Daily Slop – 19 Oct 23: Commanders turn attention to Sunday’s visit to the 1-5 NY Giants at the Meadowlands

A collection of articles, podcasts & tweets from around the web to keep you in touch with the Commanders, the NFC East and the NFL in general

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Commanders.com

Practice notes | ‘It’s just a matter of time’ for Dotson to get back on track

Despite getting nine more targets and playing in two more games — he had a hamstring injury in 2022 that sidelined him for five games — Dotson has 12 fewer yards and three fewer touchdowns through six games. He just came off a game where he was only targeted one time and did not make a catch.

That’s drastically different from training camp, when Dotson was one of Sam Howell’s favorite targets. To head coach Ron Rivera, though, “it’s just a matter of time” before he gets back on track.

“I think that’s the thing we all have to be patient with,” Rivera told reporters on Monday.

Dotson’s lack of explosive, impact plays is certainly a puzzling development, because it looked like things were headed in a more positive direction during camp.

Dotson’s connection with Howell was one of the highlights from the Commanders’ offense in August. He was targeted nine times by Howell in the preseason, more than any other receiver on the roster, and made seven catches for 106 yards to go with a touchdown against the Cleveland Browns where he ducked under two defenders to score.

Bullock’s Film Room (subscription)

Kam Curl continues to prove value in multiple roles for Commanders

Breaking down Curl’s impressive performance against the Falcons

Perhaps Curl’s biggest play of the game though came on a play where he actually gave up a catch. Late in the fourth quarter, the Falcons got the ball back with two minutes remaining, driving to try and tie the game and take it to overtime. With 47 seconds left on the clock, this play occurred.

On this play, the Falcons look to run a simple shallow cross concept with the intent being to hit the receiver on the shallow cross and have him run across the field and out of bounds to stop the clock. The concept is simple: the slot receiver to the left of the formation runs a hook route in the middle of the field designed purely to create traffic for the tight end to the right on his shallow cross route. Curl is responsible for the tight end’s shallow crossing route and as the play progresses, you can see how he actually gets caught up in that traffic and ends up surrendering a completed catch.

However, the key to this play is that Curl is able to make up ground, chasing down the tight end from behind and making a critical tackle short of the sideline to prevent the tight end from running out of bounds. By making that tackle, he prevented the Falcons from stopping the clock. That forced the Falcons to then hurry up and get lined up to spike the ball in order to stop the clock. The Falcons spiked the ball with 31 seconds left on the clock, meaning that play cost them 16 seconds to gain nine yards. They also lost a down from having to spike the ball to stop the clock.

The Falcons then made a huge error by failing to get the next play called in time and burned their final timeout before then throwing the game-ending interception to Jamin Davis.

Curl has a history of making tackles like this in key situations to keep the clock running. He did the same in the opening game against the Cardinals when he tackled running back James Conner in the flat short of the sideline, which cost the Cardinals about 25 seconds. He did the same in Week 2 against the Broncos when he tackled a scrambling Russell Wilson short of the sideline which cost the Broncos about 20 seconds. These are the types of plays that aren’t talked about in the same way as an interception or a fumble, but are hugely critical plays that lead to wins.

Washington Post (paywall)

A balanced Commanders offense is about more than just pass vs. run

[T]his season, Rivera also has echoed new coordinator Eric Bieniemy’s goal of achieving offensive balance, a term that has become less about the split between running and passing plays and more about the variety of threats the offense can pose.

“We want to be able to always constantly keep that threat on [opponents] that: ‘Hey, we can run the ball. We can throw the ball. We can throw the ball in play-action. We [can] throw the ball off boot-action. We can throw the ball on a dropback,’ ” Rivera said earlier this season. “But that keeps everything open in terms of, ‘Hey, we can run it, we can run something inside, we can bounce the ball and get something outside.’ ”

Balance creates opportunities, Rivera said. It’s something Washington is still trying to achieve more consistently, to create more chances for all of its playmakers and to keep defenders on their toes.

Commanders.com

Jamison Crowder named NFC Special Teams Player of the Week

Crowder had a 61-yard punt return against the Atlanta Falcons that set up a touchdown giving Washington a lead they never relinquished in their Week 6 win. Crowder’s punt return was the longest of any NFC player in Week 6. The return was the longest for a Washington player since Oct. 9, 2016.

