If all you knew about Washington’s Week One performance was what you saw with a quick glance at the box score, you might think they played pretty well.
Quarterback Robert Griffin III completed 29 of 37 of his passes, or 78.4 percent. And Washington gained 131 yards on the ground, on 23 carries. That looks like Washington was efficient through the air and effective on the ground.
The reality is different: Washington lost 17-6. How odd is that? According to FootballPerspective.com, Washington was the first team in NFL history to score fewer than 10 points while completing at least 75 percent of its passes and rushing for at least 125 yards. From 1940 until Sunday, there had been 615 teams in NFL history to rush for 125 yards with a 75 percent completion rate, and all 615 of them had scored at least 10 points in the game in which they reached those benchmarks.
The problem is that while Griffin was completing his passes, he wasn’t getting much yardage out of them. DeSean Jackson and Pierre Garcon, who are supposed to be able to stretch the field, averaged 7.8 and 7.7 yards per catch, respectively. Griffin’s first game of the season included four different completions of zero or negative yardage, plus a six-yard gain on a fourth-and-10, a nine-yard gain on third-and-16, a three-yard gain on second-and-19 and a three-yard gain on second-and 8, not to mention completions of one, two, three and four yards on four different first-and-10s.
Griffin currently ranks second in the NFL in completion percentage, but he ranks 16th in yards per pass. Jay Gruden isn’t going to see many big plays out of his passing game until he starts calling for Griffin to throw it downfield.
