Evaluating Brian Robinson’s performance against the Vikings
Taking a closer look at how rookie RB Brian Robinson played against the Vikings
It’s fair to say running back Brian Robinson hasn’t taken the league by storm so far this season. Since returning to the field incredibly early after being shot twice in preseason, Robinson has played five games and carried the ball 67 times for a total of 219 yards and a touchdown. His 3.3 yards per carry average isn’t anything to brag about. However, given his situation it’s understandable that he’d take a few games to really get back into his stride, especially given he’s a rookie too.
Over the last few weeks, Robinson has begun to flash some of the potential that saw the Commanders spend a third round pick on him back in April. He’s hit a couple nice runs in recent weeks but we started to see it a little more consistently against the Vikings this past Sunday.
Against the Vikings, Robinson had 13 carries for 44 yards at 3.3 yards per carry, which again isn’t overly impressive. But watching back his runs he picked up some nice gains and didn’t get a ton of help up front on others.
Robinson didn’t get much work until the Commanders’ fourth drive. They started that drive backed up on their own 11 and looked to Robinson to find them some breathing room. With Robinson in the game, the Commanders have typically opted for more gap scheme concepts like power and counter rather than the typical outside zone stuff that Antonio Gibson runs. Here we see a nice wrinkle of the counter concept. Robinson aligns to the right of the quarterback in the shotgun with tight end Logan Thomas on the other side of the quarterback. Tight end Armani Rogers lines up in the slot to the left but is sent in motion just before the snap.
As the ball is snapped, Rogers uses the momentum from his motion to block the edge defender. Thomas follows behind and looks to wrap around for a linebacker on the second level. I actually think Washington gets its targeting slightly wrong here as right tackle Cornelius Lucas climbs up to block the second level defender that Thomas is wrapping around for, while center Tyler Larsen has to work around the nose tackle to then climb up and reach the linebacker. I suspect Larsen should have worked to the left side to block the defender trailing Rogers’ motion pre-snap and Lucas should have blocked down on the linebacker that Larsen picked up. That would have left the other linebacker free for Thomas.
That blocking situation may have caused some running backs to hesitate, but Robinson takes the hand off and then quickly looks to follow Thomas into the hole to the right side. Rogers gets cut by the edge defender, but that results in the defender being on the ground and Robinson is able to skip past him on his way to the edge. Right guard Trai Turner fails to maintain his down block and allows the defensive tackle to get back outside to run down Robinson, but Robinson shows off his power to fight through contact and work his way to a five yard gain before being brought down.
On the very next play, the Commanders went right back to Robinson.
This time they run a more conventional counter scheme, with the right guard pulling to the left side to kick out the edge defender and the tight end following the guard before wrapping around for a linebacker on the second level. As Robinson gets the ball, he notices the edge defender has quickly closed the gap to the right guard and closed his lane to the left side. On top of that, center Tyler Larsen loses his block and the nose tackle is left completely unblocked in the middle. Robinson knows his only option is to try and cut back to the right side behind the nose tackle. John Bates does just enough to get in the way of the defender but pulls his hands away to try and avoid a holding penalty. Robinson breaks through the arm tackle of the defender before being met by the edge defender on the back side. Robinson again shows his strength by powering forward and dragging the defender with him until the rest of the defense shows up to force him down, but not before he picks up another five yards and a first down.
The blocking up front wasn’t great for Robinson for much of the game. We’ve already seen him making his own yards as blockers miss blocks or target the wrong players. But sometimes there was just nowhere for him to go.
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