Animation courtesy of Deadspin.com
Finally. A win to talk about. To enjoy on Monday after the game and to make you feel good about your Redskins once again. Even in defeat, the offense always looked promising, but the defense is particularly worrisome.
When you go back to their previous games, you also had concern over the Special Teams unit, allowing two blocked punts in two weeks. Add to that the defensive inability to stop the opposing offensive air strikes. But we had offense for the first time in years.
And we had a kicker who was looking to redeem himself after a botched field goal in the post season last year. Well, he didn’t do that. In fact, Billy Cundiff wound up whiffing on kicks of 31, 57 and 41 yards. He managed a small modicum of redemption as the clock ran down, however, and just barely made the game winning field goal.
Sports writers on the NFL.com site are saying that making that one kick saved his job. I can’t imagine that the team isn’t already flying in replacement kickers for tryouts as we speak. As a kicker, you have two jobs. Kick off and kick field goals. That’s pretty much your deal. You’re expected to make these plays.
Sure, some things are out of your control, but that’s literally ALL YOU HAVE TO DO! And I’ve long said that it shouldn’t come down to the kicker to win the game anyways. If the team was playing good ball all day, he would be there to simply kick extra points. However, it did come down to him. Making 2 of those earlier field goals would have negated the necessity of making a game winner in the closing seconds.
Either way, RG3 wound up with 323 yards in the air, completing 26 out of 35 attempts, and even carried the ball 7 times for 43 yards and a touchdown. Even more amazingly, for the last drive of the game, Griffin’s head set went on the fritz and he was unable to hear the play calls from the coach. This rookie QB had to orchestrate a come from behind, two-minute-drill drive all on his own. And he did it masterfully.
Hail to the Redskins!