Crowder has earned the honor of NFC Special Teams Player of the Week for the second time in his career with Washington. He becomes the fifth player in franchise history to win the NFC Special Teams Player of the Week honor multiple times, joining RB/KR Brian Mitchell, P Matt Turk, K Dustin Hopkins and P Tress Way.

Crowder has recorded the last two longest punt returns in recent franchise history (Week 5 of 2016 and Week 6 of 2023) and earned NFC Special Teams Player of the Week honors both times.

Crowder has eight punt returns for 114 yards (14.3 avg.) so far this season.

Sports Illustrated

Washington Commanders’ Casey Toohill ‘Made Most of His Opportunities’ vs. Atlanta Falcons

The Washington Commanders’ defense has a host of star players, but defensive end Casey Toohill is having a breakout start to the season.

“Probably the one thing that, if you go back and look at the plays that Casey has made, first and foremost, they’re all based off of him getting after the quarterback off of play action,” Rivera said. “The two that I’m thinking of from yesterday, very disciplined player who’s in the right spot. He works his technique. He’s got a good little burst to him. He closes ground very quickly and he’s got length. That’s one of the things, he’s stout.”

Toohill has already surpassed his sack total from last year as his two sacks against the Falcons gave him three on the year and nearly has as many quarterback hits in six games as he did the whole season last year.

The Falcons game could be seen as Toohill’s coming-out party. He grabbed two sacks, a tackle for loss, and three quarterback hits.

“If you watch those guys, how disciplined they all were trying to keep that run play from getting outside, trying to keep it bottled up. Those guys did that. Casey was one of the guys that did that. And because of that, he got the opportunities, and he made the most of them.”

Sports Illustrated

Washington Commanders Preparing for ‘Special’ New York Giants RB Saquon Barkley

New York Giants running back Saquon Barkley drew praise from Washington Commanders coach Ron Rivera ahead of Sunday’s matchup.

“They’re going to come in, they have Saquon and we know how special he is as a running back,” Rivera said. “We’ve got to be able to contain him. We got to be able to contain the quarterback (Daniel Jones). A lot of those things that we did on Sunday are things that are going to be reflected in what we’re going to need to do this coming Sunday as well.”

Barkley’s faced the Commanders seven times during his career, taking 109 carries for 634 yards and five touchdowns. In two matchups against Washington last season, the former No. 2 overall pick rushed for 150 yards and two touchdowns on 18 attempts.

This year hasn’t gone according to plan for the Giants, who sit at 1-5 and have lost four straight games. Their most recent game came Sunday night, a 14-9 loss to the Buffalo Bills during which Barkley took 24 carries for 93 yards.

Riggo’s Rag

Could late-season gauntlet condemn Ron Rivera to bleak Commanders fate?

Things are still hanging precariously for Ron Rivera…

Commanders [potential] brutal end to 2023 has implications for Ron Rivera

When discussing this exact topic recently, Tyler Sullivan from CBS Sports listed Rivera as No. 4 in his head coaches on the hot seat rankings. The writer also highlighted a daunting run of games to finish the season as something that could ultimately determine his fate.

“Ron Rivera is playing under a new regime that merely adopted him rather than specifically chose him themselves. The Josh Harris-led ownership group has a lot on their plate to inject new life into the Commanders and a change across football operations wouldn’t be surprising to see. Rivera has Washington at .500 at the moment, but the back half of the season does provide some cause for concern for the coach’s prospects of keeping his job beyond this year. Over their final six games, the Commanders play the Cowboys twice, the 49ers, Dolphins, Rams (road) and Jets (road). Outside of the possibility of teams resting starters, Washington is probably an underdog in each of those games, setting up the possibility of a 0-5 run to end the year. Under that circumstance, Rivera won’t have much momentum to keep his job for 2024.”

– Tyler Sullivan, CBS Sports

If the Commanders finish the campaign 0-5 as Sullivan stated, then landmark alterations to Washington’s front office and coaching infrastructure will be all but confirmed. What comes after that could represent the start of an exciting future if the right appointments are made.

Podcasts & videos

Locked on Commanders: Washington Commanders Storylines, Matchups, Predictions for Week 7 at New York Giants

Photos

Commanders.com

PHOTOS | Commanders practice, 10/18

The Washington Commanders got back to work on Wednesday as they began preparing for their Week 7 matchup with the New York Giants.

