Take everything about this month’s games with a grain of salt. This is preseason and it does little to foretell regular season success. That said, there were a few things I took note of during last night’s game. Due to work and vacation schedules among our staff we won’t have a traditional game recap (perhaps all preseason) but we can still bring our armchair analysis to our loyal readers. Bulleted list, GO:
On the Redskins:
- Don’t they wear white at home? When did that change?
- How good did Rex Grossman look?
- Kellen Clemens is still around, and wearing #1. Who does that? Don’t wear #1 as a QB. It looks dumb.
On the Steelers:
- Ben Roethlisberger got hit a few times early on. May have been late, maybe not, but so far so good on the consistency anyway. He ended up whacking his hand into someone or something. He’ll be fine. It’s the first abuse his hand has taken since Clay Matthews had his way with him in February.
- The starting defense looked like it had a little bit of trouble communicating early on. That’s fine at this stage. LeBeau left them in for a while, either as a message that the performance wasn’t good enough or just to get them some more live game time to get themselves sorted out.
- Defense looked good in the red zone on the first series. Good pursuit and pressure by the front 7. Helped that Shayne Graham is terrible at kicking footballs.
- Ryan Clark and Ike Taylor both left early with one health issue or another.
- Ike Taylor broke his thumb. That’s lame and all, but he can probably play with a cast in a month and it’s not like he’s going to drop any more interceptions than usual. This also gives the rookies & young guys the rest of the preseason to play with a starting defense. This is a blessing in disguise.
- Timmons and Mundy got shaken up making the same hit but neither seem to be on the shelf.
- Antonio Brown looked good with the time he got. He might be able to use this month to leapfrog Sanders on the depth chart.
- Byron Leftwich is a statue.
- Isaac “Preseason MVP” Redman’s TD run looked beautiful on film. Every player did his job perfectly.
- Da’Mon Cromartie-Smith made himself noticeable in a good way. He also made himself noticeable by having enough punctuation in his name to make Chris Fuamatu-Ma’Afala proud.
- Stevenson Sylvester will be a very good player. Not just yet. He may not see the field at all on defense this season. But by the time James Farrior is ready to call it quits, I expect Sylvester to be knocking on the door of the starting lineup.
Dream team in the house on Thursday. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the starting defense shut down the pre-preseason Superbowl champion? Let’s dispell some of this hype.
