The Redskins Blog

Greg Blache Throws Self Under Bus, Implies More Attacking From Defense

Big day for defensive coordinator Greg Blache‘s media availability, and not just for clever turns of phrase. First of all, he announced that Reed Doughty will be replacing Chris Horton in the starting lineup.

“Reed’s actually played better the last couple of weeks,” Blache said, “and Chris has struggled a little bit. You know, he had a play last week with bad eyes and got the interference call; he had an incident the week before … and it’s not that we’re down on him. But the fact that you have a guy in Reed that’s so close to him, it gives you an opportunity to get a guy that gives Chris a chance to catch his breath, refocus, come back strong. It’s a long season, and at the same time it gives Reed a chance to get out on the field more and give us an opportunity to make some plays.”

I’ll have plenty more on the Doughty/Horton switch later in the day. (Also, good eyes by blogger Dave O on his Redskins blog Staying Medium; his post-game reviews are rapidly becoming must-reads for me, and Doughty was someone that he mentioned a few times after Sunday.)

The other big news from Blache’s talk is that Greg Blache is being thrown under the bus by none other than Greg Blache.

“Quite candidly,” he said, “in 2009, things go bad, somebody’s gotta go under the bus. Being the leader of this defense, I should be under the bus. And I’ll dive under; if somebody wants to throw me, I’ll dive under. ‘Cause going under the bus, you hurt your feelings a little bit, and at worst you might end up with skidmarks on both sides of your shorts. You do, it’s the truth, so I can deal with the hurt and stuff, and we just kinda go on and play.”

This was Blache’s slightly roundabout and colorful way of leading into the announcement that the defense is going to be taking a few more chances, maybe attacking a bit more.

“Quite honestly,” Blache said, “if the calls aren’t real good, that’s my fault. If the players don’t play with detail, that’s my fault. because that all comes back to coaching. If we didn’t have talent, then you’d say, well, there’s a talent issue. We have talent. But in our league, the most talented teams don’t always win. The teams that play the best win. Like Sunday, I thought we were a more talented team, but we didn’t play better.”

He continued, “So that comes back on me. When you stop, you look in the mirror, you look at all the details, that comes back to coaches. And, quite candidly, I have no problem accepting that. Talk to the players about it. I told them: I’ll do a better job of giving them calls, I’ll do a better job of helping them on third down, put them in situations where they can be successful. I gotta just be a little bit more of a maverick. Not necessarily a McCain/Palin maverick, but a Bret or Bart Maverick, a riverboat gambler.” (That’s a reference to an old TV show, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the Jeopardy category, “television programs that were remade as Mel Gibson movies”.)

In just that short span, Blache said “candidly” twice and “honestly” once, which leads me to believe that he was trying to emphasize his sincerity in saying these things. I know there are a number of commenters here who are looking forward to seeing if Sunday bears them out.