Offensive Output Does Not Augur Well When I suggested on Friday that it might be bloody ugly to watch nobody could have predicted just how ugly, and all this from a team with a renowned “Offensive Genius” at the helm? The numbers alone tell the gruesome story of how out-muscled, bullied and battered we were by the Redskins defense yesterday, but I found myself shaking my head and throwing things around the room in frustration as our continued ineptitude. Save for a brief third quarter fightback, triggered as ever by our long suffering defense, the immovable object that is our offense struggled all day to complete a pass that covered the length of my living room, whilst Dracula has more room to run in his coffin than our running backs did. Five things I think 1. I think Joey Galloway cemented his reputation as a flake with his easy drop and then predictable injury in the 2nd quarter. We’ll see you again in October Joey for more flattering to deceive from the Darren Anderton of the NFL. 2. I know the Redskins played OK on defense but it would be extremely appreciated if the media laid off putting Gregg Williams in the hall of fame until they have played against an NFL offense. 3. I think Keenan McCardell would have made no difference whatsoever to our offense yesterday. 4. I think our offensive line played like 5 strangers who had never played together before – hang on a minute, they haven’t played together before have they? 5. I think I hope the next time that Redskins safety Bowen shoots threw on a blitz somebody like Jerome Bettis snots him totally from the blindside. The major problem I saw was that we do not have any home run threat lined up on offense, anywhere on the field – a player who is a threat to go the distance on any play. We simply don’t have one, and no amount of adjustments or Gruden trickery can hide this inescapable fact. The whole bloody league knows it now and we are in big trouble as a result of our total inability to stretch the field. The Skins had Portis, Coles or Gardner who carried such a threat, indeed Portis carried his home to gruesome effect, but we have no such stud player on offense who we can produce such a play, and we haven’t had since Warrick Dunn took his battered little body over to Atlanta. In fact all our touchdown threats line up on defense so perhaps Gruden might try Ronde Barber and Dwight Smith in the backfield this Sunday. I knew Tim Brown had lost some speed but Jesus, he looked about 96 out there and was running in slo-mo. How can anybody in today’s NFL stick a 40 year old punt returner back to receive a kick? Clayton tried hard and Brad Johnson, save for one stupid throw, did well not to get killed during the course of the game but that was it. The scoreboard does not tell the story – we were well beaten and only remained in the game thanks mainly to the stubbornness of our defense and some dodgy refereeing with us benefiting on 3 occasions. We were flat out embarrassing yesterday and I cannot see how Gruden can improve this offense, unless he makes a trade or there is a new supplemental draft I don’t know about. In todays NFL speed kills – in our case lack of speed will be our death knell this season.