FanPost

One water-logged cell phone, soaked Sean Taylor jersey and preseason victory later...

Update [2007-8-28 19:28:48 by Skin Patrol]: Bumped from diaries because DC Sports Bog did the same. ... I stand before you, blogging again.

What a weird night last night. As you may have guessed from my title, I was at the game, and yes I stayed until the 3rd quarter when "Hurricane Anthony Trucks" came through, knocking everyone on their asses faster than the aforementioned Trucks on Kyle Boller.

What we saw last night was our first team play against one of the best defenses and certainly best teams (as much as we all hate to say it) in the NFL.  The Skins offense, despite missing Jason Campbell (who has more NFL starts than Todd Collins somehow) showed flashes of excellence and consistent mediocrity running the ball. Our defense, minus a few (rare) bad plays by Rocky McIntosh, including a missed tackle on Derrick Mason, and two passes that were in his zone that he didn't even break on, looked great.

Our defense really shut down the Ravens running game, first of all. Many skeptics were worried about our front on defense, claiming we were too old, too weak, or just flatout too bad to play effectively against good o-lines. However, the Ravens got absolutely nothing on the ground. Our D-lin played very solid and our LB's made a bunch of great plays. I give the defense a good rating, but Rocky needs to watch some film and see what happened. He goofed on a few plays.

Offensively, a few things. First, our running game looked straight-up awful. Granted, Ladell looked a little bit dinged up and Portis is out, but I don't like how we played running the ball. I don't think Derrick Blaylock is better than Rock Cartwright at all- I'm not sure he makes the team. He had a first team o-line and didn't do anything against the Ravens.

However, Todd Collins continued to be very accurate throwing the ball and had a beauty of a deep ball to Santana Moss on the first play. A few dropped balls and missteps by WR's (much of which can probably be credited to the field) were concerning, but our offense looked pretty solid against a great defense -- without Clinton Portis, Jason Campbell, Chris Samuels, and still with unrest at LG (Pete Kendall didn't play, obviously).

Our defensive touchdown was the result of a great blitz -- on the Ravens first team o-line and a former NFL starter. Shaun Suisham is looking better and better, perfect on a night where planting a left foot had to have been tough.

Thoughts?