The Redskins first team defense played 12 snaps against the Bills on Thursday night, here are some notes and observations from those plays.
—Carriker and Bowen just pushed the pocket back on the Bills’ first snap from scrimmage. Ryan Fitzpatrick was immediately looking at a human wall when he set to look for a receiver. That allowed Kerrigan, who initially had run past the QB, to keep after it, loop back around, and drag down Fitzpatrick from behind.
—On third down on Buffalo’s first series, Perry Riley crept towards the line just before the snap and got a free lane to the quarterback. Fitzpatrick had to throw a fraction of a second sooner than he wanted to, enabling Josh Wilson to break up the short pass. The Redskins played a vanilla defense, but maybe with some rainbow sprinkles on it sometimes.
—Right after the Redskins fumbled the ball away they had a chance to get it right back. But an interception went right through Brandon Meriweather’s hands. He did his penance by doing some pushups on the stadium turf but he needs to catch those.
—The replacement officials didn’t get everything right but they were on the money with the illegal formation call that wiped out Fitzpatrick’s TD pass to Stevie Johnson. Both the wide receiver and the slot receiver on the left side were lined up on the line of scrimmage. That makes the inside guy an ineligible receiver but he has on a receiver’s number and he went out on a pass pattern. Five yards, TD nullified.
—Wilson broke up the pass on the ensuing play but Fitzpatrick did him a favor by throwing the ball behind C. J. Spiller.
—Incredible catch deep over the middle by TE Scott Chandler. Fitzpatrick hung him out to dry but he made the grab anyway despite Meriweanter giving hi a solid hit in the middle of his chest as he was trying to bring the ball in. Sometimes all you can do is tip your hat to a guy.
—Kerrigan got around his man and swatted a Fitzpatrick pass to the ground. He was the least-sacked QB in the league last year because he got rid of the ball so quickly. But Kerrigan jumped and foiled Fitzpatrick anyway.
—Pressure from Fletcher and Orakpo on the right side of the defense forced a deep sideline pass off target.
—None other than Perry Riley was with Stevie Johnson step for step about 20 yards downfield to force an incompletion on the starting defense’s last play for the night.
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