Jason Campbell (1 Viewer)

[joetrow]

Mon, Sep 21QB Jason Campbell, who has started 39 of 42 games since replacing Mark Brunell in November 2006, might be limited in practice this week after suffering a sprained foot during the second quarter against the Rams. "It was kind of tender the rest of the game," Campbell said. "I just kept trying to fight through it." Campbell didn't miss any snaps in the victory but the foot was swollen on Monday. Coach Jim Zorn said he was proud that his protege sucked it up and expects Campbell to start at Detroit.(Yahoo! Sports)

First if anyone has injury news on Campbells foot i'd appreciate it.Campbell vs Detroit:2008 23/28 328 1TD -2 Rushing Yards2007 23/29 248 2TD 0 Rushing YardsDetroit has allowed 255 yrds a game passing this year and 8 td, both of those thanks much to week 1 vs NO.Campbell has thrown the rock 61 times through two games this season, so it seems as 28-30 attempts vs Detroit is about what to expect. Detroit will be without Ernie Sims this week. What should expectations be for Campbell with a 30 attempt game agianst the Lions D be this sudnay? 275 and 2 TD and 15 rush yards reasonable? Anyone think this may be a shoot out, Stafford to Megatron and Campbell to Cooley/S Moss? Who are you starting Campbell over this week?

 

[footballnerd]

McNabb and not terribly confident considering what Campbell didn't do vs STL last week.

 

[Maroney=Sped]

It's not what I thought I'd be saying right now, but Zorn needs to cut Campbell loose and run the offense through Campbell, spreading things out and letting Campbell develop a rhythm. They've done that between the 20's, but in the red zone Zorn's tightened things up and gotten conservative, mixing in some strange gadget plays too. Unfortunately for Campbell, he's had some drops as well, including two by Sellers and Thomas on sure TD's last week.

I'm really not sure what Zorn is doing as a play-caller right now. What he needs to do is run a more traditional WCO by passing to set up the run and by letting his QB be featured. If that happens, Campbell will have good if not great numbers this week (i.e. 250+ yards and 2-3 TD's). I just don't know if that's what's going to happen.

 

[chihawk]

Starting Campbell over Palmer (againt Steelers).

 

[cubbie5150]

I expect Santana Moss to put up his once a year 10/180/2 before slinking back to uselessness for the rest of the season. Why? Because Det pass D is terrible & my opponent will be starting Moss

 

[jbz]

Campbell just isn't a very good QB. He's too safe with the ball and won't push the ball down field. This can be good for real life football, but in the end, the Skins lack of TDs and their streak of not scoring at least 30 are very telling. They just don't score TDs very much and Campbell is not a very good QB. In fairness he probably should have had at least 1 TD last week.

 

[Maroney=Sped]

Campbell just isn't a very good QB. He's too safe with the ball and won't push the ball down field. This can be good for real life football, but in the end, the Skins lack of TDs and their streak of not scoring at least 30 are very telling. They just don't score TDs very much and Campbell is not a very good QB. In fairness he probably should have had at least 1 TD last week.

Believe me, this is something that 'Skins fans hotly debate, but this is for your consideration, from a recent article from KC Joyner who I respect a lot as an analyst:

Jim Zorn as a Coach: Where Did the Risk-Taker Go?

By KC Joyner 09/09/09

Washington Redskins

The Football Scientist, KC Joyner, is a Fifth Down contributor. He breaks down fantasy football matchups twice a week on ESPN.com’s NFL Insider section. His 2009 Fantasy Football Draft Guide is now available for immediate download. Lab results for “Scientific Football 2009” are available for those who order the book now.

I have spent a lot of time mulling over the Redskins because no coach in the N.F.L. presents a more compelling psychological and play-calling profile than Jim Zorn.

Let’s start with the more controversial of the two, Zorn’s play-calling. Zorn was initially hired as the Redskins’ offensive coordinator before being given the head coaching job when Steve Spagnuolo reportedly turned Washington down.

Zorn won that job in part because his aggressive play-calling pedigree would suggest that he would use a go-for-broke game plan. This history went all the way back to when he was a frenetic and scrambling risk-taking quarterback for Seattle in the late 70s and early 80s. Zorn then spent many years coaching under one of the masters of dynamic play-calling, Mike Holmgren.

