Re: 2015 was pretty good though

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merlin
McVay's certainly not perfect, but what I like about him is he seems driven to get where he wants to be as a coach. I am sure the problems they had last year in Washington are things he learned from, that should benefit us.

His comments after the Dallas game were telling too, where he observed that he had plays he wanted back, where he didn't put the players in the best situation to succeed. I'm sure one of those was the route/read that fed the ball to Woods on a collision route to the MLB. But either way I suspect he's his own worst critic, and that we're in good hands.

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rom Redskins Red-Zone Offense

[www.hogshaven.com]

9. A Murderers' Row of Red Zone Defenses

Something that many people don't know is that the Redskins had a bear of a schedule in terms of both overall and red-zone defense in 2016.

According to Football Outsiders, the Redskins faced the hardest schedule of defenses in the league last season. The last five teams that faced the most difficult schedule per the site had an average offensive DVOA ranking of 23.4. Only one of those teams ranked higher than 21st (14th). The Redskins ranked fifth in offensive DVOA last season. That's pretty damn impressive, all things considered.

Warren Sharp, of Sharp Football Stats, looked specifically at red-zone strength of schedule for every team in 2016. Can you guess where the Redskins' opponents ranked?


I don't know exactly how Warren came up with his numbers, so I did my own research using the average values and rankings of every team's red-zone schedule. The numbers I looked at put the Redskins just ahead of the Browns at 31st place. Big upgrade, right?

It shouldn't surprise you to learn this has some predictive power. For example, last year when the Skins ranked eighth in the league by scoring touchdowns at a 61.22% rate in the red area, they faced a much easier slate of red-zone defenses (12.4 average ranking vs. 17.63 average ranking and 51.98% vs. 56.34%).

It's also noteworthy that five of last year's bottom seven teams in red-zone touchdown percentage had a red-zone schedule ranked 13th toughest or higher. Six of the top-12 teams in the metric had one of the nine easiest runs of red-zone opponents.

The Redskins' red-zone schedule is only slightly better next season (average ranking of 14.63 and value of 53.18%), but that small improvement could lead to big gains for Washington's ability to score six.