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Mike Shanahan isn't sitting tight at running back. Young runners Ryan Torain and Keiland Williams stepped up with Washington Redskins' ace tailback Clinton Portis out due to a groin injury. Portis will be out at least two more weeks according to Jason Reid at Redskins Insider.

Shanahan regards the practice squad as extensions of the active team. Both Torain and Williams spent time on the practice squad during the regular season. With both now on the active roster, it's slim pickings for runners on the practice team. For the Shanahans, that's reason to get busy. And they were real busy this week.

Washington released RB Quinn Porter and signed RB Jeremiah Johnson (Didn't they make a movie about him? Sorry, had to get that out.) to the practice squad on Tuesday, October 26. The Skins released Johnson and signed RB James Davis the next day, Wednesday, October 27.

Washington signed RB Javarris James to the practice squad earlier this month, only to have the Indianapolis Colts snatch him away by signing him to their active roster.

The 'Skins signed RB Chad Simpson to the active roster in September after he impressed the coaches with his play in the Redskins Bills preseason game. Simpson returned two kick-offs for 27 and 32 yards, but has yet to line-up with the offense. Simpson tweaked his hamstring during the Chicago game, which surely promoted the activity on the practice squad.

James says that coach Shanahan pointed to Torain as an example that he (James) too may have a shot at playing this season.

Not drawing any conclusions from this activity, other than to note that running backs are cycling in and out a lot. This story is more about Shanahan than Davis. I'm filing this factoid away as we try to figure out how the man thinks. I like what I see, though I don't yet understand what it all means.

Point after: Do any of these guys have to take the conditioning test when they sign with the team? Just asking.

[picapp] Side Lions Report: I wish they had a few more wins but they are what I thought they would be. The Lions have been competitive despite what their record might indicate. Injuries have been a big problem. Everybody knows about Matthew Stafford being out but the casual NFL fan might not realize that the Lions have played most of this season without their starting middle linebacker, DeAndre Levy. Both return this week so I am excited to see what the team can do at full strength.

SLR: Calvin Johnson has been more productive over the last three weeks and deserves the offensive MVP for the Lions so far. I was critical of him earlier in the season but I have to give him credit for doing his part to while Stafford was down.
Although he is just a rookie I will give Ndamukong Suh the nod for defensive MVP. He has been a do-everything defensive tackle so far. He is tackling at a good rate, leads the team in sacks, bats down passes, and commands double teams. I don't know what more he could have done over the first six games of his career.

RHH: What concerns you about this Redskins team?

SLR: Donovan McNabb. He torched the Lions the last time he faced them and I enter every game with a fear of the Lions secondary giving up big plays. So far they have exceeded my expectations but that isn't saying a whole lot because I was expecting next to nothing. The Lions have made a lot of quarterbacks look good over the years and McNabb is one of those guys that doesn't need a whole lot of help from the opposition. Hopefully the Lions can get some pressure with their front four and force Donovan into a few bad decisions.

RHH: Game Prediction?

SLR: The Lions exploit Washington's poor pass defense and score enough touchdowns instead of kicking field goals to win the game, 27-20.

The guys at Side Lions Report do a nice job covering Detroit's team. They describe what Mike Shanahan and Jim Haslett are doing with the 3-4 defense is worth a read. (See The "Hog's" Defense) Go take a look. We'll be here when you get back.

This post is not a defense of Vinny Cerrato and it is not a critique of the drafting methods employed by Mike Shanahan and Bruce Allen, who have added a franchise cornerstone left tackle to the defensive cornerstones they inherited from a prior regime.

This post is merely to point out that even though the Redskins were able to 'trim the fat' this offseason in ways we had not been able to imagine prior to this uncapped year, that the best players responsible for this 4-3 start were already on the roster and inherited by the current regime.  Trent Williams is a lone exception to the rule.

Among the ShanAllen acquisitions that have played the most time this season: QB Donovan McNabb, RB Ryan Torain, WR Joey Galloway, LG Kory Lichtensteiger, RG Artis Hicks, RT Jammal Brown, NT Ma'ake Kemoeatu, DE Adam Carriker, DL Vonnie Holliday, and CB Phillip Buchanon.  More or less every other significant piece of this team was here for at least the very end of Vinny Cerrato's tenure as executive VP of Football Operations.  One more player, KR/PR Brandon Banks, is expected to make a significant contribution in the second half of the season.