The thought was that Zorn would come out of the game-plan gates firing away, but that didn’t happen in Week 1. The Giants deserve a lot of credit for shutting down Washington, but the Skins were so conservative that Jason Campbell reportedly decided to go to Zorn and said: Look, you’ve got to relax and trust us out there.

Zorn didn’t exactly decide to be more aggressive. What he did was start to put more responsibility on Campbell’s shoulders. He gave him more leeway to call huddles and even had Campbell changing protections for the first time.

I also think he put the onus of whether or not to throw downfield on Campbell’s head. I say this because of multiple comments I heard on broadcasts in which the announcers talked about Zorn being able to call for a downfield pass and have Campbell not throw it if the play wasn’t there. That philosophy worked well early, as evidenced by Campbell’s vertical numbers during the first half of the season:

Wk/Opp Att Comp Yds TD Int Pen Pen Yds YPA

Wk 1/NYG 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.0

Wk 2/NO 12 6 162 1 0 0 0 13.5

Wk 3/Ari 5 3 37 1 0 1 -10 4.5

Wk 4/Dal 5 4 113 0 0 0 0 22.6

Wk 5/Phi 4 3 59 0 0 1 5 12.8

Wk 6/Stl 6 4 81 0 0 1 5 12.3

Wk 7/Cle 6 3 76 0 0 0 0 12.7

Wk 8/Det 9 7 185 1 0 0 0 20.6

Wks 1-8 52 30 713 3 0 3 0 13.0

To put a 13.0 vertical YPA into perspective, just consider this: That is slightly higher than what Philip Rivers posted (12.7) last season and just under what Kurt Warner posted (13.2). It is an elite total.

What isn’t an elite total is the number of attempts. If we double the 52 attempts, it would pro-rate to 104 vertical pass attempts for the season. To put some perspective on that statistic, consider that no full-time starting quarterback outside of Washington had a total of fewer than 138 vertical attempts in 2008. It is an incredibly low number.

The combination of these two metrics say that Zorn told Campbell not to go deep unless the play was open, and Campbell did exactly that. He didn’t go downfield often, but when he did, he was incredibly successful.

This concept worked in large part because of how productive Clinton Portis was in this same time frame. Check out his all-POA win YPA marks in Weeks 1-8:

Wk/Opp All-POA win runs Yds YPA

Wk 1/NYG 15 85 5.7

Wk 2/NO 20 95 4.8

Wk 3/Ari 13 56 4.3

Wk 4/Dal 13 106 8.2

Wk 5/Phi 18 111 6.2

Wk 6/Stl 18 123 6.8

Wk 7/Cle 20 152 7.6

Wk 8/Det 15 122 8.1

Wks 1-8 132 850 6.4

The 6.4 total is superb on its own and it was weighed down in part because of the totals from Weeks 1-3. From Weeks 4-8, Portis posted a 7.3 YPA in this metric, which is a very high number.

The problems for this offense started around Week 9. Portis was hit on a knee in the Pittsburgh contest that Sunday, and he wasn’t the same the rest of the year. His all-POA win YPA provides the evidence:

Wk/Opp All-POA win runs Yds YPA

Wk 9/Pit 7 47 6.7

Wk 11/Dal 8 56 7.0

Wk 12/Sea 21 120 5.7

Wk 13/NYG 8 18 2.3

Wk 14/Bal 8 32 4.0

Wk 15/Cin 16 63 3.9

Wk 16/Phi 10 60 6.0

Wk 17/SF 16 61 3.8

Wks 9-17 94 457 4.9

Portis went from posting a YPA in this metric that would be near the top of the league at the end of the season to one that would be near the bottom. His drop-off in productivity dovetailed with the vertical YPA drop-off Campbell suffered in the second half of the year:

Wk/Opp Att Comp Yds TD Int Pen Pen Yds YPA

Wk 9/Pit 5 2 26 0 0 0 0 5.2

Wk 11/Dal 3 2 37 0 0 0 0 12.3

Wk 12/Sea 7 2 33 0 0 1 21 6.8

Wk 13/NYG 10 3 61 0 1 1 5 6.0

Wk 14/Bal 6 2 35 0 1 0 0 5.8

Wk 15/Cin 5 3 45 1 0 0 0 9.0

Wk 16/Phi 7 2 29 0 0 0 0 4.1

Wk 17/SF 7 2 31 0 0 0 0 4.4

Wks 9-17 50 18 297 1 2 2 26 6.2

Once defenses didn’t have to focus as much attention on stopping Portis, they could drop back and take away any and all vertical passes from Campbell.

