Monday, November 28, 2011

Kyle Shanahan Reads IDYFT

In one of the very greatest Washington wins this entire 2011 football season, the Skins came from behind in the fourth quarter to beat the Seattle Shithawks. It was a particularly sloppy, ugly game as one ought to have expected. What was truly remarkable was that the run-pass ratio was actually normal.

Rookie Roy Helu, earning the start and a full game of carries, ran the ball 23 times on Sunday. That is equal to his carries in the last three games combined. Result? 108 yards and a TD versus the allegedly 4th ranked Seahawks run defense.


Here's the clue that someone has wised up: although Helu only chipped and chunked through the first three quarters, they kept giving him carries. On their first possession in the fourth quarter, Helu took a pitch off-tackle, hurdled a defender and smashed through some pathetic weakling to score his first career TD.

A running game may not excite Colon Cowherd or the stat nerds who insist that a three yard run is really a loss, but it wins football games in the 4th quarter. Especially for a team whose QB is guaranteed to throw two picks every game.

Next week the Skins play the Jets, whose run defense is a slim shadow of its former self. This is a winnable game, Kyle. Keep running the ball.

n.b. Santana Moss, in his first game back from a broken hand, laying the crucial block

2 comments:

Gabe said...

Love it - however don't badmouth FO. I have a crush on them.

Andrew Wice said...

I like them too, and was really only making a reference to one reprehensible article from 2003. But the fact remains that it is easy to get caught up in the numbers, forgetting that football is about collisions not cosines.