The bye week... some teams take advantage of it by working on their problems, some teams take advantage of it by giving the team an extended rest to recover from injuries, some teams just thank the football gods that they have a chance to figure out what's going wrong with the team. As is the case with the Washington Redskins.
At 3-4, the Redskins are reeling and definitely on their heels. What began as a promising start to the season has spiraled downward over the last few weeks, and while the result against the Bucaneers two weeks ago was bad, it was nowhere near as self-deprecating as the away embarassment to the struggling Bills. Coaches questioned player's heart, players questioned coaches abilities, Lavar Arrington even broke down in tears this week on the John Thompson show when asked about the state of the team.... the Redskins are just in total disarray.
As a stop gap, or was it a media ploy, Washington sought out two 'consultants' this week to try and determine how the team can solve their recent struggles. Foge Fazio and the venerable Joe Bugel were brought in to look at film and make suggestions on how the respective defensive and offensive units could improve. However, their visits were comically short and now appear to have been a means to 'appeasing' the Redskins faithful as opposed to actually fixing any problems.
Steve Spurrier also vowed that he'd grab players 'off the street' if he needed to, and so that's exactly what Washington did. The 'shake-up' however, only involved some reserves as seldom used DE LaDairis Jackson was dropped in favor of Ron Warner and offensive lineman Brad Bedell was replaced by journeyman Mitch White.
The Redskins also decided to end their quick honeymoon with Rob Johnson. Despite little chance to prove what he could do, Johnson proved one thing -- he's not capable of running the Fun 'N Gun.When forced into his first action against the Bills on Sunday, Johnson did not appear to have a clue what was going on at Ralph Wilson Stadium. The former Bills QB was looking around the stadium like he was trying to track a favorite relative rather than find an open receiver. So the Redskins picked up Tim Hasselbeck, brother of the Seahawks' starting QB Matt, to try and improve the backup QB situation. Now the backup duties could fall to a young man who has never taken a regular season snap in the NFL, and there is new talk of bringing back Danny Wuerffel to shore up the backup position or promoting Gibran Hamdan from the practice squad.
So how is this team working through the problems during this bye week?
They've all gone home.
Word out of Redskin Park was that practices this week were crisp and intense but the Redskins broke camp for the entire weekend to recuperate and rejuvenate. Apparently the players wasted precious little time evacuating the premises and all going their separate ways to 'reflect' on the season-to-date.
Like all bye weeks... the time off is welcomed by the injured. Patrick Ramsey, Dave Fiore and Jermaine Haley are all banged up and will benefit greatly from the additional recovery time.
After the last few performances by the team... we fans could use the break too.
-- BossHog
Stay tuned next week as theHogs.net individually grades out the performances of the various Redskin team units.
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