Hope (yet again) in D.C.

It is a fairly glorious day to be a greater Washington DC metropolitan area sports fan, as it’s rainy as fuck, and cool enough to justify sitting around the kitchen table all day gloating in goodness. The Caps stole a win from the Bruins in Boston yesterday, and return home today to try and close out a best-of-seven, with a game to spare. The Nats are rained out today, so will hit the road to the West Coast with a shocking 12-4 record, meaning if they simply go .500 the rest of the year, they finish with 85 wins. And the cover of the Sunday Washington Post has a glowingly glorious article about what a great all-around package of athleticism and solid psychological make-up Robert Griffin III is, who will become the Redskins new QB of the present, the future, and perhaps for history, come this week’s NFL draft.

And yet, I am struck by the common theme through all these glories… wild orgasmic hope, yet nothing actually yet accomplished. The Caps should’ve, by hype and talent, at least played in a Stanley Cup finals series at least once the past three or four years. And yet here we are getting excited that they might actually win a first-round series against last year’s champs. The Nats have never finished above .500 since they came to Washington, much less sniffed the playoffs at any point past a 4th of July fireworks display. And my beloved Washington Redskins are once again claiming they are about to be relevant again, with the pick of a young “can’t miss” superstar.

First, let me proclaim my joy with Robert Griffin III. He does seem like a wonderful talent, and an even better human being. He does not seem like he’ll be the guy who is broke and addicted to strippers three years after flaming out of the NFL. He does not seem like he’ll be trashing his life during his prime, nor afterward. He is a freak of an athlete, and honestly, in my mind, seems like more Michael Vick than Michael Vick, athletically speaking, and yet with a chill, grounded mentality to complement that. I do not even one single bit find fault with the picks the Skins traded off for him, nor will I ever. I fully co-sign this move, and feel free to hold me to that, at any point in the future.

That being said, even as awesome as he is, I am uncomfortable with it all. He has commonly been touted as a franchise prospect with higher upside than Matthew Stafford or Sam Bradford (previous #1 overall picks at QB); yet in Detroit, Matthew Stafford was brought in as part of a rebuilding process, not as the savior of a franchise to bring them back to their entitled glory. RGIII comes into DC with no Calvin Johnson, but rather a large and odd assortment of Number Two receivers who are allegedly going to gel into some sort of remarkable corps. RGIII does not come into a locker room filled up with upper-round O-linemen who manhandle opposing defenses and create the space any QB needs to succeed, whether brilliant or not, but rather a roster that has severely overlooked the line for not only the last couple of drafts but for an entire decade. And worst of all, Robert Griffin III does not come onto a team being talked down as “a great young talent who can help us get better” but rather is being hyped as this year’s The Final Piece to help make everything that has not really looked like it goes together fit into the grand vision that somebody in Redskins management has allegedly been piecing together over time.

That hasn’t stopped the Redskins brass from making a fawning trip to Waco in advance of RGIII’s pro day, nor has it stopped them from doing all but actually selling jerseys already. Griffin has already been to memorabilia shows in the DC area signing Redskins helmet, weeks before the Colts said they were definitely drafting Luck. It has bordered on tampering, and it’s not exactly like the NFL is in love with Dan Snyder and the Redskins lately, but at the very least looks like a needy, emotionally flawed woman latching onto a man after a nice first date, and already talking about how many children they’ll have. And essentially, needy and emotionally flawed is what my Redskins have become.

Therein lies my discomfort with it all. When the Redskins were rumored to be in the Peyton Manning hunt, I was legitimately ready to abandon them. Legitimately. Which would have meant I abandoned football, because I’m not going to switch to another team at this point in my life. I was very relieved when they were out of that sweepstakes (which will end badly… hahaha Denver), because I can at least keep convincing myself the Redskins will get better, even though they never will so long as Dan Snyder’s management runs through the veins of the organization. It pains me to say that, because ultimately we are looking at the collision of two very opposite forces – the unquestionable awesome promise of Robert Griffin III and the very obviously displayed over time institutional dysfunction of the Washington Redskins. And unfortunately, even a 20-foot tall man will drown when tossed into a 30-foot deep cesspool.

At this point, I have not really figured out where Dan Snyder stands on the spectrum of things. At worst, he is an actual evil man who works diligently every offseason to re-brand the Redskins brand and instill false hopes in the fan base that this year will once again be different, hence the Offseason Champs meme associated so closely with burgundy and gold. And even at best, Snyder is still a terribly stupid man who actually believes his own press releases and thinks he’s actually working towards building a viable professional football team. Today – and this fluctuates weekly – I’d put him somewhere between stupid and evil, probably about two-thirds of the way towards stupid, but that’s probably because the past couple of weeks of Washington Post Redskins talk has been wildly hopeful and throwing force behind the future being good line of thinking. (It is interesting how a newspaper that is allegedly not an ally of Snyder’s, and also allegedly unbiased, very often just seems like more well-written and fleshed-out versions of an actual Redskins press release.)