If you asked a panel of national writers to name the acquisitions above that have had most to do with the team's 4-3 start, you'd probably get a lot of responses along the lines of "McNabb", "Torain", or "Jammal Brown".  You probably wouldn't get a lot of answers at the other positions.  In reality, the player who has been the most pleasant surprise amongst this group would have to be Buchanon, with Carriker as a close second.  Vonnie Holliday has not exceeded nor failed to live up to expectations, and Kemoeatu has been a major disappointment.

Meanwhile, the offensive line doesn't appear to be improved at the guards or the RT position.  Stephon Heyer has been (by far) the team's second most consistent lineman this year.  Lichtensteigher and Hicks have, if nothing else, brought stability to their positions, but stability in the form of out-matched interior linemen is only an improvement when compared to last year.  Derrick Dockery, who was one of the better performing pass blockers last year, has fallen out of favor because of his inability to assimilate to the man and zone blocking schemes favored by Kyle Shanahan.  The best possible pass protection group would have both Lichtensteiger and Dockery on it, and then only one of Hicks and Rabach.

Ryan Torain is a popular answer as one of the biggest upgrades in the Redskins offense, but Torain produces fairly misleading yardage totals.  4.6 yards per carry is very good, but Torain's fumbles nearly match his TD total, he doesn't break long runs, and he loses yards too often.  Still, when you have a guy who can take 6 yard gains and turn them into 14 yard gains, you want to feed him the rock as much as possible, and the Redskins run Torain a lot more than they would run Portis.  But with Portis, you didn't have nearly as many wasted plays or fumbles, knew that neither was going to break the long run, and had a guy who could take the blocking that gets Torain stuck four yards behind the line of scrimmage, and tunnel for three yards.

I guess it comes down to asking what's more valuable: the difference between -3 yards and 2 yards or the difference between 6 yards and 12 yards.  Torain will get you the latter on good blocking plays.  Portis will get you the former on poor blocking plays.  When you look at the struggles this offense has had since Portis got hurt, it's hard to argue that the ability to turn good plays into better plays is helping the offense succeed more than the ability to turn big losses into short gains.  Portis helped this offense stay on track, where as Torain pretty much makes you live and die with the variations in his results.  Both have value: I would take Portis.

Then there's McNabb.  Quarterback production from last season to this season is down across the board with one notable exception: sacks.  McNabb is getting sacked a perfectly league average 6.1% of his dropbacks.  Jason Campbell was sacked on 7.8% of his dropbacks last year.  This has effected the ever-critical fumble totals: Campbell had nine fumbles and aborted snaps all of last year.  McNabb has just three and is on pace for seven total this year.  Since not all fumbles are lost, the difference over the course of the season adds up to about six fewer sacks and one fewer turnover for McNabb than Campbell last year.  A small improvement in ball security is worth a fraction of a win improvement at the QB position.

In the aggragate, McNabb may be holding the Redskins back.  Certainly, it's not like the team has a better option, as neither Rex Grossman or John Beck can be trusted with a professional offense.  But this offense could be executed to this level by many NFL quarterbacks.  We're going to stick with McNabb because he is one of the many quarterbacks who could have lead this team to four wins in his first seven games here.  Beck and Grossman do not qualify.

However, McNabb falls into a growing category of offseason acquisitions that look seemingly more pointless by the week.  You'd have to think that with the new roles we've given Santana Moss and LaRon Landry, with the way that Albert Haynesworth has dominanted in two out of his three games this year, with the surprise that Trent Williams and Lorenzo Alexander have provided, with the steadyness of London Fletcher and Carlos Rogers, and the big play ability of DeAngelo Hall, and the quarterback killing mentality of Brian Orakpo, that pretty much any combination of offseason moves (or at least any where we drafted a tackle at no. 4 overall) could have had this team at 4-3.  Add breakout WR Anthony Armstrong to that mix, and those (sans Williams) are all Cerrato acquisitions that are contributing to a team that has more wins than losses at the mid-season mark, and are being used correctly, finally.

