Will be interesting to see if they add anyone. Couple of beat reporters suggest they need another WR. John Keim reported they have interest in Stefon Diggs. That was news to me because all the other reports I’d heard felt more like they were coming from Diggs’ camp rather than Washington. But Keim is as reliable as they come so for him to say they are monitoring the situation and have interest means there’s something there.
Given we just saw the Chiefs suffer a few WR injuries in camp too, that could accelerate things for Diggs as well. Be interesting to see just how much they are interested if the Chiefs get involved and the price potentially goes up.
Lots of noise around Diggs. It would be great to get through the joint practice with Miami on the 12th before bringing in another WR. If they can live the ball well then they might not need more help.
I would assume that no one knows better than the people making the decisions whether this team truly needs another WR—especially an established one. (Tho I've felt that way before, to my subsequent chagrin.😖)
But it seems like almost every team is enamored with the group it’s bringing into camp at the start. It’s only when reality hits them right between the eyes that they realize they need to make a move. So wait it out till then.
Fwiw, my guess is that if they decide Diggs would really improve the room—and they can get him on a team-friendly deal—they’ll pull the trigger. And if they don’t, it probably means they just weren’t feeling it.
Yeah, I think they do actually like the guys in the room better than most fans do and I think ideally they’d give those guys a week or two of proper camp practices to see if someone steps up and earns the spot or not. But with the injuries to the Chiefs receivers over the weekend, if they want Diggs, they might have to act a bit faster
I’m not a bit surprised that KC might be a number one contender for WR help, especially with their top guy Rashi Rice being under a cloud from both the civil and league authorities for past indiscretions, as well as recovering from a May knee cleanup. Now with Worthy being dinged up, they might be getting a little antsy. And that room wasn’t all that great in the first place!
But I can’t see AP getting into a bidding war with them over Stefan - or at least until the Cs have injury woes of their own. Can you?
I don’t think he’d get into a bidding war no. If he was willing to pay the price, he’d have already done it. I think either AP wants to give the current guys a chance for a few weeks, and thus wont rush into signing any vets regardless, or he has a price on Diggs that he’s willing to go to and Diggs is currently holding out for more.
"So while teams like the Ravens are live streaming their training camp practices and seemingly every play from the Cardinals training camp gets posted online, Commanders fans get very little."
Yeah, I do understand why they do it. 2 new coordinators that nobody fully knows exactly what they’re going to do, so anything they can keep under wraps is an advantage. But they’re already super tight on how many days fans can attend, so they could just keep the main stuff away from fans. They have 2 joint practices and they will have 3 preseason games that will give everyone some tape to go off of. So they can’t keep everything a secret forever.
Ultimately, the best team isn’t the one that nobody knows anything about. We know what the best teams do. We know Kyle Shanahan is gonna run wide zone and layer 5 different plays off it. We know Pat Mahomes is gonna drop back and pass, look for Kelce or scramble and make something happen off-script. We know Brian Flores is going to blitz the hell out of every offense he comes up against. The best teams don’t beat you with surprise, they beat you with execution. Having a handful of random plays from training camp tweeted out online isn’t going to be the difference between making the playoffs or having the whole staff fired, at least in my opinion.
From a purely practical perspective you're purely right.
But there is value in sending a message and setting a tone. This new regime is disciplined, principled and calculated. We're not even five years in to the new ownership, of which the previous owner left behind a fetid and dysfunctional legacy.
It’s pretty annoying how tight the B&G are being with security at camp and their efforts to throttle any videos of what they’re doing. Borderline paranoia?😅 There definitely do seem to be two opposing schools of thought around the league when it comes to training camp secrecy. Unfortunately for us, the Commanders fall into the super-secret society! I wonder if AP picked up that approach during his time with Bill Belichick?!🤔
(Gotta admit, I’m a little concerned that you blew up the spot of those fans who managed to smuggle out some video evidence of what the Comms are up to! I hope they don’t put an APB out on Reedie and Zee!!😜)
I do get it. I remember when I was with the Post and actually went to camp back in 2016. I was unaware of exactly how things worked and I tweeted out a note I had taken about a double A gap blitz. Now, everyone in the league uses that look but apparently the team didn’t like the fact I had said it. I had a senior WaPo reporter pull me aside and he told me about how the team PR staff weren’t happy but let me off because I was new to the whole thing.