Of course, come August, I’ll be geeked up, even without an offensive line, without a deep threat at WR, without a proven commodity in the backfield (and that’s just looking at the offensive side of the ball), and hope shall spring eternal… for a month or two at least. I am still not sold on the genius of the Shanahans, and am already convinced of Snyder’s bad influence on things, so the two most prevalent influences on the team will still be an outright negative and a very possible negative, and that unfortunately means we could ship RGIII off to southeast Asia, clone him in a Thai mad science laboratory, and have nine of him, and still probably be lucky to get a wild card in the upcoming season. And sadly, even more than that, I fear tragedy. Robert Griffin III seems so great, such a wonderful guy, such a pure of spirit smile and amazing athlete, that I actually worry for him being sucked into the vortex that is the Washington Redskins. I know he is being hyped as the man who will help pull us from our own vortex, but that doesn’t make logic according to the laws of metaphysics. I really hope this goes well, or at least continues to have enough promise to keep me falsely erect with hope for a few years, but I fear tragedy. It makes me sad to even verbalize it openly, as I am a superstitious man and wonder if perhaps I did not bottle these fears deep down inside of my own soul, that perhaps I could carry it and they’d never be unleashed upon reality. But just like RGIII will have to at some point, I realize I am not stronger than the force of the Redskins. I am simply being dragged along for the ride at this point, until I decide to cut the rope and move on with my life. Sigh. Mega-sigh, deep down in my football-loving soul.

REDSKINS 2012 SCHEDULE UNLEASHED!

Here is the Redskins schedule broken down, dudes…
WEEK 1: at the Saints, in the "Roger Goodell Bitch Bowl" where teams Herr Goodell don't like play together. Redskins lose.
WEEK 2: at the Rams, in a battle of schlubs, where the Rams 19 new players will out-contribute the one dude they were essentially traded for - RGIII. Redskins lose.
WEEK 3: home opener, against the Bengals. RGIII mania alone overpowers the Bengals. Redskins win.
WEEK 4: at the Buccaneers, but their former coach is our DB coach now, so we will cheat to win bros. Redskins win, 2-2 after the 1st quarter of the season, which traditionally is the only quarter we do well in.
WEEK 5: hosting the Falcons, who have been a smoke and mirror team where the smoke has dissipated. Redskins win.
WEEK 6: hosting the Vikings, who traditionally embarrass the Redskins for whatever reason, especially in DC (meaning Maryland). Redskins lose.
WEEK 7: at the Giants. We don't play a fucking divisional game until week 7? That's crazy. We tend to beat the Giants for whatever reason, but not in NYC (meaning New Jersey). Redskins lose.
WEEK 8: at the Steelers. Whatever man. James Harrison will have RGIII braiding Steelers linebackers hair and tossing salads by the end of the game. Redskins lose, 3-5 at the halfway mark.
WEEK 9: hosting the Panthers, in a battle of last year's rookie sensation QB and this year's (hopefully). Fuck Cam Newton, he is not even half the solid dude RGIII is. Redskins win.
WEEK 10: week off. Redskins don't lose, guaranteed.
WEEK 11: hosting the Eagles, and the Eagles have made embarrassment of the Skins lately in DC. But this is late in the season so the black Mike Vick will already be crippled by then, so Redskins win.
WEEK 12: at the Cowboys, on Thanksgiving. Really, what is more American than a gluttonous meal, sitting our our fat asses watching pro football, featuring a team of Cowboys and racist Native stereotypes, before our fat wives dash off at 9 pm to spend whatever we've recovered of our credit limit from last holiday season at Wal-Mart's Black Friday but on Thursday night sales? Redskins lose.
WEEK 13: hosting the Giants. Beating the Giants at home is the one thing the Skins can do. Redskins win, 7-5 at the 3/4 mark, which makes the logic in me go "whatever dude." Obviously I am being too hopeful. Way too hopeful. We don't even have an offensive line.
WEEK 14: hosting the Ravens, and having just forced myself to be logical, I now realize RGIII is probably on IR by now, perhaps from having torn all his ligaments and will be out for 3 years. Redskins lose.
WEEK 15: at the Browns. Even a crushed in spirit & cursed by Snyder luck Redskins team is better than the Browns. Redskins win.
WEEK 16: at the Eagles. Will the Eagles still be playing for the playoffs? Because if they are, we will win. If they are not, we will lose. That's how it works in these NFC East games. I will assume the Eagles are out of it though, so Redskins lose.
WEEK 17: hosting the Cowboys to close the season and perhaps play for a winning record. Won't happen. Redskins lose, finish 8-8, which seems about 3 games ridiculous to me. But whatever, I just deduced it metaphysically so it must be true.

