Winfield Doesn't Think He's Being Used Right

Antoine Winfield may be going back into angry mode.  At least that’s the indication going by his appearance on this morning’s edition of P.A. and Dubay, where he made the following remark about the upcoming match-up against the Packers and Donald Driver:

"If I’m not matched up on Donald Driver one-on-one something is wrong."

And I would tend to agree.  Antoine is clearly our best corner, so why shouldn’t he be matched up against the other team’s best receiver?  Why play Cedric Griffin on one side and Antoine on the other, knowing teams are just going to stay away from Antoine’s side?  Force teams to make a decision – am I going to throw away from Winfield, hence taking my best receiver out of the game, or am I going to challenge him?  Granted, Winfield is not necessarily one of the best cover corners in the league – he’s made his name by his tackling and toughness and smart play.  However, given the problems Cedric Griffin has had both covering and tackling, and the fact that beyond him and Winfield we have a lot of inexperienced guys, it seems to make a great deal of sense to trash the whole Winfield covers one side, Griffin covers the other side approach and just stick Antoine on the other’s guy’s best receiver.  Otherwise we’ll see what we saw yesterday against the Chiefs – teams putting their best guy (Bowe for the Chiefs) on Griffin’s side and just picking away.

Winfield’s apparent discontent leads to a bigger question – how long will our defensive guys remain patient with not only the bad offense but the sometimes questionable defensive scheme?  It’s true that the Chiefs put up pretty big passing numbers in the second half yesterday, but they did little throwing the ball in the first half, and the run defense was still basically impenetrable.  A better offense and a few tweaks to the defense and we could get on a roll – after all, we had a chance to win both of the games we’ve lost, and arguably should’ve won both.  It remains to be seen whether our coaching staff is capable of making the adjustments that need to be made.