NFC East links

Big Blue View

Giants-Commanders storylines: 3 things to watch

Giants set to begin a stretch where it seems more realistic to expect some victories

[QB Daniel] Jones did not practice this week. We will find out around noon if he will practice on Wednesday. If he doesn’t, I would expect Tyrod Taylor at quarterback again.

Am I worried about the long-term with Jones’ health? The Giants and Jones are saying not to be, but this is his second neck injury in three seasons. Until he gets back on the field, it is hard not to have some level of concern.

A softened schedule?

After a brutal six-game stretch to open the season, the Giants now face a part of their schedule where victories could be more realistic.

Of their next eight games, only the 4-2 Cowboys have a record above .500. No games are ever easy, witness the Week 2 game vs. the Arizona Cardinals (+7.5), but there are winnable games in that stretch. Including this Sunday, against a Washington team that comes in 3-3 and is favored by DraftKings Sportsbook.Let’s see if the Giants can take advantage and earn a few victories.

Big Blue View

Justin Pugh is signed to the Giants’ active roster

Pugh now part of 53-man roster

The New York Giants signed offensive lineman Justin Pugh to their active roster on Wednesday. Pugh, who in his Sunday Night Football intro stated he was straight off the couch, was signed to the Giants practice squad two weeks ago after tearing his ACL with the Arizona Cardinals in Week 6 of last season.

The 33-year-old offensive lineman, and 2013 first-round pick by the Giants, helped to stabilize a porous Giants’ offensive line in Week 6 against a Bills team that led the league in sacks.

Pugh played 77 total snaps; 9 at left guard and 68 at left tackle after second-year offensive lineman Joshua Ezeudu left the game with an injury. Ezeudu is now on injured reserve.

Earning a start at his age, after recovering from a torn ACL only two weeks back as a Giant, was impressive enough, but playing left tackle for the first time since 2015, sans five snaps in 2021, represents the consummate professional that is Justin Pugh.

NFL league links

Articles

Washington Post (paywall)

Why are NFL QBs suddenly putting up such skimpy passing numbers?

[W]e are starting to see the typical modern NFL passing offense morph from one that focuses above all on explosive plays to one that employs a more conservative style, relying instead on skill and athleticism to gain yards. As a result, the average passing yards per team per game this season has been just 218.4, a figure that would be the league’s lowest since 2008 if it persists. Here is what is contributing to that phenomenon.

NFL defenses have adapted to neutralize explosive passing plays by employing more two-high safety looks, creating challenges for vertical routes. This shift combines zone concepts with varying degrees of man-to-man defense, also known as Cover-6, forcing quarterbacks to hold the ball longer and allowing pass rushers extra time to bring pressure.

Usage of Cover-4 — four defensive backs, typically two safeties and two cornerbacks, each responsible for a deep quarter of the field — is also on the rise (from 11 percent in 2019 to 16 percent in 2023). This coverage helps prevent deep passing plays by dividing the deep part of the field into four sections, making it more challenging for offenses to exploit the deep zones.

Pro Football Focus (subscription)

NFL offensive line rankings ahead of Week 7

18. Washington Commanders (Up 2)

Projected Week 7 starters:

• LT Charles Leno Jr.
• LG Saahdiq Charles
• C Nick Gates
• RG Sam Cosmi
• RT Andrew Wylie

• Charles Leno Jr. did not play against Atlanta due to personal reasons and was replaced by Cornelius Lucas, who did not allow a single pressure and ranked second among offensive tackles in pass-blocking grade in Week 6.
• Left guard Saahdiq Charles has earned a negative grade on 20.0% of run plays — the sixth-worst rate among guards this season.

Best player: Sam Cosmi

• Cosmi has surrendered pressure on 3.5% of pass plays, the lowest rate of his career. His previous best was 6.5% last season.

The Athletic (paywall)

The Eagles’ ‘tush push’ play is taking over the NFL. But is it workie NFL. But is it workng?

When I wrote about the play last January, it didn’t yet have a name. And not many teams aside from Philadelphia had tried the maneuver. Now it has multiple names. The Brotherly Shove, the rugby sneak, “Organized Mass” as the Kelce brothers refer to it, and most commonly and cutely, the tush push.