Redskins 2-0 Positives/Negatives Metasciences Week 1 Recap

(calling the spirits of ancestors from past decades to
guide our souls against those vile cowboys)

[Each and almost every week, I will metaphysically testify upon the positive and negative influences on my beloved Washington Redskins team, who I've known since childhood, as seen in their on-field - or television more realistically here - performance. As the year goes on, we shall have a metascientifical tabulation of who is the most valuable or biggest detriment to the future of this franchise.]
Well, the Redskins are 2-0, and the delusions will continue to gain steam, as they did this past week. I understood that though, as the win over the Giants was a game we usually lost in years past, and not only did we not lose it, but we went away with it in the end, so that we weren't biting our nails as Eli tossed a hail mary downfield as the clock expired. This week was more like last year's Redskins - when the offense dominates for the most part, field goals are the end result instead of touchdowns, and even some of those are botched or blocked. This was classic Redskins under Snyder on offense - should've won by a bunch but instead were less stuck with less than 4 points separation in either direction deep into the 4th quarter. Clock mismanagement at the end of the game allowed for a game-ending punt instead of literally running the clock out like you would've thought was happening when they were in kneel-down mode.
On defense though, this team is a pleasure to watch, even with a somewhat shoddy secondary at this point. I know with a 2-0 start, even though it was a pair of home games with a solid win over an injury-depleted division rival and a barely win against a fairly not-so-great cross-continent team, that PLAYOFFS talk is going to pipe up with Skins fans, especially when the last two times this team started 2-0, they went to the playoffs (both times during Gibbs 2.0 era). But let's remain focused here - if this team even sniffs the playoffs in December, that's a plus, because we shouldn't really be thinking such lofty things until next season. Sorry to be realistic here, but in the new NFL, this 2-0 start is not quite dynasty foundation material.
But enough with my caveats to my fellow Redskins fans who tend to be a quickly delusional bunch due to past successes (let's not forget that underneath all that evil, Dan Snyder is basically just a Redskins fan). Let's get into the positive and negative metaphysical effects felt on this franchise from individual entities this Arizona Cardinals game...
EIGHTH DEGREE POSITIVE: LB LONDON FLETCHER - There is no doubting the fact the defense is the strong side of this franchise at this point, the one closer to a finished product instead of a work in progress. And there is no fucking doubt when you watch any series with any notable momentum changing play that London Fletcher is the spark plug of this defense, an on-field coach who not only gets everything moving in the right direction physically, but spiritually as well. The dude is a monster, and a couple decades from now, when it is common NFL fan perspective to respect defensive MLBs in a similar vein as offensive QBs, Fletcher will be looked at as the prototypical type who helped start this trend. He may have just made his first Pro Bowl last year, by default, after 19 other guys dropped out, but if you watch football, you know he's a one-of-a-kind guy, and if the Hall of Fame puts stat-accumulators like Bruce Smith in there but overlooks a guy like London, then fuck a Hall of Fame. The Urlachers and Ray Lewises and hyped up HGHed dudes like that might get all the mainstream press, but if I'm looking at needing a big stop on a 3rd or 4th down, I want #59 spark plugging the middle of the field. And I was glad to see the old man get that INT to shut down that one drive, all jumping up and high-stepping like a 23-year-old. Fuck yeah.
SEVENTH DEGREE POSITIVE: LB BRIAN ORAKPO - I didn't really mention Rak last week, because at this point, his job is mostly to get held while someone else makes a sack. After Ryan Kerrigan's big rookie debut last week, looks like the Cardinals eased up on concentrating specifically on holding Orakpo, to spread their attention around, and even with a sprained ankle, Orakpo looked like the monster we all know and love, getting a couple of neck-snapping, soul-crushing hits on Kolb. Them other dudes might get through and make sacks, but if you've got somebody you want crushed because you are filled with an irrational inter-divisional hatred for them (like say, Tony Romo), there is nobody else you want keying in on them with about three free steps to build momentum than Brian Orakpo. And another great aspect about this dude is his ego-less play. He understands that if he's held every other play, that allows someone else to make a play, and he can do that without bitching. Just another reason to have a guy like London Fletcher on the team, because when you get a young beast like Orakpo on your roster and he's got a guy like that to help him steer him the right way. Orakpo seems like a good dude regardless, so I'm not taking anything away from him, but it's nice to have a demon beast defensive monster salivating adrenaline to kill QBs understand that he is a cog in a larger machine as well.