The real question is: was there perhaps a combination of moves that could have gotten this team off to a much better start?  You'd have to think that: yes, this group missed an offseason opportunity to really put together a true winner in 2010.

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Ex-Redskin Of The Week: Jason Campbell, Quarterback, Oakland Raiders
One week after earning Ex-Redskin of the Weak honors, Jason Campbell merits a return engagement after the Raiders' point-a-minute beatdown of AFC West rival Denver Broncos. Yes, Darren McFadden had more to do with the 59-14 win than Campbell did, but Jason opened the party with a 43 yard scoring strike to TE Zack Miller. As Football Outsiders points out:

"Campbell doesn't get credit for handing the ball off, but he did have six plays of 20 yards or more, five of which came on the left side of the field. That's the side struggling rookie corner Perrish Cox plays on.... Four of the six passes Campbell threw to his running backs resulted in first downs."

Campbell endured cruel treatment last season at the hands of his own team, the Washington Redskins, who boldly entered the sweepstake for Jay Cutler against the Chicago Bears. Neither Denver nor Chicago would consider Campbell in any trade formula. Denver accepted Kyle Orton and multiple draft picks for Cutler. They've gone 10-13 since, including 0-2 against Campbell.

In more evidence of Karma, Campbell finished the game with a QB Rating of 127.9. That's the exact sum of the day's ratings for Cutler (54.3) and Orton (73.6).

Ex-Redskin Of The Weak: Norv Turner, Head Coach, San Diego Chargers
I am reluctant to name Turner as Redskin Of The Weak now. It's only October. Turner is gifted at guiding the Chargers to a late-season peak and the playoffs. The Chargers are the NFL's best team in total offense and total defense. They've scored 177 points. Phil Rivers is their quarterback. Who's to say they are not on the verge of a 9-0 run to clinch the division after an unimpressive 2-5 start? Not I quacked the duck.

GM A.J. Smith's hard-line negotiating tactics and the decline of Shawne Merriman has more to do with the Chargers' swoon than Turner does. No other ex-Redskin sunk to the honor, unless you count Denver's Brandon Lloyd who was held to a single reception in that blowout loss to Oakland. But Lloyd and his Broncos cohort had to defeat Raider CB Nnamdi Asomugha, a tough task for anybody, and Lloyd's one catch was for 46 yards.

By default, this week's (weak's?) honor goes to Turner.

 

This review could easily examine nothing more than the ineptitude of the Bears offensive line, which doesn't execute nearly well enough to play at most successful D-I colleges.  For the Bears though, the bigger problem is that it may be too late to fix the problem: when they did pick up the Redskins rush to give Cutler a clean pocket, they were playing with a quarterback who was unable to complete passes to wide open receivers in the Redskins zone secondary.  As Redskins fans have seen over the last 21 games, what Bears fans are seeing with Cutler could be a function of the perception of pressure and the breakdown of passing fundamentals, even when pressure isn't really there.  The Bears OL lost the battle with the Redskins pass rush, but they played above expectation in this game: it was expected that the Redskins would get to Cutler early and often, and they were there often if not early, but not often enough to explain the Bears' passing game woes.

Pass Pressure on Jay Cutler

The Redskins had 11 pressures on the quarterback, plus three sacks in addition to these pressures (the Rocky McIntosh sack was the result of a pressure).  They knocked him to the ground a number of times.  However, this amount of pressure was not out of line for the Redskins facing even a good pass protection unit and quarterback combo, so it should be argued that the Bears OL raised it's level of play, particularly J'Marcus Webb (2 sacks allowed, 1 holding penalty) and Olin Kreutz (0 sacks, 1 pressure allowed).  The Redskins were obviously going to win any match-up with Orakpo in it, and if you had told Bears OL coach Mike Tice that Albert Haynesworth was going to make a mockery of the pass blocking abilities of LG Chris Williams in this game, Tice would have pulled out whatever remains of his hair.  But the Bears won the rest of their matchups.  All the rest of the Redskins pass rushing success came against blocking TE Brandon Manumaleuna, who has been a disappointment since signing a big money contract (for a TE) with the Bears.

