The Redskins’ 2018 Season in Review

The season is over. The numbers are in. Let’s take a look at 2018 through the dirty lens of hindsight. I’ll discuss offense and defense separately. Time to dive in!

Offense

Let’s start with a bold, obvious, big-picture assertion: the offense lost this season for us. That shouldn’t be a terribly controversial statement; after all, we lost key starters before the season even started, kept losing them as the weeks went by, and finished the season with a 4th string quarterback. Jay Gruden’s odd play-calling at times did us no favors.

The passing offense ranks 28th of 32 teams. Again, this should be no surprise. Alex Smith was never known as a guy to feed deep-threat receivers, and that trend didn’t break this year. Even when the record was 6-3, the team had difficulty sustaining drives and capping them with scores. Consider that, for the first 10 weeks (with Alex Smith under center), the Redskins scored 21 points only 3 times. That’s not very good; the average winning NFL score is over 22 points, so if you’re scoring less than that, generally, you’d better hope your defense is above average (and for at least the first half of this season, it largely was).

Washington’s offensive passing performance of 189 yards a game is good for a bottom 5 ranking. Very few teams can get it done with such a poor passing attack, and the Redskins proved why over and over again this season when they found themselves unable to score quickly – or at all – when they needed to get points on the board. The team needs field-stretching receivers and much better (healthier, at least) offensive line players to give those passing plays time to develop. We also, likely, need a quarterback. Preferably one under 30.

All of our quarterbacks did a good job targeting multiple receivers. This is Jay’s spread-it-around west coast offense, after all. It didn’t always work, obviously, but the targets stayed generally even throughout the season.

On Jay, he has a few infuriating tendencies. For one thing, he frequently dialed up long-developing three and five steps drops that depended on time the team didn’t have. At others, he seemed too stubborn about dialing up the long shot at all. More than once he fell into the trap calling three consecutive failed goal line runs. You just never know what you’re going to get with Jay. Is it a function of constantly catering your offense to an ever changing/injured roster of players? Is it an offense that lacks overall vision? After years of Jay’s coaching, I’m just not sure.

Since this is Smith’s offense for now by default (McCoy, Sanchez, and Johnson were never competing for permanent starting jobs), we’ll give his offense extra scrutiny.

I classify 3 of Smith’s wins as pretty “lucky”, or at least defense-heavy wins. Those three wins are: vs. Dallas, when the Cowboys committed a stupid penalty that took them out of game-winning field goal range, vs. New York, when the Giants repeatedly coughed up turnovers to our defense, and vs. Carolina, when our D got a huge stop on the Panther’s final drive. In all of those games, our offense failed throughout the second half, our defense performed well, and our opponents were poised to win or tie on their final drive before we stopped them. Smith threw for under 180 yards in all of those games.

The rushing attack actually fared better this year; 17th of 32 teams. Adrian Peterson carried most of this, though he went missing some weeks and saved others with a single play (90 yards on one play vs. Philadelphia comes to mind). It’s a bit of a miracle. After all, Trent Williams played much of this season injured and even missed a few games. Guys like Bergstrom, Cooper, and Nsekhe came in for injured guys like Scherff and Williams, and they too suffered injuries.

While the injuries certainly hurt the passing game as well, I think Alex Smith and co. were somewhat doomed from the start. Smith failed to find Reed for a TD through every game they played together except for the season opener against Arizona. Reed is obviously the biggest receiving threat on this team, and it’s a bit of a head scratcher that Smith routinely overlooked him despite being a QB known to favor TE’s and dump-off receivers. Even in the week 2 loss to Indianapolis, folks were picking up on the total lack of talent on the Redskins offense and the viability of Alex Smith on such a team. It wasn’t a totally crazy signing; the team had promising young offensive line players and a rushing attack that looked great on paper (first Guice, then Peterson), but the glaring issues with it surfaced early, especially when the team started losing talent to injury.

Defense

The defense ranks 17th in total defense this year; 15th for passing, 17th for rushing, 15th for points. The stats are up and down accordingly in other areas. That’s all a bit of a miracle; the team is ranked 20th for time of possession, and in the second half of the season, when the defense really declined, those stats were particularly bad: 14 and 20 minutes against Philadelphia, 24 against Dallas, for example. In other words, the defense was on the field for most of those games.

I count 4 games with truly bad defensive performances; New York 2, Dallas 2, Atlanta, and New Orleans. Every other game this season remained in the winnable realm, so long as you’ve got an offense that can at least hang, let alone have a – *gasp* – good game. We had precisely 0 commanding offensive performances this year, except, arguably, Green Bay. We topped the NFL’s average winning score only 4 times.

Remember how I said three of Smith’s wins were defense-heavy? The defense also performed well in losses to Indianapolis and Houston, and in the wins against Jacksonville and Tampa.

Rumors swirled about what ailed the defense in the second half of the season. Zach Brown grumbled to reporters about structural changes. DJ Swearinger repeatedly mouthed off, and lost his job before the season was over. Many noted how poorly the unit seemed to play after Smith’s injury; they’d generated 21 turnovers before it, only 5 after. I think you can attribute some of that to offensive struggles; the Skins found themselves in earlier holes through the second half of the season, and opted for conservative over aggressive as a result.

Still, the defense doesn’t get a pass. Our linebackers were a huge problem throughout most of the season, generally leaving gaping holes right in the center of the field for opposing offenses to capitalize on. Norman had a pedestrian year, and Swearinger declined after the signing of HaHa Clinton-Dix. Matt Ioannidis largely disappeared in the second half, before getting injured. Other guys, particularly in the backfield, also failed to stay healthy, and only offered flashes of ability when they were.

There’s young talent along the defensive front. There’s much less certainty at the positions behind them. I think the scheme is fine; I can’t get on board with all the Manusky criticism. It’s world’s apart from Jim Hazlett and Joe Barry, and it’s trending in the right direction. Compliment this squad with a decent offense and you’ll see a return to their early-season form.

TL:DR

This team wasn’t structured well and had no contingency plan for injuries. Even at their best, the offense was pretty pedestrian, and put together precisely 0 lights-out performances when healthy. The defense played well early to compensate, but fell apart spectacularly when the team started losing the TOP battle. Glaring issues exist at quarterback, receiver, along the offensive line, and in our corps of linebackers and defensive backs. There are many positions of need for both first and second string talent. The work’s cut out for us.