The Redskins are 3.5 underdogs to the Colts Sunday night. That’s expected. But beating the Eagles in Philadelphia and Washington’s eye-opening win over the Packers last Sunday has the smart guys reassessing.
Stat-master Paul Bessire at Predictionmachine.com upped his assessment of the Skins. After accounting for Mike Shanahan’s tendencies and the performance of Redskins players, Bessire has the “Skins winning 44 percent of the 50,000 simulated games of the Colts. That would be unremarkable except that Bessire’s simulation had Washington winning 30 percent of those simulations.
Football Outsiders once projected the ‘Skins for nine wins and a playoff make. Their game simulations now projects 8.1 regular season wins for the Redskins. Confusing, huh?
An 8-8 record is the benchmark performance for a coach in his first year with a team. Marty Schottenheimer did that five times in his career, once with Washington (2001). Mike Shanahan is on that pace. If the Redskins upset the Colts, Football Outsider’s nine-win scenario gains currency. An upset is entirely possible.
While the Colts have out-performed the Redskins in passing yards (1586 to 1243), Donovan McNabb’s passing yards-per-attempt is slightly higher than Peyton Manning’s (7.7 to 7.4). For all of Washington’s troubles in the passing game, they, like the Colts, rank in the NFL top 10 in net passing yards (Redskins 7th, Colts 4th).
The Redskins out-performed the Colts in rushing yards (443 to 399). Both, however, are in the bottom half of the league in rushing.
The Redskins are seriously scoring-deficient in comparison to the Colts (136 to 89). Washington overcame that in other games by playing close and running enough big plays to pull out a win. That’s the point here. We don’t want to see any big leads by the Colts.
Houston and Jacksonville needed 34 and 31 points to beat Indianapolis. Washington is not yet the scoring juggernaut we hope they become next season. Washington’s defense has to win this game.
Two weeks ago, Washington handled Michael Vick (mostly) by controlling his run to force him to pass. We don’t want Manning to pass. We want him to run. Manning is too wily to do that, but he might be pressured enough to make dumping the ball the smart thing to do. Doing that contains WRs Reggie Wayne and Austin Collie.
Do that and Washington can win this game the old fashion way: run the ball; stop the run; knock the snot out of Peyton Manning.
Football Fan Spot 