I got the impression later on in the season that Campbell was forcing more throws downfield. My instinct was that he was doing that because Zorn wanted to take more vertical shots to take pressure off the running game.

Still, the most perplexing part of all of this was that Zorn started leaning on the run game as much as he did to start with. He brought over a pass-heavy West Coast scheme from Seattle and then turned the Redskins into a ground attack. Part of this may be because Campbell had some issues with reading defenses at times, but he was in his seventh offensive system in eight years.

Campbell also didn’t have problems avoiding mistakes; he had zero bad decisions in the first six weeks of the season. I cannot stress enough how rare it is to go that many games without a single bad decision. It is a major part of why the Redskins didn’t have a turnover until their 344th play of the year.

It also says that the offense should have been able to take more chances and put the ball in the air with greater frequency. That could mean leaning more on the West Coast passes to give Campbell additional comfort in that system and take some wear and tear away from Portis. The downside of a couple of bad decisions would have been more than offset by those benefits.

I don’t think Zorn wanted to do that because he wanted to take the safest route possible no matter what. My scouting eye said that happened because he was focusing on trying not to fail as opposed to trying to succeed. Be it in the football world, the business world, or simply life in general, this mind-set’s lack of focus on success all but assures that success won’t occur.

This became clear to the outside world by the end of the season when Zorn said, “I just feel like the worst coach in America to have to lose the way we are losing,” but I think the team caught on to that almost from the start. Portis certainly seemed to feel that way early on, based on his comments to a Washington radio station before Week 3. He said he would like to have just one game running behind the best offensive line in the league or to play in the best offensive scheme in the league. Since the Redskins’ offensive line placed 8th in overall POA win rate, it doesn’t take much to read between the lines and see that he was zinging Zorn.

Portis didn’t stop there. He sarcastically called Zorn a genius later in the year and didn’t seem to make any bones about complaining to the press about him. Since his position coach called Portis one of the most unselfish, hardest-working backs in the league, it has to be assumed that he is one of the leaders in the locker room. Zorn tried any number of ways to motivate and connect with Portis but none of them seemed to work, and I think the locker room picked up on that in a way that wasn’t good for Zorn.

Zorn also learned a truism about the head coaching position – you have to seem as if you know what you are doing at all times. It is like any primary leadership position in a company. If the employees for one second catch on that supervisors don’t know what they’re doing, their respect level will plummet immediately. Once that happens, the manager is pretty much toast; that level of regard can be hard to get back once lost.

Zorn had numerous instances where, if he didn’t know what he was doing, it was at least clear that he was going through some OJT (on-the-job training). Any new head coach goes through some OJT, but the good ones never let the players see it, or least never let them see it affect him in a negative way.

The odd part is that Redskins management didn’t seem to think Zorn was the problem. They focused their efforts on trying to replace Campbell even though Campbell was, according to a Week 9 comment by “Monday Night Football commentator” and tape guru nonpareil Ron Jaworski, the MVP of the first half of the 2008 season. I don’t think anyone was anointing Zorn the Coach of the Year at that point, and if he doesn’t show improved leadership skills in 2009, he’ll have trouble even equaling his 2008 accomplishments.

Note, BTW, that Joyner doesn't address (or missed) the significant O-line problems that the team had late in the year that also affected both the running game and the passing game.

 

[Maroney=Speed]

It's not what I thought I'd be saying right now, but Zorn needs to cut Campbell loose and run the offense through Campbell, spreading things out and letting Campbell develop a rhythm. They've done that between the 20's, but in the red zone Zorn's tightened things up and gotten conservative, mixing in some strange gadget plays too. Unfortunately for Campbell, he's had some drops as well, including two by Sellers and Thomas on sure TD's last week.

I'm really not sure what Zorn is doing as a play-caller right now. What he needs to do is run a more traditional WCO by passing to set up the run and by letting his QB be featured. If that happens, Campbell will have good if not great numbers this week (i.e. 250+ yards and 2-3 TD's). I just don't know if that's what's going to happen.

First you steal my name, than this ' It's not what I thought I'd be saying right now, but Zorn needs to cut Campbell loose and run the offense through Campbell'.This was said on ESPN, Dude Please get a life.

I'll be back in another 3 months from now.