He then told me about how he covered the team when Mike Shanahan was in charge and he heard stories about how Shanahan had people reading through newspapers and later online/tweets to get every bit of information about opponents he was playing that season. So Shanahan was extremely secretive with what he wanted out there. It was understandable back in 2012 when they drafted RG3 and they had this entire new read-option system that the NFL hadn’t really seen before. But otherwise, it was still the basic Shanahan wide zone, bootleg/play-action attack that it had always been.
As I said in a comment above, I think it’s stupid how secretive teams are now. I have multiple copies of Kyle Shanahan playbooks from his time in San Francisco, and I’m just some guy on the internet. I’m sure each team has copies of just about every playbook in the league from various sources. I’m sure Dan Quinn had Brian Shottenheimer’s playbook from his time in Dallas. The Cowboys just hired their DC from Philly, so I’m sure they have Vic Fangio’s playbook. Those will give far more info than some random clip from a practice. But alas, I just have to deal with it…
And for the record, I messaged Reedie and Zee last night before writing this post to make sure they were ok with me using the clip. They were all good with it
I know they’re called both picks and screens in basketball, but given we already use screen in football, I’d call them picks. They’re definitely a good way to beat any form of man coverage, as Washington saw last year on the defensive side of the ball. Felt like whenever they played man, they got a bunch of pick plays and because they couldn’t trust their DBs to pass things off and play man-match, they just kept getting caught not he picks and giving up catches…
McLaurin, Burks, Williams
Mclaurin, Burks, McCaffrey
McLaurin, Williams, Brown
McLaurin, Brown, Jefferson
McLaurin, Williams, McCaffrey, Okonkwo, Sinnott, White
The more I breakdown combinations, the more bought in i am
Will be interesting to see if they add anyone. Couple of beat reporters suggest they need another WR. John Keim reported they have interest in Stefon Diggs. That was news to me because all the other reports I’d heard felt more like they were coming from Diggs’ camp rather than Washington. But Keim is as reliable as they come so for him to say they are monitoring the situation and have interest means there’s something there.
Given we just saw the Chiefs suffer a few WR injuries in camp too, that could accelerate things for Diggs as well. Be interesting to see just how much they are interested if the Chiefs get involved and the price potentially goes up.
All true statements. I heard that yesterday on the local radio. I guess the point is we have raised the floor significantly
Yeah, and the scheme isn’t likely to require those outside guys to win 1-on-1 as often as they needed to under Kliff. Different role
Lots of noise around Diggs. It would be great to get through the joint practice with Miami on the 12th before bringing in another WR. If they can live the ball well then they might not need more help.
💯!
I would assume that no one knows better than the people making the decisions whether this team truly needs another WR—especially an established one. (Tho I've felt that way before, to my subsequent chagrin.😖)
But it seems like almost every team is enamored with the group it’s bringing into camp at the start. It’s only when reality hits them right between the eyes that they realize they need to make a move. So wait it out till then.
Fwiw, my guess is that if they decide Diggs would really improve the room—and they can get him on a team-friendly deal—they’ll pull the trigger. And if they don’t, it probably means they just weren’t feeling it.
Yeah, I think they do actually like the guys in the room better than most fans do and I think ideally they’d give those guys a week or two of proper camp practices to see if someone steps up and earns the spot or not. But with the injuries to the Chiefs receivers over the weekend, if they want Diggs, they might have to act a bit faster
I’m not a bit surprised that KC might be a number one contender for WR help, especially with their top guy Rashi Rice being under a cloud from both the civil and league authorities for past indiscretions, as well as recovering from a May knee cleanup. Now with Worthy being dinged up, they might be getting a little antsy. And that room wasn’t all that great in the first place!
But I can’t see AP getting into a bidding war with them over Stefan - or at least until the Cs have injury woes of their own. Can you?
I don’t think he’d get into a bidding war no. If he was willing to pay the price, he’d have already done it. I think either AP wants to give the current guys a chance for a few weeks, and thus wont rush into signing any vets regardless, or he has a price on Diggs that he’s willing to go to and Diggs is currently holding out for more.