SIXTH DEGREE POSITIVE: TE FRED DAVIS - Big Fred made some weird Arizona Cardinals gonna lose song on his smart phone using some app, wore Peter Pan tights with his crazy ass whiteboy counterparts at TE, and then went out and had another big game on the field. He's quickly showing he can be the open field beast Chris Cooley is, but with an even more athletic grace. But most of all, he hasn't been dropping the ball like he did in previous years. He seems to be a more focused player this year thus far, and finally, after three years, Vinny Cerrato can feel good about one of his draft picks from that one draft he kept trying to convince us was going to be awesome.
FIFTH DEGREE POSITIVE: RB ROY HELU - Speaking of draft picks, second game of the season, and second week we have prominent performances by rookies. It's no hyperbole to say that after only two weeks, you have to say this was probably the best draft the Redskins have had in a decade. I mean, that's not saying a lot really, but it's a sign that perhaps just maybe shit is being done in a way that is synonymous with actually building a team, not putting marquee names on $180 jerseys.
Helu backed up Tim Hightower, who got a lot of hype time during the game for being a former Cardinal and running half-roughshod over his old teammates. But Helu is just a different type of runner. Whereas Hightower tends to work towards the corners, watching for a gap to open, or having the veteran presence to at least move forward to the line of scrimmage or for a minimal loss if absolutely nothing does develop, Helu has a burst that just takes off. He had a couple of nice jukes, but he also had that extra sense you always hopes for in a feature back where he instinctively wraps that second arm around the ball when he feels the presence of a defensive player in his peripheral vision. I was real hyped up on Helu in the preseason, because his dad is like a Tongan rugby hero or some shit, but also because Helu looked good, and his performance against the Cardinals did nothing to temper that excitement. I'm not one to really believe the Shanahan PR that he finds wonderful RBs in the scrap heap of other team's player evaluations, but I ain't gonna lie that Helu, as a 4th round draft pick, looks like he could help add another point in that column for Shanahan's curriculum vitae. Also, his last name is pronounced in that beneficial way that all us drunks can slowly moan his name in appreciation when he does something awesome, so it sounds like a "BOOOOOOO" but it's not at all. People love that shit.
FOURTH DEGREE POSITIVE: KR/PR BRANDON BANKS - He is a little dude that is fairly useless at this point in actual offensive packages, but when the Little Assassin is back there to catch a kick, you never count out a big return. How many years did we have Antwan Randle El or Santana Moss back there, busting off 23 yards sideways and around but only 4 yards forward returns? It's so fucking nice to have an actual Mr. Excitement on returns, who might bust it all the way, and probably will bring it back 20 yards if he finds a seam, and actually makes the special teams game special and not just an endless parade of fair catches and minimal returns.
THIRD DEGREE POSITIVE: P SAV ROCCA - Speaking of special teams, Sav Rocca is as special as they come, and the best bonafide knucklehead weird ass punter we've had since Matt Turk split town in a huff. I should just be honest and say I am always gonna love an Aussie rules player come to the NFL. Those dudes are tough as fuck. I watch them joints on my local PBS on Monday nights, and it's as concussive as the NFL, but without any pads.
That being said, beyond probably being a drunken misanthrope in real life, Sav Rocca is a pretty damn good punter, getting it inside the 20 yard line more times than not so far this season. He didn't get much action today, at least not the first half, and for whatever reason the clock was botched up at the end of the game in such a way that the Redskins may have been the first team in ever to do multiple kneel downs to run out the clock but not actually run out the clock. So Sav Rocca had to punt, and he booted it deep, and whoever that Cardinals dude was hit a gap and was off to the races, although there were Redskins closing in. But who should wrap him up, chest to chest, and take the dude down, but ol' #6 Sav Rocca. This was no pussy sideways flop to trip the dude up punter/kicker tackle. This was a straight up special teams wedgebuster special. Granted, Rocca is 6'5", 265 lbs, which puts him in LB territory anyways. But it ended the game, and gave my heart an extra patter of appreciation to see it was Rocca making the tackle, ahead of other Skins, like a special teams gunner on his own goddamned punt.
SECOND DEGREE POSITIVE: WR SANTANA MOSS - In recent years, my opinion of Santana soured because of the whole over-celebration of minimal successes thing. But with more of a cast around him, not only is Santana not so annoying, but he actually seems more beneficial to the team. That quick slant thing which last year and the year before it (and the year before that) was So Fucking Stupid because they did it too many times every game, it actually seems smart now, as he's not the only receiver on offense. It doesn't hurt my opinion of him either that he's doing his little ball spin 1st down celebration a whole lot more than what he had been doing in recent years, which was over-exaggeratedly complaining about lack of flags for pass interferences. I guess that's what happens when you have more than one receiver on a team though.
