People may claim that John Beck "made a claim" to the starting quarterback job with his performance last night (14 for 17, 170 yards). There are a couple counters to that claim. First, it really was his job to lose even before this game. Second, the passes he threw were not exactly very tough. Most of his throws were across the middle to wide targets not very far downfield. I will admit that the throw to Gaffney on the goal line was a nice strike, and he did move in the pocket well (Trent Williams did not have a good game trying to block Freeney). However, he didn't do anything that would make me, a skeptic, say that he is going to be fine as the Redskins' #1 guy. The Colts don't care about the preseason. They just don't. They have enough confidence in their personnel that they feel like they're going to win 12 games if they had to start the season stone cold. Therefore, they put zero stock in preseason games other than to evaluate talent for the bottom of the depth chart. Sure, the Skins scored their one touchdown against the Colts' "starters," but how much effort did they really put into that first quarter?
That's another thing that is very concerning to me so far in the preseason. We have been in the red zone (inside the 20 yard line) 8 times this preseason from what I can remember from the two games. We have scored touchdowns only twice, and have attempted field goals every other time. The good news is that we have not turned the ball over (Rex's one interception last night was near midfield) and we have scored points, but when you get that close, you need 7 points, not 3. Red zone offense is something that we definitely need to work on in practice, because if the offense continues to move the ball as well as we have, we'll have plenty of opportunities in close.
Defensively, I don't really read anything into how we played. The fact is that we only gave up 3 points (and a total of 10 so far in the preseason). That's good. On the other hand, who has been our competition? Ben Roethlisberger (for one drive), Byron Leftwich, Charlie Batch, Dennis Dixon, Curtis Painter, and Dan Orlovski. It's good that we can beat second-rate competition, and the live action is definitely beneficial to a team that is still learning the offense, but at the end of the day, 2-0 in the preseason does not mean anything when then the New York Giants come to FedEx field on September 11th.
Our next game is against Baltimore, which traditionally has always been a solid test. I like the fact that we play them in the 3rd preseason game because this game is when the starters usually get their most work of the preseason. Beck will probably start again and play a half, but everybody else in the first unit should go well into the 3rd quarter. It will be interesting to see if we can move the ball as well against a team that will be putting a little more stock into this game than our two previous opponents. It would be nice if we could even punch it in the end zone a litte bit more.
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