Cutler had decent protection all day, especially in the second half when halftime adjustments made by Mike Martz kept the Redskins rush completely off balance.  The Redskins responded by blitzing against most empty or offset sets employed by Martz.  On a play by play basis, this matchup was won by the Bears passing game, getting the open receivers and protection they desired.  Nearly any time Cutler was pressured in this second half, he made a bad decision.  The thing was, Cutler played most of the second half proactively, attacking the Redskins defense.  This mindset may have hurt him when he was trying to wait out his receivers on a blitz, as Cutler was painfully inaccurate and never had a clear picture of the defense.

Is our run defense declining?

I don't have a clear, direct answer to this question.  With the Bears, there was no reason to prepare during the week to defend the run, as any success the Bears enjoyed with the rushing game would have been academic.  The Bears are going to live and die with the pass.

Still, the Bears were able to create chunks of yardage with cutback runs.  The Redskins didn't have a backside contain defender, they used an edge rusher to take away Cutler's ability to use the bootleg to move the pocket.  This opened up the backside edge for the Bears' running backs, and Chester Taylor used this seam a lot better than Matt Forte did.  Forte is the best back in the league outside of the backfield, but he's a below average back inside of it.  Many of the interceptions in this game were created by a reliance of the Bears on empty backfield formations, just using their personnel to the best of it's ability.  I don't think our run defense is declining, as Albert Haynesworth and Ma'ake Kemoeatu both showed up on film like they haven't all year.  But the Bears were able to get their running backs outside of our front six defenders and into the secondary when they wanted to.  Fletcher had a couple of tackle attempts that could have been stuffs in the hole, but instead ended up being drag and hold on situations where the runner turns mediocre blocking into a successful gain.

The Lions don't really run it either, so perhaps the Redskins will revisit this at the bye.

DeAngelo Hall

These are Hall's coverage numbers for the first half: 3 targets, 3 completions, 3 first downs allowed, 34 passing yards allowed, 11 YPT.  That's more or less Hall's year to date in coverage.  When we talk about what a great game he had (and he did have a great game, by all standards), we're essentially just talking about one half.  At the half, Hall's season long coverage statistics were horrible.  Hall had nearly given up 70% successful completions and had given up 9.3 yards per attempt.  Small sample, sure, but no quarterback in NFL history had done that well over any significant length of time.  Throwing against Hall, QBs were doing that well.

The crazy thing about small samples is that one half of football can change everything.  Hall dropped a yard in YPA for the season in his 7 second half attempts, and dropped more than 6% in terms of allowing successful completions (2/7 in the half and there's no bonus included for interceptions).

More importantly, Hall also provided the offense the Redskins needed to win the game.  Two of Halls interceptions were among the difficult variety that I often get on him for not making when I talk about playmaking corners, because the ball wasn't in the air very long.  One time, he got inside of Devin Hester on a curl.  The other, he got inside of Johnny Knox on a slant.  Those are skilled plays by Hall, who also showed up in run support in this half for the first time since week two.  He got into the game in a multitude of ways, adding tackles on runners to his interception total.  While two of the four interceptions were gifts from Cutler, one of the gifts would have put the Redskins in poor field position...except that Hall took it back 92 yards for the score, the only score of the second half by either team.

That was all the offense the Redskins would need to overcome the Bears in this one, and makes it the second game of seven possible where Hall has tied or led the Redskins in scoring.

Redskins Pass Defense

While pass defense is still the overall weakness of the Redskins, I think it's now safe to say that this 2010 Redskins pass defense is an improved unit compared to our pass defense units of the pass.  You do have to consider who they have played: the Bears were an easy draw compared to such a difficult slate of opponents to begin the season.  But considering who they played, and then realizing that the Redskins now are in the top half of the league in creating turnovers (more thanks to fumbles than interceptions), that their yards allowed per game is on the decline, and the defense is out there winning ball games against the Packers and the Bears, and keeping them in the game against the Colts, it's critical we don't look at this side of the ball as a liability.

We have a better pass defense than the Jets, Patriots, and Cowboys, per DVOA.  Ranking 22nd in anything might not be something to write home about, but those AFC East teams are winning games with similar efforts to how our secondary is playing.  They both rank in the top quarter of the league in Total DVOA.  We're giving up far fewer points than the Jets or the Patriots or the Cowboys.