FIRST DEGREE POSITIVE: CB JOSH WILSON - For all the hype Tim Hightower got during this game, there was not much about Josh Wilson, who was also a pretty decent free agent who came in here, and had strong local ties. Wilson is a good second CB, and after seeing the highlight of a potential interception actually bouncing off of Carlos Rogers' head in the Cowboys/49ers game, it reminded me of how Butterfingers treated us during his tenure here, and how Wilson is able to actually catch a football if it comes his way. Today though he was mostly notable for getting his spinal cord twisted the wrong way, and lying in a crumpled heap while other players did that one knee prayer thing, and the cart was called out. Except Josh Wilson got up and walked to the sidelines, stiff as fuck, grimacing as he swallowed the pain, all the way off to the locker room. I know dudes are supposed to not be too tough, and not cause further damage to themselves by ignoring what might have happened, but when you are trying to build a tough as nails defense, which is what the Skins are doing, to have a veteran player refuse the cart and hobble his half-crippled ass to the locker room, that's setting the example to follow right there. Much different than Albert Haynesworth staring at the grass while Michael Vick waited to find an open receiver last year. I do hope Wilson ain't out long though, because if there's one thing on this team that makes me really nervous that's not named Rex Grossman, it's the secondary.
STAY MEDIUM DEGREE: QB REX GROSSMAN - I don't know, as much as the Sex Cannon has been competent, it's hard for me to even really think of him as a Redskin yet. Seriously. That second INT he threw was just an errant tip gone the wrong way, so I can't hold that against him, but that first one he threw, down in the red zone to start the game, was classic stereotypical Rex Grossman - having too long to look around, wanting to force something, and squeezing it where it won't squeeze, resulting in a turnover. To his credit, he settled down and didn't repeat that, even on a 3rd and goal when he normally would have, settling for a field goal instead of a turnover. Grossman scares me because he is still Rex Grossman. Sure they've polished him up, and are telling me he's a veteran dude with a different attitude, and is working a system this is guaranteed to work (which always reminds me of those dudes that want me to send them $140 to learn how they made millions, and SO CAN I!!!), but wasn't it the same veteran dude with a different attitude who knew this system inside and out that coughed up that icon-making fumble to Ndakumong Suh last year? We will see. But nobody has really gotten at Grossman enough to rough him up and rattle him. We won't know we're really looking at with our B-level QB controversy until the Sex Cannon takes a couple of hard shots of his own.
FIRST DEGREE NEGATIVE: K GRAHAM GANO - Gano is somehow like a young Rex Grossman kicker, except there's no negative history with another team for me to fall back on. I really want to believe in Gano, and he had a great preseason, but every time he comes out to kick a field goal, regardless of how close or far it is, I am anxiously worried about whether it'll make it through the uprights. So when something gets blocked (like it did this week) or shanks left (like last week), it doesn't surprise me, and only validates my worries. Ideally, you'd like to feel good once your team crosses like the 30-yard line or something that you know you're good for 3 points. I don't have that feeling yet (though Gano did help my fantasy team out nicely with 10 points this week... stupid fantasy football).
SECOND DEGREE NEGATIVE: CB DEANGELO HALL - Hall is not the me-first dude he once had a reputation for, and he's certainly improved his open-field tackling since being with the Redskins (as the Fox commentating team said like 39 times), but he's still not as good as he thinks he is, and certainly not a shut-down corner. Shut-down corners don't give up 73-yard 4th quarter TDs to the guy they're supposed to be shutting down. I would feel much better if Hall wasn't so prominently counted on in this secondary, because much like Michael Vick with the Eagles, it feels like something that will let you down inevitably. Maybe Larry Fitzgerald's 73-yard TD got part of that out of his system, but I doubt it.
THIRD DEGREE NEGATIVE: OWNER DAN SNYDER - Stupid fucking solar panels, to brag about how green he is in press releases before this game. Dan Snyder does nothing for no reason. He can't be all over the place on purpose like he used to be, because he's supposed to be a hands-off owner now, so he does 37 interviews about a couple of token solar panels installed in the parking lot at FedEx, to try and discreetly drive home the front office talking point that he's not a meddling owner, and all he really wants to do is win. Guess what, fuckface? Every NFL owner only wants to win. They just have differing philosophies on how to achieve that, some of them slightly delusional, some of them downright wrong-minded. Thus far in his tenure as beloved Kim Jong-Il of the Washington Redskins, the verdict is out as to whether Snyder is simply often misguided or outright delusional, but as long as he is owner of this team, even more so than Graham Gano or Rex Grossman does, I will not feel comfortable about anything good that happens. Because if things start going good, Snyder's going to want to show he can play with his toy because he owns it, and he'll break something in the process.

