Remember when Scott Turner’s offense was touted as a high-functioning and high-flying scheme that would move running backs in and out of the backfield, often using them as receivers, while using receivers like Steven Sims Jr. as a running back on sweeps? What happened to that?
Four catches for a total of six yards, on nine targets.
That’s not just the receiving stat line for Antonio Gibson, but rather for Gibson and J.D. McKissic combined. Through two games of the season, we’ve seen nowhere near the amount of workload in the passing game that we were expecting to see for the RBs in Washington, and it’s rightfully leading to some questions.
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The simple answer as to why we aren’t seeing this wrinkle of the offense just yet is because the first couple weeks of the season have virtually been an extension of the non-existent preseason. Without a chance to get players familiar with the new offense, Turner is undoubtedly still rolling out some new ideas and playsheets, hoping that Dwayne Haskins can get comfortable with the offense and grow confident in plays he’s running. The same can be said for Gibson, who is a rookie RB that didn’t have a huge workload in college at Memphis, where he only carried the ball a total of 33 times in his career, and often lined up in the slot or split out wide, rather than behind the QB in the backfield.
This is obviously not a time for panic, and if you have any trust in Washington’s offense, then you can trust that Turner will start to expand his play-calling sheet and look to get Gibson and McKissic involved in the passing game. Going forward, however, this is absolutely something to watch as we wait for the offense to start rolling.
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