Redskins Pre-Season Preview

There are two big things about this game:

1. Willie Parker will play. Probably not much, but he'll play.
2. This will most likely be the most we'll see of the starters until the season kicks off against Cleveland.

And... that's pretty much it.

If Fast Willie is in there for a quarter or two, then we'll certainly get to see how well he works with the new offense. Like I mentioned on the Najeh Davenport play in the Green Bay game, he would've blown by that cornerback and scored. It could very well be that Parker will find a lot of good running lanes with everything spread out.

Of course, this means that, if the Steelers are successful running the ball out of the three wide receiver set, that Dan Krieder's days are numbered. That's tragic and upsetting, but I will say this: I love Dan Krieder, but I love the Steelers more. If they can win more games and run the ball better with Fast Willie picking his lane in a more spread out formation, more power to them. It sucks that Krieder takes the fall for this, but I'd rather have another Lombardi Trophy in the South Side than a happy fullback. And yes, I have reached the Acceptance phase. That's the best thing for me, really. It will make things easier when they cut him to get down to 53 on September 1st.

I am going to assume that the defense will, once again, come out fired up and that Dick LeBeau will continue to experiment with different sets, formations, and blitzes. They threw a lot of exotic shit at Favre last week, so expect them to try and downright confound Jason Campbell this week.

I am also going to assume that, provided we keep the offensive starters in for more than two seconds, we're going to see a return of the shitty, vanilla offense that we were subjected against the Packers. Lots of crossing patterns, short passes, and bland stuff to behold as Arians tries to see how well the offense does with the worst, most stripped down version of the playbook imaginable. And, that's the way it should be. He saw that both Ben and Batch can complete long passes for big plays when needed, so he really doesn't have to see any more along those lines. Plus which, if the offense is set up to fail in the pre-season, things will seem that much easier when they're set up to succeed during the regular season.

I like the way Tomlin is handling this. The offense doesn't need any more confidence, but the defense needs all it can muster. There may be a new guy at the helm, but most of the personnel are still the same players that Cowher coached. And all those guys feed off of emotion and momentum. Since Porter isn't there anymore to provide it and Tomlin is pretty damn stoic on the sidelines, they need this early confidence and momentum heading into the season. It remains to be seen how long that'll last, but we definitely need every last ounce we can get.