ACCUMULATED INFLUENCES UPON THIS FRANCHISE 2011, BEST TO WORST: TE Fred Davis (+13), LB London Fletcher (+12), NT Chris Neild (+8), LB Brian Orakpo (+7), OLB Ryan Kerrigan (+6), RB Roy Helu (+5), WR Santana Moss (+5), LB Rocky McIntosh (+5), KR/PR Brandon Banks (+4), P Sav Rocca (+3), WR Anthony Armstrong (+2), CB Josh Wilson (+1), QB Rex Grossman (even), CB DeAngelo Hall (-1), K Graham Gano (-2), S Reed Doughty (-2), owner Dan Snyder (-6).

Redskins Draft Pseudo-Analysis

(this dude was the next-to-last pick in this year's NFL draft, and already I think he is awesome)

We have not been writing too much about the football around here lately because none of us get paid, or give a fuck to mock draft nonsense thirteen times in nine days before the actual draft happens. Armchair Linebacker is very much a place for bizarre tangents in life, but these should be wholesome, drug-induced frenzies that put your bare feet into the tall grass, not busting open 13 page Excel spreadsheets on every available college player and pretending you know about them all. Good fucking lord man, what is wrong with people? Has the internet exploded our brains into retardeddom completely?

Anyways, there have been things that have made me feel very good about being a Redskins fan lately. First off, due to the lockout, the Redskins players held their own little mini-camp recently, led by London Fletcher, and featuring Rex Grossman at QB, who is not even signed to the Redskins right now. Fletcher ran shit tight, and god bless that little well-spoken spark plug motherfucker. If they made Chris Samuels' false-starting ass a coach after retirement, there better be a fucking spot in the coaching hierarchy for London Fletcher. (Sadly, I would assume he'd go chase that carrot under his boy Gregg Williams tutelage, whether that still be in New Orleans or elsewhere. I would not imagine too many people want to hang around D.C. after being done cashing the last Snyder check.)

And then the draft. Probably the greatest benefit to having the lockout going on is Dan Snyder couldn't start having little fits and trade like Chris Cooley, two radio stations, three future 1st round picks, a roller coaster, and Tom Cruise's next baby's middle name to the Panthers to draft Cam Newton. I fully expected things to be normal Redskins things on draft day, and they to trade a bunch of draft picks to move up and get a shitty QB who would follow in the great tradition of Heath Shuler and Patrick Ramsey.

And there I was last Thursday night, seeing the Redskins (or watching the talk of it online) at the #10 pick and Blaine Gabbert still available. I thought to myself, "Well, here we go. I hope Blaine Gabbert does not end up being like every other Blaine I have ever known in real life (meaning, a piece of shit), and he somehow without an offensive line or RBs or WRs is able to stay upright and not be concussed into oblivion." I actually cut it off and went outside to fuck around in the yard, that's how sure I was this was going to happen. Not a fucking doubt in my mind.

And then I come back in and see the Jags picked Gabbert at #10. What? So I read they traded down for an additional pick. And then get some goofy whiteboy DE/OLB hybrid to complement Brian Orakpo on the other side. So I look up said whiteboy on the interwebs, and it appears he is a super hard worker and slightly goofy, sort of a defensive Chris Cooley so to speak. Plus, likely to have shaggy hair I would say, in the right locker room. Amazing.

Then they traded down again, and juggled, and a team with no 3rd or 4th round picks somehow ended up being a team with picks in every round and, at one point, a total of 13 draft choices to make. Shit man, we haven't made 13 draft picks in the past five years.

Actually, let me look that up, because I would not be surprised if during the Cerrato reign, that's true... Well, there was a three-year period where you could say that, but looking back through the drafts was painful. A lot of picks are hit-or-miss, except tons of misses for the Redskins. Tons.

But they made moves this year and ended up with 12 new faces (after trading up in the 4th round to draft a RB, using one of the extra picks they had acquired). And really, after using their head and drafting a bookend OT in Trent Williams last year, I am shockingly of the belief that maybe, just maybe, somebody in Redskins office has an actual plan.

Now I am not one to grade drafts because that is fucking stupid, just as stupid as doing mock drafts. You want to grade it with actual grades, but I am a homeschooler so don't think that way. You take these 12 guys and let them contribute the first year. If many do, even on special teams, then good. Years 2 through 3, they should start developing into something in particular, preferably in a role beyond special teams, maybe even a couple of surprise starters from the lower picks and the upper picks panning out fairly well. Years 4 through 7, if you are getting solid contributions from half of these guys, you have fucking won. Do that every year and you are the Patriots, in six years time. Seriously.

Of course, the very fact there seems to be a plan in motion, combined with the egos of Shanahan & Son and Dan Snyder, but with Snyder holding the deed to the car, I would honestly expect the Shanahans to be run out of town at the end of this year if they do not deliver at least wild card. Again, seriously. Dan Snyder is a little-dicked fucking idiot, and the best example of a shithead ultra-rich dude the NFL currently has. That guy is currently suing somebody who wrote basically a truthful article about his reign of terror just to tie up the little newspaper it came out in legally and cost them money and try to run them out of business. So fuck Dan Snyder, always and forever. He can't get enough cancers or be locked out of hanging with the player long enough to make me feel bad for him.

But I digress. So first round we get this crazy whiteboy from Purdue. Second round, they draft a giant negro DT from Clemson, hopefully to end our painful relationship with Lord Albert Haynesworth, who only dates white girls apparently. Not sure about the Jarvis Jenkins, DT pick, as Da'Quan Bowers was still available, but I'm going to do something completely un-internetty of me, and I'm going to give whoever was making these decisions in the Redskins war room the benefit of the doubt, simply because they traded down and got extra picks and didn't waste everything on a QB. It looks like somebody knew what they were doing, so I'm going to assume they did so when they picked Jarvis Jenkins. Plus we already have a D-lineman named Jeremy Jarmon, who also is a big black dude, and I think having a Jarvis Jenkins and Jeremy Jarmon side-by-side would be funny.

3rd round they got some dude named Leonard Hankerson from The U(niversity of Miami) who apparently was considered by football eggheads a steal at that spot, and has freakishly large hands. He is already being prognosticated as a potential great. Whatever. I just want him to not be Devin Thomas or a Malcolm Kelly. Like if he can actually play as a starter and maybe catch a few passes, he has already cleared the bar set by the past five years.

