I Dislike Your Favorite Team

The most disappointing Washington Outsider tonight was not John McCain, since he has lived in Washington almost as long as I have been alive. Jim Zorn is a true Washington outsider, and boy, he was just about as grating as Sarah Palin.

First of all, can we sit down and ask for Jason Campbell to be given a real fucking chance at some point? How many different offensives has he been asked to learn? Seven in eight years? Eight in seven years? It is something like that.

Jason Campbell has the skills, clearly, when given a pocket and a target. But he is learning, and the way for him to learn is to do. Jim Zorn, do not dare call only 5 pass plays in an entire first half next game.

Jason Campbell was 1-5 in the first half; a completed pass to Chris Cooley was brought back because of holdling on the line--that pass would have made it 1-5 at the time. It took the closing minutes of the half, on a beautiful thrown ball to Santana Moss on a shallow cross to get it to 2-6.

(Dear Jim Zorn: Please don't listen to Al Michaels whining (even after the half closing TD has been scored) that you are taking too much time and not using your timeouts effectively. Obviously, you were draining clock, and with 20 seconds left, and 3 timeouts, your plan was to throw close to the end zone, and it worked fine in the first half. Fuck Al Michaels. He ain't no coach.)

But, Dear Jim Zorn: Please let Jason Campbell throw more than 6 times in his next first half. please don't run Clinton Portis right up the middle every first and second down. Please don't do it when you are down two scores with eight minutes left. Because when it fails, and the Giants give you the ball after taking 4 minutes off the clock, they will be looking for the pass that much more.

Show some trust in your QB. If you don't have any faith in Campbell, then throw in Collins. To be clear, I think you should have faith in Campbell. He played, when not in obvious passing down, quite well. He should be throwing the ball more; he should be play faking on the very first down the Skins have. You don't have to "establish" Clinton Portis. He's Clinton Fucking Portis. Defenses will be scared of him, regardless. I promise.

Dear Skins Secondary: Catch fucking interceptions. Smoot, you caught one, but you also dropped one in the endzone that cost the Skins 3 points. Carlos Rogers, you had a tougher one, but one you could have caught. Laron Landry, you had one, too. CATCH INTERCEPTIONS.

Positive notes to the Redskin defense: Nice adjustments. After letting Jacobs and Plaxico run and catch all over you between the 20's in the first half, you shut them both down, respectively in the second half. You held the Giants scoreless. Well done. You were let down by an offense that couldn't score more than 7 points.

It should be noted, though, that if you played a little better, you could have held the Giants to 7 points. To be fair, if you had played a little worse, you could have given 28 points in the first half. I like bend don't break defense. I like stifling defense better.

The Drunken Savages didn't pass enough, and didn't execute well enough, and generally game-planned their way to a loss. I expect more passes to Cooley; fewer 1st and 10 runs up the damn middle, and more inventive play-calling. We will see.

I expect Andrew Wice is writing up his own post-mortem. We will compare notes.