Ch. 7
Coach’s Log, Week 6, 2019:
We were down by 14 early in the second quarter and looked dead in the water — early in the first we had driven down the field and stalled out in the redzone, so we had to settle for a field goal, which we shanked from 22 yards out. The Redskins and Keenum pounced on the opportunity, our defense couldn’t do enough to stop them.
Early in the second, we were stuck in 3rd and 17 after a bad sack and in danger of going three and out again.
Rosen didn’t let it happen. He stood in the pocket, delivered a strike to Kenny Stills, who took that ball and ran it way upfield.
From that point, we went no-huddle. Given time, the Redskins were eating our offensive line, so we didn’t give them time. I let Rosen call his shots and we put up 10 points in the second.
We needed the defense to step it up in the second half, we had to get pressure on Keenum, we had to stymie that passing game. It was Case *ucking Keenum, a journey man QB replaced by Kirk Cousins and then Joe Flacco — he wasn’t anything special.
The defense stepped up. They held the Redskins to only 3 points in the second. Offensively, we had trouble scoring in the redzone all day, having to live off field goals (which our kicker thankfully hit). We were ineffective in scoring situations — passing wise, we just couldn’t get the yards we needed, but we didn’t make any terrible mistakes, pulling away in the final quarter.
Drake being out wasn’t slowing down our running game — we were still getting yards, but getting into the endzone was harder. I still wasn’t sure what Drake’s value was to our team, but with the way Ballage, Walton, and Gaskin were playing, I was willing to run a committee backfield and save the money for free agency. We were projected to have a lot of cap room — with the way we were playing, if we could finish the season strong, we had a chance to add some real talent in the draft and free agency.
We just had to stay focused.