“That’s a manhood issue”—well it looked like men tossing around boys out there. Campbell was sacked three times in six plays, and the TFL stats for the Panthers must be ridiculous. The first half stats tell the story. 49 net yards, 3 total yards passing, this stat included the negative 36 yards passing from the four sacks. 

 

With the offensive line not able to adequately protect Campbell, we really can’t do much more evaluation of Zorn’s offense, because it never really had a chance to run. I will say this though, the very few opportunities the line did give Campbell time to pass, he held the ball to long, which is a big no no for the West Coast Offense. When I researched the WCO I came across this Steve Young sidebar to a Len Pasquarelli piece on the history of the WCO. Here is the key graph:

 

 

Even with solid protection and time to throw, I think Campbell’s main learning curve will be in timing his footwork with his throws, learning to throw to a zone. However, if the offensive line cannot give him time, this is all a mere academic exercise.

 

With the offense unable to sustain drives and giving up turnovers, the defense was put in a near impossible position. They didn’t help their case with missed tackles, which allowed for huge scoring runs (50 and 60 yards) by Carolina running backs. Steve Smith is really something. He has talent and hustle, what a player. 

 

 

Defeats like this stick in a player’s craw and provide plenty of fodder for the coaches. They say no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy and you need to be flexible and I think Zorn learned as much from this as any of the players. We cannot toss out performance from the previous preseason games with this loss. I still think the players are very comfortable with Zorn’s offense they just didn’t get a chance to run it with the offensive lines’ utter failure last night. My hope is that the line’s performance was an aberration. 

 

That this drubbing comes in the preseason is good, we don’t need any more Patriot Games during the regular season.

 

 

Kareem Moore gave us a glimpse of the player he could be. He had an interception and some nice tackles. However, he also showed some rookie mistakes like taking a bad angle on DeAngelo Williams’ touchdown run. If the defensive coaches go with a youth movement in the secondary, Moore and Chris Horton could develop into really good safeties. 

 

Derrick Frost, after some initial boomers, again looked inconsistent. The offense gave him too many opportunities—eight. I think Durant Brooks wins the job. 

 

Erasmus James looked good. Let’s see how he holds up over the season. We may need him if Taylor’s injury is indeed worse than the initial diagnosis. If Taylor is either out for the season or misses a substantial chunk of it, the door is open for Chris Wilson and Rob Jackson. 

 

The first round of roster cuts is Tuesday. Five players will be cut. Should be interesting to see what positions the cuts come from and where the coaching staff’s priorities lay.