But they used other later picks to grab WRs in the 5th and 6th round as well, which is great, because we all saw Brandon Banks and Anthony Armstrong rise up from nowhere last year. If anything, this team needs more unproven longshots to clear out the lockers of the highly-touted and often overrated check cashers that Dan Snyder tends to drool over and attract. Santana Moss, as great as he has been, has a certain stink of that on him.

Additionally, Mike Shanahan was always famous for plugging RBs into his system in Denver and getting big results. Thus, him moving up in the 4th round to grab some dude I never heard of named Roy Helu, hey, I will trust this move. He's done it before, and trading late round picks to move up in the 4th is a huge difference than trading your future 2nd and 3rd round picks for aging veteran who won't be here when you don't have those draft picks anymore, which has been more of our recent history. And on top of this, Shanahan drafted some chump dude from Penn State as a second RB, to fill up the backfield, and keep Ryan Torain surrounded, being that dude will probably injure himself by week 4 anyways. It's a far better plan than stockpiling stars from 2005, like they did last year with Larry Johnson, Clinton Portis, and Willie Parker.

And with their last pick, Mr. Co-Irrelevant, as he was the next-to-last pick of the draft, the Redskins picked a big, knuckleheaded, non-stop white dude DT from West Virginia named Chris Neild. Like I watched two youtubes on this guy, and he's already one of my top ten favorite players on the team. That's what you get with those late round picks - guys that might fill a role but will be crazy and spirited and work hard as fuck to chase their dream and fire up the fans and might could fill the middle of the D-line or return punts or play nickelback (the position, not the band) or something. Try to get something.

And we got 12 new faces. Shit man, just having fresh blood makes me happy. This is not a team that is one or two players away from being good. This team hasn't been in that position for years, although every year the standard operating procedure is to pretend that's exactly what we are, and a McNabb or Haynesworth or Jason Taylor or whoever it was the year before that, that's all we need to be Super Bowl champions again.

Now, if only someone else could own this team, I could actually let this momentary excitement take root in my soul, without the fear of it all being ripped next January because Bill Cowher likes to cash giant checks with Dan Snyder's signature on the bottom right. And that is what I end up with, the dread and pain that although it certainly looked like someone had a plan this past week, and it certainly looked like the remaining players bonded in the locker room enough to hold their own spring practices, it's all going to get fucked up by Dan Snyder, eventually. And he'll further exploit the name in merchandising and gouge fans and just generally piss all over it all, but do his little fucking media parades where he's all like, "Aww, I'm just a Redskins fan. All I want to do is win. Really, that's all." He's shown Redskins fans time and time again that's bullshit.

Sometimes I hope that the Redskins end up moving to L.A., so Snyder can be with his Hollywood buddies, and D.C. gets a new franchise, without the racist nickname, and without the retarded owner who is only a few years older than me and most likely will be around for far too long of my remaining life. When there is a team you have followed and loved all your life, and you are contemplating switching them with a fucking expansion team, that's a serious lack of quality ownership.

But I will always pull for these dudes, and I like the ragtag batch of fuckers they drafted, and hopefully the youth infusion will further what happened last year, where anybody could earn any position, and nobody was granted their spot because of who they once were or how big their paycheck was. I can briefly pretend that this team is built with hard work and earning your role, and not just given to the dude who cashes the biggest check.

Lost In My Own Delusions

Lieutenant Mark Sanchez, ladies and gentlemen!

I’m excited for this week’s game against the Jets. It’s another test, another mile marker on the long, terrible road out of hell, and we’ll know a lot about whether or not the Lions have made the jump to Ludicrous Speed that we all hope, deep in our wounded hearts, that they have. Coming into the season we all hoped for progress and we have gotten it. It’s been evident, especially over the last month, when the team has gone 2-2, with the two losses being one possession types on the road in Green Bay and New York. The Lions have really only been slapped around in one game, and if that game against the Vikings was played today, I’d pick the Lions to win it. That may sound like irrational hubris, the stupid nattering of a fool drunk on Hope and Delusion, but damn it all, I actually believe that crazy shit.

The good thing – hell, the damn near miraculous thing – is that I think a lot of people would probably agree with me. And okay, fine, that says more about how hilariously the Vikings have collapsed this season than it does about the Lions, but fuck it, perhaps that is the point. There are teams out there now more fucked up than the Lions. There are fans of other teams without hope, bitter at the world, screaming at the sun and barking at the moon, because they know their team is a broken mess, irreparable, and for once, those fans are not us.

We have come a long away in just a few weeks. This is the way that progress often happens – not gradually, not linearly, but with a sonic boom, a parabolic rise which builds on itself exponentially until one day you finally stop to breathe, check to make sure all your vital bits are still there, and realize that you are a million miles off the ground, thundering across the sky with the stars and the sun while everyone else stares at you in wide eyed wonder from their own mortal place under the sky that they cannot touch.

