Despite having played Washington at least twice a year since 1970, the Super Bowl champion New York Giants are going to be playing somewhat of a guessing game against the Redskins in the kickoff game to the NFL season.
It’s one of the advantages that Jim Zorn brings to the Redskins as their new coach.
Zorn installed the West Coast offense, hired two new coordinators and has been so vanilla in the preseason that the Giants are going to have be very flexible in the nationally televised game Thursday night at Giants Stadium.
"We haven’t gone out to try and reinvent ourselves and all of a sudden come up with a magic potion," Zorn said. "We’ve been trying to work hard and prepare ourselves so we can battle."
The Giants aren’t totally in the dark.
Zorn has been a quarterbacks’ coach for 10 seasons with Detroit and Seattle, so New York has an idea what he likes to use. The West Coast offense isn’t new either, but Zorn will have his own wrinkles. "They didn’t show all their cards in the preseason," Giants middle linebacker Antonio Pierce said. "They showed a little bit, but they are working on other things and probably game planning against us a little, just like we’ve been doing against them. "After the first 15 plays we’ll know what their game plan is and what their state of mind is," he added. Zorn has kept the majority of running plays that Joe Gibbs had in his playbook, but he also has offered quarterback Jason Campbell more options.
"Before it was, ‘This is what we are going to do no matter what they do. They have to stop us,’" Redskins halfback Clinton Portis said in describing Gibbs’ offense.
More often than not, defenses stopped the Redskins, Portis said.
Leave Your Comments