It started the previous night, with Greg Blache energizing his players with his words during a defensive meeting. He was passionate, intense and focused. And the players loved it.
“You were ready to run through a brick wall for him,” linebacker London Fletcher said. “He was very emotional. [The speech] nearly left him in tears.”
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Both Blache and his defense delivered. They weren’t exactly facing a high-powered offense, one with a second-year quarterback making his first start and it helped that Tampa Bay missed two field goals. But the Redskins played more aggressively from the start, sending corner Justin Tryon on a blitz. Playing in the slot, Tryon blitzed several times and even posted a sack. The Redskins left Tryon in the slot, leaving DeAngelo Hall strictly on the outside. Also, Tryon played more than Fred Smoot in the second half.
Though they didn’t blitz a lot, they did play with a different mindset.
“It’s a mentality,” Redskins safety Reed Doughty said. “If you sit in a zone all day, you can feel yourself sitting back. We talked about no matter what was called, being aggressive. I could feel the sense of urgency to get off the field and make plays.”
The Redskins held Tampa to 85 yards in the second half and 229 overall. Hall helped with a third-quarter interception, reading quarterback Josh Johnson perfectly, and returned it 22 yards to set up a 42-yard field goal.
“It was a play someone needed to make,” Hall said.
On Tampa’s last drive, rookie defensive lineman Jeremy Jarmon forced a fumble that Chris Horton recovered at the Bucs’ 28-yard line.
During the week, Blache vowed to be more of a “riverboat gambler.”
“He said, ‘I ain’t gonna lay back,’” Redskins end Phillip Daniels said. “Yeah, he fired us up pretty good.”