We're lacking a little bit in special teams (though our special teams are our one advantage in trying to beat out the Eagles and the Giants for this division).  Those teams create points through special teams and points through offense.  We prevent points by the opponent through special teams and prevent points through offense.  Right now, we're scoring up to league expectation on the defensive side.  It's time for the offense, led by Donovan McNabb, and special teams, led by Brandon Banks, to meet up with the defense, led by DeAngelo Hall, in the end zone for much-needed dance choerography.

It's not as easy task to find positives from this game.  Among the many things that went wrong: the Redskins converted just two third downs in this game, both on the same drive, and both through the air.  They ran on only one of 12 third down attempts, and that was not a successful run.  Donovan McNabb himself was 2/11 in converting third downs through the air.  He was only a 40% passer in those situations, and took a pair of sacks (though one sack was nullified by the Bears being offside.  The Redskins went 3 and out 5 times, and 7 more times their drives lasted 5 plays or fewer.  They did not have a drive last longer than 5 plays after the first quarter.

However, they did do a number of things well in the passing and the running games, and they did these things well throughout the games, just going unrewarded after the first quarter.  The Redskins had 9 plays that moved the ball more than 10 yards through the air, which was fewer than what Chicago had, but is still respectable.  They had far more ground success than the Bears did, with Ryan Torain ripping off runs of 27, 23, 20, 11, 10, and 9 yards.  Add those 6 runs up: it's 100 yards.

Torain, though, more than any other player on this team runs hot and cold in the context of a single game.  Torain had 15 carries that gained just 25 yards in this game, with 6 of his carries gaining the other 100.  Torain is at his best once he is more than 5 yards downfield because he is a mismatch for pursuing linebackers, undersized corners, and all kinds of safeties.  That's a valuable skill, but it does not excuse Torain's role in stringing plays out to the side, which risks holding situations and can result in 4 or 5 yard losses where there was zero backfield penetration.  Torain's largest loss of the day was actually called back by holding on Jammal Brown, so Brown takes the blame for Torain's inability to go forward.  Because in addition to the "lost yards" criticism Torain also put the ball on the ground twice, he's a tough nominee for player of the game.

There's obviously plenty of blame to go around for the turnovers.  McNabb threw 2 interceptions, probably should have been charged with a third except his own time-management error prevented it from counting.  McNabb fumbled twice on sacks, doubling his season total.  That's five potential turnovers on McNabb alone, but only one was actually costly: the pick six by DJ Moore.  Torain's fumbles were more costly, and Cooley is more of a "fumbler" than we would be lead to believe.  Brandon Banks fumbled on the first play of the game, and only got it back thanks to a miracle roll.  There was a common thread in the non-McNabb fumbles, and that's the fact that Chicago CB Charles Tillman matched DeAngelo Hall blow for blow in interceptions with game-changing forced fumbles, and that player of the week award could easily be his -- had the Bears been fortunate enough to recover more than one of those fumbles, which of course was recovered by Tillman himself.  Tillman essentially turned every one of the Redskins ballcarriers into a mobile version of the Jay Cutler turnover machine.

If you threw out all the fumbles, interceptions, and sacks in this game, and the missed field goal, the Redskins had only one problem all day, which was the inability to convert great field position into points.  Keep in mind though that one of the reasons the Redskins were able to start so many drives in Bears territory is because (while the defense got 3 and outs early) the offense had great success moving the ball out of their own territory quickly.  Looking at the great field position and only ten points scored as a missed opportunity is one way to think about it, but the alternative is to think about it as playing the game on the other teams' half of the field where one defensive mistake results in points for the offense.  By that perspective, credit the Bears defense for never breaking in this game, because the Redskins offense was able to move the ball in longer fields.  I have had a couple of opportunities to study the Bears before this, and I can say that this is not a first time occurance for the Bears: they generally get more aggressive and more successful on defense the closer they get to their own goal.  This is to say: our offensive failures were more the Bears defense dictating to us what we could do rather than the Redskins offense shooting themselves in the foot.

Were the Bears 2/11 on third downs dominant?  No, they were not.  In that down, with an average distance to gain of 7.2 yards, the Redskins have to be better.  But the Redskins offense didn't stall because of a design flaw or because a terrible time in first or second down, it stalled because in convert-or-punt situations, we were punting.  The longest 3rd down we converted: 2 yards.

