Redskins 0-0 Positives/Negatives Metasciences Preview

(why yes voice of Hank Williams Jr. inside my head, I am ready for some football)

As I continue to work myself into an emotional frenzy before Sunday night's kickoff against the Cowboys (having already warned my family just how insane I will probably be, given a whole nice cool late summer day of drinking to get primed for Cowboys/Redskins), I figured I'd give my positive/negative metaphysical scientificish charting of the season gimmick another go this year.
I started this last year, before being forced to abandon it after a failed suicide attempt as the Jim Zorn era became too embarrassing to live with. But you live and learn (cut your veins parallel to the vein, because then the EMTs are less likely to be able to stop the bleeding, and thus the continuation of a painful life).
The basic premise behind this is football is not always Xs and Ox, but Hs and Ys and ampersands and wingdings and even a whole lot of things you can't even see also. It is energy, both real and behind the scenes and floating through space. This is how things break your way, or not your way, with no scientific rationale whatsoever. So each week, after the game, I'll lay out the positives and negatives, eight spots total, centered by the even charge, for my Redskins. And thus, we can metaphysically keep track through the year of the best and worst influences on this franchise's direction. It keeps things more laboratory like, so we don't have knee-jerk reactions after one infamous moment, and can be more precise with our unscientific calculations. I do not see why NFL teams do not hire people like me to just sit around and drink mushroom tea and analyze game film personally. In this day and age where every little advantage possible is searched for and counted upon, I could be of invaluable service to the Redskins, or really any team that would pay for my services. Honestly, I'd probably be better off working for another team so that I didn't let my heart rule my faux sciences. But whatever.
I am mostly positive going into the season (as we all are, to some extent, because we always think it's going to be better than it actually will), leaning towards a 5-plus/2-minus analysis at this point. Of course, were I rooting for an actual Super Bowl contender, it'd be a 7-plus/0-minus, but hey, the actual season will work these things out. Here is who I am feeling the positive and negative effects of the most as a psychic energy-sensitive Redskins fan...
FIFTH DEGREE POSITIVE: LB London Fletcher. Most underrated football player in the NFL. Seriously. And I'm not just talking about making Pro Bowls; this guy is one of the best, considering the past ten years the talking head consensus has started to refer to MLBs as the QBs of the defense, in reading the offense and switching up the coverages. No one has excelled as a defensive QB in this age more than London Fletcher. He is getting older, that is true, but his game is twice as much mind as it is matter, and he will succeed. I hope, as a Redskins fan, that they keep Mr. Fletcher on board until he retires, and when he does finally hang up the cleats, they hand him a coach's clipboard, and keep him around even longer.
FOURTH DEGREE POSITIVE: RB Clinton Portis. C.P. catches a lot of flack from old school "Joe Gibbs era was the Best!" Redskins fans, of which I guess I am technically part of. But man, I've got no gripes with Portis. Sure, he's a moody bastard, and has back-doored his way into Snyder's office over things in the past. But really, when you break it all down, he's basically a 21st Century John Riggins (okay, maybe about 92% John Riggins). Or even better yet, if you watch something like this - The Altered States of Portischussetts - he's like a cross between Riggins and Dexter Manley. I think free agency is not the greatest thing when done to the ridiculous extent it is, when guys build no real team identity and play for five different franchises in 9 years. But C.P. moving from Denver to Washington makes perfect sense, because a guy like that coudn't thrive in Colorado, whereas D.C. seems like a better place for having Clinton Portis bouncing around town, regardless of whether he has brought us more Lombardi trophies or not.
THIRD DEGREE POSITIVE: LB Brian Orakpo. Orakpo is a monster, and will be even more so of one this year. Lavar Arrington was a monster in his time. The problem with Arrington, and this is what I've heard from people who actually met the dude, was he did not have the book smarts or desire to study the game of football and learn, so he got by on his pure animalistic athleticism. It worked out fine, as far as I'm concerned. I've got no gripe with Lavar's career. The thing about Orakpo though is he has that same animalistic athleticism that Lavar had, AND he wants to refine that rawness into an educated beast-like domination of opposing offenses. He has already earned a reputation as a guy who studies film and carries around his own notebooks about shit, separate from what coaches would demand. You combine that with his weird longer black man looking like a hillbilly beard he is sporting (which is always a good style in my opinion) and what you have is a superstar in the making. There will be a whole lot of #98 jerseys in the stands in the coming years, and being you can never count on guys staying with teams anymore, if my wife was like, "I just hit a scratch-off lottery ticket for $1200, why don't you buy one of those stupid embroidered authentic Redskins jerseys?" I'd probably get an Orakpo.