"So while teams like the Ravens are live streaming their training camp practices and seemingly every play from the Cardinals training camp gets posted online, Commanders fans get very little."
Simultaneously frustrating and awesome. Great up!
Yeah, I do understand why they do it. 2 new coordinators that nobody fully knows exactly what they’re going to do, so anything they can keep under wraps is an advantage. But they’re already super tight on how many days fans can attend, so they could just keep the main stuff away from fans. They have 2 joint practices and they will have 3 preseason games that will give everyone some tape to go off of. So they can’t keep everything a secret forever.
Ultimately, the best team isn’t the one that nobody knows anything about. We know what the best teams do. We know Kyle Shanahan is gonna run wide zone and layer 5 different plays off it. We know Pat Mahomes is gonna drop back and pass, look for Kelce or scramble and make something happen off-script. We know Brian Flores is going to blitz the hell out of every offense he comes up against. The best teams don’t beat you with surprise, they beat you with execution. Having a handful of random plays from training camp tweeted out online isn’t going to be the difference between making the playoffs or having the whole staff fired, at least in my opinion.
From a purely practical perspective you're purely right.
But there is value in sending a message and setting a tone. This new regime is disciplined, principled and calculated. We're not even five years in to the new ownership, of which the previous owner left behind a fetid and dysfunctional legacy.
It’s pretty annoying how tight the B&G are being with security at camp and their efforts to throttle any videos of what they’re doing. Borderline paranoia?😅 There definitely do seem to be two opposing schools of thought around the league when it comes to training camp secrecy. Unfortunately for us, the Commanders fall into the super-secret society! I wonder if AP picked up that approach during his time with Bill Belichick?!🤔
(Gotta admit, I’m a little concerned that you blew up the spot of those fans who managed to smuggle out some video evidence of what the Comms are up to! I hope they don’t put an APB out on Reedie and Zee!!😜)
I do get it. I remember when I was with the Post and actually went to camp back in 2016. I was unaware of exactly how things worked and I tweeted out a note I had taken about a double A gap blitz. Now, everyone in the league uses that look but apparently the team didn’t like the fact I had said it. I had a senior WaPo reporter pull me aside and he told me about how the team PR staff weren’t happy but let me off because I was new to the whole thing.
He then told me about how he covered the team when Mike Shanahan was in charge and he heard stories about how Shanahan had people reading through newspapers and later online/tweets to get every bit of information about opponents he was playing that season. So Shanahan was extremely secretive with what he wanted out there. It was understandable back in 2012 when they drafted RG3 and they had this entire new read-option system that the NFL hadn’t really seen before. But otherwise, it was still the basic Shanahan wide zone, bootleg/play-action attack that it had always been.
As I said in a comment above, I think it’s stupid how secretive teams are now. I have multiple copies of Kyle Shanahan playbooks from his time in San Francisco, and I’m just some guy on the internet. I’m sure each team has copies of just about every playbook in the league from various sources. I’m sure Dan Quinn had Brian Shottenheimer’s playbook from his time in Dallas. The Cowboys just hired their DC from Philly, so I’m sure they have Vic Fangio’s playbook. Those will give far more info than some random clip from a practice. But alas, I just have to deal with it…
And for the record, I messaged Reedie and Zee last night before writing this post to make sure they were ok with me using the clip. They were all good with it
Cool story about that camp tweet.
Right in the thick of it! Pressure musta been intense.
And it was nice of you to check in with the guys before you posted their names. That’s all class!
Using screens (or picks?) definitely seems to be the favorite way to disrupt coverage and get guys open in today’s NFL.
That screen Ben provided for Jaylin in the clip you showed worked perfectly!
I don’t recall seeing much of THAT in past seasons outta Ashburn. It’ll be good to see DB use them even more—or at least more effectively—this season.
I know they’re called both picks and screens in basketball, but given we already use screen in football, I’d call them picks. They’re definitely a good way to beat any form of man coverage, as Washington saw last year on the defensive side of the ball. Felt like whenever they played man, they got a bunch of pick plays and because they couldn’t trust their DBs to pass things off and play man-match, they just kept getting caught not he picks and giving up catches…