Improving on Third Downs

What to my game notes suggest to be the problem in long downs.  I will transcribe:

 

• 3-2 Tim Jennings had late contact on Moss, with no flag.  The Redskins had just run for 13 yards in 2 plays.  A quick pass on 3rd and 2? For real?
• 3-10 McNabb had pressure in his face and used a quick release to get the ball to Cooley at the sticks.  Cooley drops it.
• 3-2 Moss got wide open in the weakness of the defense (middle) off a rub concept using Cooley.
• 3-1 Effective boot action got McNabb outside of pressure, but Cooley was covered. He stopped his route giving McNabb a place to dump the ball for a conversion.
• 3-8 Moss is jammed hard inside 5 yards by Tinoisamoa and never regains his balance as McNabb anticipated him open over the middle.  McNabb was right and Moss just didn't execute.
• 3-7 Rabach gave up middle pressure off a stunt by Peppers and McNabb launched this one downfield high, missing his receiver by a ton.  Two closest players were Chicago's safeties
• 3-11 The Bears brought one more than the Redskins can block, McNabb took maybe a fraction of a second more time than he had, and couldn't get it to Galloway who wasn't going to have the first down anyway.
• 3-10 McNabb beats a blitz successfully, thanks to a big time pickup by K. Williams. Cooley is hit in-stride with a good throw, but gets shoved to the sideline a half yard short of first down yardage.
• 3-9 This was an ugly play from the start, disasterous timing, multiple free runs on McNabb and a tight throw that gets to Moss who comes up three yards short and wasn't trying to get much more.
• 3-8 The Bears stunt and get the edge pressure on Trent Williams, causing McNabb to pull the trigger a lot sooner than he wanted to with things developing downfield.
• 3-11 Trent Williams is beaten far too quickly and to the inside, and Idonije forces a fumble on McNabb.  McNabb had poor ball security in the pocket, but he also was trusting Williams to make that block.
• 3-1 A run with Torain where Rabach and Lichtensteiger get zero push at the line of scrimmage, and Torain cuts it back into them.

 

A couple of years ago when I was trying to figure out why the 2008 Redskins could move the ball so effectively and not score, I couldn't pin it all on one fatal flaw, but rather, too many mediocre performances that weaknesses really shined through when the margin of error got tight inside the opponent's 30 yard line.  That's probably similar to what is happening here on third downs.  It would be easy to chalk it up to a small sample and expect our third down performance to reflect our first and second down performance in time, but I don't think that's the case.

Rather I think that when you talk about the mediocre players on the offense, it really puts pressure on them in third downs when the defense can raise the level of play on the offense in an attempt to get off the field, you really need every individual to do their job to the best of their ability to be a great third down team.  Here's a complete list of starters who didn't have a third down gaffe leading to a punt or turnover:

Anthony Armstrong, Mike Sellers.

That's probably just by circumstance, as neither Armstrong or Sellers was gaffe-free in this game (though I thought Sellers had his best game of the year).  And it was Armstrong's drop that put us in a third down situation we should not have been in, leading to a Cooley drop.

Nothing about the Pass Protection unit?

The thing here is that the Bears' defensive ends had a whale of a game going against us on stunts and speed rushes alike.  Julius Peppers was all over the place on film, as was Israel Idonije.  But the Bears defensive tackles, aside from a nice tipped pass or run stop by Matt Toeina here or there, were non-factors in this game from the start to the finish.  DT Anthony Adams is having a great season for Chicago, and he was neutralized most of the day by Lichtensteiger, Rabach, and Hicks.  Cooley had a great day blocking, both against the run and the pass, sometimes given Peppers in a one-on-one assignment (with help to the inside, as long as he wouldn't get beaten around the edge).

The Redskins like to use Cooley as a blocker because he is versatile, and expands the edge on the opponent, taking away the ability of teams to stunt and exploit Rabach or Hicks, both of whom really struggle to sort protections and get everyone picked up.  On the other side of the interior line, Lichtensteiger is great at sorting protections, but he and Rabach can both be overpowered by skilled linemen on the rush.

