MVN - Most Valuable Network

Todd Collins!!!!!–and Bears Game Recap

First with the important question.

Who the heck is Todd Collins?

The Redskin backup took over for Jason Campbell who suffered a potentially serious injury to his left knee in the 2nd quarter Thursday night.  Collins was a Brunell-esque 15 for 20 for a Brady-esque 11+ yards per attempt in relief of Campbell.  More importantly, he led three touchdown drives and the Redskins won.

More importantly is the emergence of a potentially dominant red zone defense for the Redskins.  The Bears didn’t really get any big plays on the Redskins, although some great catches by Bernard Berrian and Greg Olsen allowed the Bears offense to have some success.  Save the acrobatic TD catch from Berrian in the end zone, and we are talking about a defense that has gone 10 2/3 quarters without allowing a TD.

Gregg Williams went after “Chicago quarterback” today, which allowed for two things: 1) it got the Bears passing game out of rhythm early and forced a lot of hot routes on a short practice week for the Bears, and 2) the Redskins finally had a solution for a running game.  The Redskins bottled up the “original” Adrian Peterson, and Bears’ rookie Garrett Wolfe all night long.  By the end of the game, the Redskins were playing with John Eubanks and Leigh Torrance on the outsides.

The play of the game, easily, was made by Cornelius Griffin.  1st and goal from the one yard line, and Griffin just drives Bears’ Guard Terrance Metcalf 6 yards deep into the backfield and swallows up “other AP” for a 4 yard loss.  The Bears were forced to throw and ultimately settle for the field goal on that drive, cutting the Redskins lead to 17-13 instead of tying the game at 17.

Kedric Golston had the first blocked kick for the Redskins since last season when Troy Vincent blocked Mike Vanderjagt’s field goal attempt, and Sean Taylor returned it to set up the game winning field goal against Dallas last year…which was the last time the Redskins won a game without Jason Campbell at QB.

It looks like Campbell dodged a bullet with his injury, but I would still put his status for next week’s game at New York as “very doubtful.”  The Giants will have all week to prepare for Todd Collins, just not as much time as the Redskins will have to prepare for Eli Manning.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 12:11 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.