SECOND DEGREE POSITIVE: WR Anthony Armstrong. I will just say right here and now for any full-fledged Skins fans who read this that I'm straight up taking Chris Cooley for granted. He is a wonderful influence on any pro football team, and a most definite fan favorite, and I would gladly kiss his ass if I ever met him in real life. That being said, I only have five spots of positivity, and somebody young and unheard of needs to be highlighted, because the Redskins way of doing things the past decade has been aging veterans and trading off all their draft picks. Armstrong is a kid who fought through every off-season practice, and battled through two-a-days, and worried incessantly about preseason performances. And the thing is, when it looked like he made the team, he refused to accept it, still freaking out. They actually didn't even play him the final preseason game, pretty much assuring him that he'd made the final 53-man roster, and yet his comments afterwards were something along the lines of how he thought he'd be excited that he made it, but he's not, he's still worried and knows he has to fight every week or else he might be fucked right out the NFL. Seeing a dude like that, a draft day scrub, is a welcome sight compared to overhyped Malcolm Kelly who allegedly has all the potential in the world, yet three years later hasn't done a goddamned thing except take up sideline space while he stands around on injured reserve.
FIRST DEGREE POSITIVE: head coach Mike Shanahan. My pre-Redskins respect for Mike Shanahan was non-existent. I did not like the dude, and still have to not look at his face too much when they show it on the sidelines or I am reminded of my distaste for him. But I have enjoyed his demeanor and his lack of coddling high-priced vets. Yeah, the Haynesworth thing has been a distraction, but seriously, after having complained about playing time in preseason and then being made to play the WHOLE FUCKING GAME in the last preseason game, that is some funny shit. And if Haynesworth slacks off in actual regular season game situations, he shoots himself in the foot at ever getting paid by any other team again, even if the Redskins outright release him. The whole thing is funny, and I am tentatively feeling positive about the Shanahan era. Very tentatively though.
STAY MEDIUM DEGREE: QB Donovan McNabb. We will have to see. McNabb makes himself a little too limelighted at times, and says things that draw attention. Like this past week when he said the Skins can't win without Albert Haynesworth. Why get involved, bro dog? Hopefully the McNabb era is at least competent, but I fear a lot of sprained ankles, bad interceptions, and Rex Grossman cameos.
FIRST DEGREE NEGATIVE: DT Albert Haynesworth. Yes, he is ridiculous. But who knows? Maybe once the season starts and all these shuttle runs and pregnant strippers and lawsuits from banks and $250,000 speed boats will fade into the background the dude will start playing football. Maybe.
SECOND DEGREE NEGATIVE: owner Dan Snyder. Why couldn't it have been a locker room cancer like T.O. or Deion Sanders that came to the Redskins briefly, something benign that has a chaotic run through the Redskins for a couple of years and then gets on down the road to elsewhere? Why must this malignant cancer of a Napoleonic chump ass have to take it upon himself to commandeer the Redskins towards total oblivion? There are websites like firesnyder or buy the team from Snyder or whatever already, but none of them really get to the real deal. He is not going to sell, and you cannot get rid of him. The only hope is a terminal disease, and I am sorry that we all pretend to be politically correct enough to not wish things publicly on people like that, but I know I am not the only person who would gladly drive up the web traffic on a www.terminaldiseasefordansnyder.com site. I know it, yet I am the only one willing to admit it. We will not move from these dark and trying days - fuck, years now - as Redskins fans until we are able to be brutally honest with ourselves. I know the days before opening kickoff are not exactly the time of year we are even close to brutal honesty, but I want this to percolate in the back of your head as the season kicks off. We have to be honest and open, and on a public level, to help psychically heal this franchise of the cancer that is eating through every tiny aspect of its existence. Any success this team might have - this year or next or five years from now - will be in spite of Dan Snyder, not because of. We will never be allowed to flourish again until he is removed from our presence.

Season-to-date totals: LB London Fletcher (+5), RB Clinton Portis (+4), LB Brian Orakpo (+3), WR Anthony Armstrong (+2), head coach Mike Shanahan (+1), QB Donovan McNabb (even), DT Albert Haynesworth (-1), owner Dan Snyder (-2).