Head coach Joe Gibbs reiterated Saturday night that the quarterback competition between Patrick Ramsey and Mark Brunell could go down to the final week of preseason. Brunell is expected to start next Saturday night's game at Miami as Gibbs continues to alternate his starting quarterbacks during the preseason.
Gibbs said he wanted to look at the film to get a better evaluation of the quarterback play in Saturday night's 23-20 loss to the Carolina Panthers.
"I think we made a lot of mistakes on offense, period," Gibbs said. "Our quarterbacks are a part of all of the mistakes. I really want to get a look at the game film, see how much pressure we had, things like that."
Ramsey started the game and was 4-of-11 for 62 yards and one interception. His one bright spot, a 34-yard completion to Laveranues Coles, was quickly followed by an interception near the goal line.
Ramsey and center Lennie Friedman also had a snap exchange miscue near the Redskins' goal line, but Chris Samuels was able to recover the fumble.
After the game, Ramsey was particularly hard on himself.
"It was rough tonight," he said. "I played as badly as I can remember in a long time. I've got to improve. I didn't play well. I don't think I saw the field well or made good decisions."
Brunell led the offense on six drives and was 6-of-15 for 119 yards, with a touchdown and an interception. The score came on a 61-yard touchdown pass to Darnerien McCants running a step ahead of the defender on a post route.
"[The touchdown] came at a time when we really needed it," Brunell said. "We were struggling a bit offensively and it gave our team a little boost, but in the end we couldn't take advantage of it."
Brunell emphasized that since it's only the second preseason game, the Redskins' offensive schemes are "pretty vanilla."
"That's Coach Gibbs' philosophy and obviously he knows what he's doing, so we're going to keep plugging away," Brunell said. "We've got three more preseason games and you'll see this offense start to do some things.
"I think we played better [Saturday night] than we did in the first preseason game. Would we have liked it to better, more productive and more efficient? Absolutely. But this is a process and we're not going to get this thing overnight. We're headed in the right direction."
The third quarterback of the evening, Tim Hasselbeck, came in late in the third quarter and was 6-of-15 for 65 yards. He threw critical interceptions in the fourth quarter and overtime which gave the Panthers excellent field position to score the game-tying and game-winning field goals.
"You don't necessarily look back and say it was a good performance minus those two interceptions," Hasselbeck said. "Like I've said all along, I just need to go out and play well every time I play, whether it's every day in practice or in a game. Every time you go out there, you're going to have good and bad plays, but you just don't want the bad plays to cost you the game."
