The Takeaways, week 9: Giants at Washington

November 10, 2020

by Steve Thomas

In what has become an expected result against the division rival New York Giants, Washington lost their week 9 contest to drop to 2 – 6 on the season.  I can’t say I’m all that surprised by the result, but the way they got there was certainly unexpected.  Normally, these games are either Giants blowouts or close, hard-fought wars.  Somehow, this game managed to be neither of those.  Fortunately, that gives me plenty to talk about in this edition of The Takeaways, which is our weekly attempt to provide you with the “around the watercooler” discussion topics that come out of each week’s adventure with the Washington Redskins Washington Football Team Washington.  Without further ado, let’s get on with it.

Alex Smith was both good and bad

Smith, who entered the game after Kyle Allen went down with a severe ankle injury, both invigorated and killed Washington’s offense.  I can’t really blame Smith for the first interception, which was more bad luck than anything else – a running back falling down at the last second isn’t something that can be anticipated.  However, both of his last two interceptions were inexcusable busts that were entirely out of character for Smith but essentially destroyed all chances for Washington to win the game.  The second ball was a high floater that Smith threw on the move, off of his back foot, across his body, and into coverage: a terrible throw.  The third interception was simply a bad decision.  However, for as much damage as those three turnovers did, Smith’s performance outside of those three plays was mostly outstanding.  Smith actually was able to invigorate the offense in the second half and make it look like a legitimate NFL passing game for awhile, which is progress.  He went 24 for 32 for 325 yards, which are outstanding numbers for two and a half quarters of play, but for the obvious busts.  I’m willing to give Smith a pass for his interceptions for this week considering how rare it’s been for him to do that throughout his career.    Ron Rivera answered the question about next week’s starter by conclusively stating that Smith will start and Haskins will back him up.

The defensive line was inconsistent and underperformed, again

At times, the defensive line got good pressure on Giants quarterback Daniel Jones and impacted his passing decisions; however, they gashed right up the middle by the Giants’ less than intimidating running game and surrendered 166 yards on the ground without a meaningful contribution by Jones, who is New York’s leading rusher.  I’ve felt since last season that the principle problem with this group of first round draft picks is that they haven’t demonstrated the consistency and dominance that a position group drafted this highly should have.  This game did not change my opinion at all.  Old friend Alfred Morris, who’s bounced between the Giants’ practice squad and the active roster all year and has had exactly one regular season carry since the 2018 season before this Sunday, gained 67 yards on just 9 carries, most of which went inside.  That’s inexcusable.  As a team, they surrendered a total of 166 rushing yards.  Yes, this group looked good in pass rush at times, but one of their 4 sacks was by Kamren Curl on a safety blitz, and at other times, Jones had plenty of time to execute the offense.  It was more of the same on Sunday from the defensive line: moments of great coupled with stretches of mediocre to bad.

Cam Sims’ career day

Cam Sims is someone who I’ve thought highly of since his rookie year.  He was drastically underused and misused at Alabama for reasons beyond his control, and he’s suffered form chaos, inconsistency, and bad quarterbacking during his time in Washington.  Sims isn’t the fastest guy on the field, but he’s not slow (he was timed at 4.59 seconds in the 40 at Alabama’s pro day), is long and lanky, has mostly good hands, is a good route runner, and understands how to use his body in coverage.  Sims took full advantage of his shot in the spotlight this week, producing 3 catches for 110 yards.  He’s probably not destined for superstar status, but at 6’5”, he has a body type and skill set that can play an important role in the offense if he’s given a chance.  He can play on both the outside and out of the slot – he played mostly out of the slot in college.  I’m glad to see Sims have this sort of positive performance, and I hope it’s a sign of good things to come.

Washington’s running game shows no improvement at all

Washington’s ground game, which was the worst in the NFL until the Dallas game last week, came to a screeching halt against the Giants, with a total of 9 carries for 37 yards between Antonio Gibson and J.D. McKissic.  Washington needs to make a major push in the offseason to fix this group, and at this point, I don’t think that this means waiting and hoping that Bryce Love can regain his 2017 college form.  Gibson obviously has a bright future and will play a major role on this team in the future, but Washington needs a feature back, and right now they don’t have one.  In all fairness, there are reasons why this week’s production was so bad: first, Washington was playing from behind all day and therefore needed to pass, and second, Alex Smith and Kyle Allen had 14 combined pass attempts to McKissic, nearly all of which were either flat or short passes.  Those sorts of passes have the same impact as a run.  All the same, though, unless your team has someone like Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers under center, NFL teams don’t win many games with just 37 yards rushing.

Scott Turner playcalling is getting better

I realize that I just spent part of this week’s Takeaways bashing the performance of Washington’s offense.  I’ve also criticized Turner in this space in previous weeks; however, he isn’t responsible for failures of his players on the field.  Turner has gotten better recently at calling plays that make more effective use of the talent he has to deploy.  For example, I’d argue that Turner recognized that his team’s ground attack was going to go nowhere, and therefore intentionally used McKissic primarily in his receiving role.  He also allowed Alex Smith to go deep several times this week, which is necessary in football in order to keep defenses from stuffing the box and keying on the run and short passing game.  Granted, it didn’t work, as Washington lost, but frankly, if Alex Smith hadn’t turned over the ball three times, Washington had a good chance of getting a victory.  Turner is a young guy on his first real stint as an offensive coordinator, but he might just be getting better.

That’s it for this week.  I’ll be back next week after Washington’s battle in Detroit.