There have been some really pitiful showings this season, such as the Giants putting two backup offensive linemen in the pusher positions, failing to gain a yard, and injuring two of their starting offensive linemen in the process. Or the time the Chargers inexplicably ran the play with a quarterback who only had one good hand with which to carry the ball.

From 2000 to 2022, the league averaged 53 sneaks through six weeks of games. This year, that number is nearly double — up to 104 sneaks through six weeks of games, the most in that 24 season timespan. It might be the most ever, but since NFL play-by-play records were first kept in 2000, totals from seasons before that are difficult to check. Sneaks have been on the rise since 2021, when the season total of 233 was the highest in our dataset since 2000. The next season’s 274 sneaks smashed that record. Now the pace of sneaks is headed toward a new record for the third straight year.

I went through and watched every sneak from the 11 teams that are perfect on sneaks this season, and there was a good variety of the three types of sneaks. Buffalo ran exclusively tush push while Denver mixed a variety of looks into its three sneaks on the season.

The Eagles still lead the league in tush pushes, with 17 this year. Only one has been stopped for no gain. Their 93.3 percent success rate is just shy of their 93.5 percent success rate last season, and that’s only because they don’t have the volume yet at this point in the year.

Philadelphia ran the tush push 43 times last season, including six times for two touchdowns in the Super Bowl. And this year, the Eagles have run it six times in one game again, at the Rams, including on third-and-3 in the final two minutes of game time. They gained a yard to set up for a fourth-and-2, where you guessed it, they ran another tush push.

The rise in sneaks overall this year makes it clear that the Eagles near-automatic success rate, which is one of the reasons the play was seriously scrutinized by the competition committee over the offseason, has inspired other NFL offenses to see if they can also exploit the same advantage. When you take Philadelphia out of the equation, the rest of the NFL averages a 77.8 percent success rate on sneaks this season.

Defenses haven’t looked nearly as hopeless in halting the inertia of the organized mass this season, and Jenkins said he’s noticed some interesting tactics from Commanders defensive tackle Jonathan Allen. “He’s like laying down on the ground,” Jenkins said. “He’s literally on the ground.”

Upon further review of Bears and Eagles film, I found that Allen — and sometimes teammate Chase Young — angles his body nearly horizontal to the wall of offensive linemen surging towards him and then sprawls sideways into the contact. In theory, it is so that he can push back against multiple offensive linemen at once, instead of taking on just the one in front of him if he were facing straight forward. The innovative technique didn’t work against Chicago, or against the Eagles, but it’s a better strategy than the many defensive players who choose to jump over the top of the pile and completely whiff on making any contact at all.

Deadspin

The NFL wants to penalize defenders for a tackle it just made up

The ‘hip-drop’ tackle is the latest idiotic buzz phrase from a league that thinks it can make football safe

The NFL? It seems to believe all danger can, and should, be eradicated from the sport. Case and point is its newest venture: The “hip-drop tackle.” Described as a cousin of the horse-collar tackle, it’s when a defender, often coming at the ball carrier from behind and at an angle, grabs his prey around the waist and uses that momentum to swing the ball-carrier to the ground. That swing drops the runner’s hip and the injuries come when the defender falls on the plant leg, trapping it while the tackler twists the ball-carrier’s body, but not his ankle or leg, to the ground.

“It is an unforgiving behavior and one that we need to try to define and get out of the game,” said Jeff Miller, executive vice president of communications, public affairs, and policy for the NFL.

“The defender’s encircling, tackling the runner, and then swinging their weight and falling on the side of their other leg, which is their ankle or their knee,” said Rich McKay, NFL competition committee chair. “You can see what they do, because it can be a smaller man against a bigger man, and they’re trying to get the person down. That’s the object of the game.

“But when they do it, the runner becomes defenseless.”

There’s so much nonsense here, I merely hope to keep your attention spans long enough to debunk it all.

First, a hip-drop tackle is not a cousin of the horse-collar tackle, because a horse collar is a cousin of the face mask. Latching on to a piece of an opponent’s uniform like a handle and wrenching on it to rip them to the ground is a lot different than grabbing a guy by the hips and swinging him down.

I thought you were supposed to see what you hit, wrap up, and drive through the tackle? What are they supposed to do now? Wrap up, but try to hold up the ball-carrier at the same time? It doesn’t make any sense.