 

[footballnerd]

It's not what I thought I'd be saying right now, but Zorn needs to cut Campbell loose and run the offense through Campbell, spreading things out and letting Campbell develop a rhythm. They've done that between the 20's, but in the red zone Zorn's tightened things up and gotten conservative, mixing in some strange gadget plays too. Unfortunately for Campbell, he's had some drops as well, including two by Sellers and Thomas on sure TD's last week.

I'm really not sure what Zorn is doing as a play-caller right now. What he needs to do is run a more traditional WCO by passing to set up the run and by letting his QB be featured. If that happens, Campbell will have good if not great numbers this week (i.e. 250+ yards and 2-3 TD's). I just don't know if that's what's going to happen.

First you steal my name, than this ' It's not what I thought I'd be saying right now, but Zorn needs to cut Campbell loose and run the offense through Campbell'.This was said on ESPN, Dude Please get a life.

I'll be back in another 3 months from now.

Whoa, what in schizophrenia is going on here???

 

[jbz]

i confused

 

[Maroney=Sped]

Sorry. My kid got onto my account for a second obviously.

 

[fatness]

Sorry. My kid got onto my account for a second obviously.

Campbell should have a good day against Detroit. If Zorn allows him to.

 

[jon_mx]

I expect Santana Moss to put up his once a year 10/180/2 before slinking back to uselessness for the rest of the season. Why? Because Det pass D is terrible & my opponent will be starting Moss

Santana Moss has had a career going up against me too. But I own his this year, so i am thinking he will continue to suck until I cut him loose.

 

[Maroney=Speed]

Sorry. My kid got onto my account for a second obviously.

This is why this site, will never be 'The site' it's clowns like 'Maroney=Sped'. 'Maroney=Sped' what did you think about the half back option that was run by Washington inside the Rams 5 yard line? What play should they have run, or was that a good play? Thanks I'll wait for your answer.

 

[Bizkiteer]

Truly feel sorry for any FF owner that is depending on Campbell for anything other than taking of a roster space. Problem is we still have no idea if he's actually a decent QB...maybe one day they will let JC throw the ball, if the balls and chains come off.

 

[Maroney=Sped]

Sorry. My kid got onto my account for a second obviously.

This is why this site, will never be 'The site' it's clowns like 'Maroney=Sped'. 'Maroney=Sped' what did you think about the half back option that was run by Washington inside the Rams 5 yard line? What play should they have run, or was that a good play? Thanks I'll wait for your answer.

Stop. Just stop. You do this again and I'm taking away your computer privileges.

 

[PatrickT]

McNabb and not terribly confident considering what Campbell didn't do vs STL last week.

Same, out of necessity.

 

[joetrow]

Mon, Sep 21

QB Jason Campbell, who has started 39 of 42 games since replacing Mark Brunell in November 2006, might be limited in practice this week after suffering a sprained foot during the second quarter against the Rams. "It was kind of tender the rest of the game," Campbell said. "I just kept trying to fight through it." Campbell didn't miss any snaps in the victory but the foot was swollen on Monday. Coach Jim Zorn said he was proud that his protege sucked it up and expects Campbell to start at Detroit.

(Yahoo! Sports)

First if anyone has injury news on Campbells foot i'd appreciate it.Campbell vs Detroit:

2008 23/28 328 1TD -2 Rushing Yards

2007 23/29 248 2TD 0 Rushing Yards

Detroit has allowed 255 yrds a game passing this year and 8 td, both of those thanks much to week 1 vs NO.

Campbell has thrown the rock 61 times through two games this season, so it seems as 28-30 attempts vs Detroit is about what to expect. Detroit will be without Ernie Sims this week. What should expectations be for Campbell with a 30 attempt game agianst the Lions D be this sudnay? 275 and 2 TD and 15 rush yards reasonable? Anyone think this may be a shoot out, Stafford to Megatron and Campbell to Cooley/S Moss? Who are you starting Campbell over this week?

attselfonback:

 

[Gary Pinkel]

Sorry. My kid got onto my account for a second obviously.

This is why this site, will never be 'The site' it's clowns like 'Maroney=Sped'. 'Maroney=Sped' what did you think about the half back option that was run by Washington inside the Rams 5 yard line? What play should they have run, or was that a good play? Thanks I'll wait for your answer.

Stop. Just stop. You do this again and I'm taking away your computer privileges.

 

[Ladsud]

You bumped a month old thread for that?