The Bears run defense had an issue whenever we could get on Peppers, Urlacher, and Briggs on the same play.  They really ask a lot of their stars, and I think Shanahan^2 took advantage of it with a full on assault of rushing concepts, mostly zone concepts but some man, just throwing the whole kitchen sink at a Bears run defense that is among the best in the NFL.  We really gave them way too many looks to properly adjust to at halftime, which along with great open field running ability, was the reason for Ryan Torain's big fourth quarter.  That, and securing the football, finally.

Torain and Keiland Williams are both developing excellently as pass protectors.  Outside of Trent Williams, the biggest difference between last year's pass pro and this year's pass pro is that we really are staying on our guys, making sure that it's not okay for Torain and Williams to be Marcus Mason and Quinton Ganther on blitz pickups.  It's night and day the kind of protection our current replacement backs are giving compared to what we got from last year's replacement backs.  Torain and Williams are both somewhere near Rock Cartwright in pass protection ability, which is respectably above average.  Mason and Ganther might have well been paper cutouts of themselves.  We're also using Cooley more creatively in protection schemes, without really taking away what Cooley does in pass patterns.  It also helps the unit that Stephon Heyer is not overextended beyond his capabilities.  Heyer was the RT for one drive in this game: the Redskins only TD drive.

The final piece in the protection unit is McNabb, but I'm not sure what kind of upgrade in the protection unit we're getting from him at this point.  He's hurting, and hasn't been able to extend plays much since the Green Bay game, and McNabb holds the ball just a fraction of a second too long on some plays.  I do think it's in an honest attempt to make a play happen downfield though, not that McNabb is unaware of his assignments as a quarterback.  Like I said, I'm just not sure if we've upgraded the pass protection unit at the quarterback position. It seems clear that we're certainly not any worse off than last year.

Former Washington Redskins middle linebacker Neal Olkewicz (1979-1989) invited me to join the cause Dignity After Football.org - Fighting For Yesterday's Heroes. The invitation came from Olkewicz via Facebook Causes. Whoa! I didn't know there were causes on Facebook, nor that a message from a hero of the Redskins glory days could find its way to me.

It turns out that Causes is another Facebook app, like Farmville, that may or may not be a good thing.

I haven't made up my mind about apps, but how could I ignore Neal? (We're on a first name basis now because...we are FB friends.) What is Dignity After Football?

Says Neal, "Dignity after football is an organization dedicated to helping the players who built the NFL who are now left without any health insurance and are suffering from many chronic ailments from their playing days."

Olkewicz is the cause's leading advocate with 456 recruits, according to the group's profile page. Dignity After Football hopes to attract 5,000 members, up from 4,282 today.

Help for retired pro-ballers is a worthy cause and it's a tough issue. Pension programs are not like Social Security where income for current retirees is funded by current wage earners. Financial help for older generation players is not funded in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. That is the financial reality that made the late Gene Upshaw, as head of the NFL Player's Association, sound so hard-hearted.

The pot for real pension and disability benefits are funded by employees and employers contributing to the worker's future. That sort of funding did not exist for the heroes of the 'Sixties and 'Seventies as (I imagine) it does today. With the typical pro career lasting about six years, yesterday's heroes could not have saved enough for meaningful disability support in their latter life.

Therein lays the problem. Teams were not then obligated to set up 401K plans that were not in widespread use in the 'Eighties and did not exist in the 'Sixties. Yesterday's heroes did not save for future disability. Fans were not asked to pay an up-charge on tickets or jerseys for retired players.

All of football--owners, players and fans--owes something to the guys who gave their all for us. Look at this clip from George Michael's Sports Machine profiling the great Earl Campbell (Houston, New Orleans, 1978-1985).

Free Video Hosting

Man, it is painful to watch Campbell struggle to walk in the last minute of that clip. The issue plays into the NFL's concern for concussions and other life-altering injuries. 

Everyone is concerned. No one wants to ante up. The problem will be solved only when somebody kicks in something. For now, Neal Olkewicz and Dignity After Football would like to raise your awareness. I joined. Maybe you could too.

Point after: Neal Olkewicz ran a vending business in Maryland from 17 years after he retired from football. He recently sold the business and relocated to Pennsylvania.