Fake Pillowfight of the Beltway

Are you ready for some football?!? Training camp and news coverage has been ongoing, but the excitement doesn't seem to get in full swing until the first preseason game (or when Hard Knocks premiers). You always hear how everyone is looking great until they actually are on display against (semi) real competition. This is depressing when you realize the o-line was actually getting negative press during preseason.

On to the game. What a suckfest, the Skins looked punchless on both sides of the ball while resting/missing a lot more key guys than the Ravens. The most notable point from tonight is that we struggled against the Ravens passing game. Yes, that's correct, the Ravens passing game gave us problems. Justin Tryon, in particular, was picked-on after getting a lot of hype about how well he has prepared for his sophomore season, and Kevin Barnes was also overmatched. Fred Davis tried to 'one-down' them by fumbling twice on the same drive. This team sorely needs depth to emerge from the ranks of the youth, but there were few bright spots tonight.

Chris Horton came from nowhere (I wasn't a geography major, but am pretty sure UCLA is in the middle of nowhere) and established himself as a playmaker in the preseason last year, and is now a solid starting safety. Tonight, Devin Thomas and Malcolm Kelly looked comfortable, ran some nice routes, and Kelly showed-off his hands. Despite those guys being under the microscope and performing relatively well, the guy who stood out most to me was Orakpo. Rak was a high energy guy who looked consistently tough to block on the line, too bad he is now a linebacker. Other pluses are that the o-line held their line reasonably well, which is especially important given our injury rate in that unit, and Jeremy Jarmon performed up to the hype.

Maybe it doesn't matter, maybe it does. Either way this game was pretty damn boring to watch.

(Image courtesy of didisworld.files.wordpress.com)