Greg Gabriel worked at various levels of professional football, starting as a running back for a semi-pro team in Buffalo. But he then entered the NFL, working as a part-time scout for Buffalo in 1981 and eventually working his way to the New York Giants four years later. He spent 16 seasons with the Giants before joining Chicago as its Director of College Scouting in 2001. He lasted nine seasons with the Bears and currently is a columnist for the National Football Post.
On the Redskins: “I like the way the Redskins are playing. They’re playing aggressive football. Jim Haslett is doing a great job with the defense. I like pressure defenses; right now the best defenses in the league are the pressure style defenses that blitz a lot. That creates turnovers, but you might get stung with the big play but overall you make things happen. They should have won the other night.I think they’re playing with confidence. But I don’t see them as a team that will blow anybody out. They have to beat you with fundamentals and by playing mistake free football. They’re playing more the way Mike wants. Going into the year I thought they might have been a team that wouldn’t go anywhere. But Philadelphia is not playing good ball. If the Redskins stay injury free, they have a chance to be there at the end. I like Rex Grossman. I was in Chicago when we drafted him and he’s in a good situation there. He’s probably going to play the best ball of his career.”
On the Rams: “I thought they would easily win the NFC West going into the season. They played pretty good ball last year. They had a rookie last year, Roger Saffold, at left tackle and Jason Smith was in his first year at right tackle. I thought they’d be playing a lot better and they’re not. Sam Bradford has not taken the step you’d think he would have from year one to year two. It’s a disappointing team.”
On Rams end Chris Long: “I thought by this time in his fourth year, with the progression he’d make and his high motor, he’d be more dominating than he is. He’s a good, but not great player. I haven’t seen the dominating ability where you’ve got to plan for him. They have the tools and Steve Spagnuolo is a defensive coach and he’s always done a great job. But you look at the first three games …You look at their roster and it had the makings of a pretty good pass rush on the outside with Long and adding Robert Quinn and they got C.J. Ah You and then on the inside they got big guys like Freddie Robbins who can give you a big push. I thought it would be better. James Laurinaitis is another guy; I didn’t think he’d be dominant but maybe a top flight middle linebacker. Their team as a whole is not playing anywhere near as good as I thought they would.”
On Rams QB Sam Bradford: “I watched him a lot last year. He played better than a lot of rookies – guys who went on to have great careers. You’d think he’d take the next step and he hasn’t, whether it’s because it’s a new offense I can’t answer that. But what I liked last year was his poise and ability to make plays. Even though he’s not a superlative athlete he was able to do things with his feet. He has a good arm, good accuracy. A lot of rookies don’t have the poise he showed. But even in the last quarter of the season he flattened out. He was getting more flustered by pressure. The arrow was going up for the first three quarters and he leveled off. It hasn’t gone back up yet and that can be concerning.”
On if the lockout and having a new coordinator has hurt Bradford: “Well I guess you can use the lockout any way you want. I look at Carolina. Cam Newton didn’t have one offseason practice and yet he’s thrown for like 1,100 yards and he’s a rookie in a brand new system having to play in a pro-style offense. If there’s one thing I thought about and I don’t know if you can put any stock into it, but Josh McDaniels became the guru when he was with Bill Belichick. He goes to Denver, didn’t do the job and now he’s in St. Louis. You’d think he might be able to give that offense a kick start, but it’s gone backwards.”
On Redskins QB Rex Grossman: “Tom Brady had four interceptions and he doesn’t get criticized. You hit a sour point with me. That poor kid has been criticized by the media and unfairly more than any player I can ever remember. We go to Arizona on Monday night. We win the game because of Devin Hester’s return and Grossman was terrible and [analyst Tony] Kornheiser crucified him. Kornheiser doesn’t know if a ball is stuffed or filled with air. And then everyone in the national media was jumping on him. It really hurt the kid’s confidence. He had to constantly answer questions and his play went downhill.
“Rex is not a big guy. He’s not as mobile as when he first came out. When he broke his ankle in the preseason (in 2005) – his ankle was shattered; he had plays and screws all over the place. He’ll never have that mobility he had coming out of college. And he’s short and short armed so he’d better have the open seam. But he has an extremely quick release. When he sees it, when he makes up his mind to throw, that ball is out of his hand faster than anybody. Part of that is because he has a short arm and a compact release and he has pretty good arm strength. Shanahan has settled him down a little bit. The best way to beat Rex because of his size and he doesn’t have the mobility, you pressure him because he has to have the sight lines. If you pressure him and take that away, that’s how you take away the flow of the game. But from what I’ve seen of Washington they’re good at handling pressure. And I don’t see St. Louis having the kind the caliber of players that can create the type of pressure that Dallas did.”
Follow me on Twitter @John_Keim