We are not there yet. To be honest, I don’t know where we are. Our team is 2-5 (well, 3-4, but you know . . .) and most people seem to think that 6-10 is a likely destination, which . . . uh, I hate to break it to you, but if we go 6-10 the only way we’re soaring across the sky is if we are snatched up by some giant hellbird who just wants to fuck with us before dropping us onto the rocks far below. That’s where we’re at right now, and hey, that’s okay if that’s all there is to this. That’s reason to smile given where we’ve been. Even a dirty shack with a hole in the floor to shit in feels like paradise to the man who has spent half a century getting cornholed in hell by Failure Demons and Hitler.

But there is a small piece in all of us that wants to believe that our parabolic journey has just begun, that things will move so quickly now that none of us will even be able to understand what is happening until it’s finally over and our Lions are beating the shit out of everyone. It wants to believe in something miraculous, something strange and wonderful and improbable, because we deserve a miracle, we deserve magic. That is why the game against the Jets sold out so quickly this week. Last week, the fans couldn’t be bothered to show up. It wasn’t because they didn’t care, it was because they didn’t believe. Now, they do.

People don’t get excited when they think the end of the road is 6-10. They just don’t. They don’t start to believe and to gibber on about magic and miracles unless they’ve embraced some part of themselves that is eternally hopeful, some part of their soul that has never been touched by the Failure Demon, some tiny part that they keep so close to their heart that they never let anyone know it’s there. That’s what you’re seeing right now with Lions fans. For the first time, they believe and for the first time they are opening up their hearts and revealing the thunder and the joy within because, deep down, they – no, fuck that, we – really believe that it’s different now.

Of course, this is very likely a hilarious prelude to tragedy, and I will likely look back at this and wonder how and when I was possessed by the spirit of Walt Disney on lithium, but that’s part of the fun of all this, you know? I’m just sort of reveling in it all, reveling in the sheer possibility of it all. Yeah, I know it’s dumb. I know it’s irresponsible and I know that I will very, very likely end up disappointed when the parabola immediately flattens out and I realize that the long road out of hell still has a million miles to go. I know all this and yet, I don’t care. And I don’t care because for the first time in a long, long time – maybe ever – I feel like anything is possible right now.

When I was a kid, there were moments that were probably filled with more possibility – I’m thinking specifically of the Lions skull fucking of the Cowboys in the playoffs in ’91 – but I was just an idiot kid back then and didn’t really know any better. I didn’t understand the magnitude of the moment. And hey, as great as that moment was, we still didn’t have a franchise quarterback and we were coached by a dude who looked like he was going to be found dead in an alley after mainlining a plate full of spaghetti. This is the first time that it’s felt like all the key pieces are in place – Franchise QB? Check. Hyper-talented playmaking receiver? Check. Game-breaking running back? Check. Monster defender who will gladly rip the opposing quarterback’s head off? Check. Head coach who is smarter than everyone else and who actually makes our team better? Check.

Sure there are holes to be filled, but the core is there. The heart of the team that will leave us smiling and gibbering like idiots when we jump to Ludicrous Speed is there. Now it’s only a matter of time. It will click in and when it does . . . well, just read all of the idiot gibberish I have been spewing lately.

That’s why this game against the Jets has us so excited. It’s not that we think we’re going to win. It’s that we could win. And if we do . . . magic. I have no idea where we really are. I have no idea how to get to the end of this long, exhausting road. It could be a million miles away or it could just be over the next hill. I don’t know. But for the first time, I feel like it could be over the next hill, and that just makes me want to march harder and faster. When I think of it, my whole body sort of involuntarily shudders, and my mind races and it allows itself to imagine the future, and for the first time it can make out specific details. It can see Ndamukong Suh celebrating after a sack and it can see Matthew Stafford running off the field looking like some sort of big dicked cowboy fighter pilot and it can see St. Calvin jumping up and grabbing a touchdown pass while the helpless defensive back just slumps his shoulders and trudges off the field. It can see all this and it can connect with the memories of watching all of these things having happened already. Because that’s the thing. We’ve seen all of those things. We know what they look like. We know what they feel like. We know the future because we have seen it, we have felt it and we have lived it.

It’s just a matter of consistency at this point, and yeah, I have gotten completely carried away, but I don’t really care. At some point, you just have to wrap yourself in the flag of your country and sing with your brothers and sisters even if you know it’s kind of corny, even if other parts of you are telling you that there are still problems. Because pride is a motherfucker. Pride is a beautiful and a terrible thing. It will rip you apart and leave you looking like a damn fool but sometimes, it will leave you smiling and dancing in the streets. Right now, I am filled with idiot pride, I am wrapped in the flag of the Detroit Lions and I am singing drinking songs with my friends and even though there may be a comet heading straight for Earth, we don’t know that. All we know is that anything and everything feels like it’s possible and that alone feels like some sort of cosmic victory after all we’ve been through. And that’s enough for me.

But can we actually beat the Jets? Well . . . yes. And that’s the great thing. Right now, I think we can beat almost anybody. Will we beat the Jets? Well . . . probably not. That’s just the reality of the situation. It’s one thing to be capable of winning every time you take the field, no matter who it’s against. It’s another thing entirely to actually go out and do it. There are a lot of teams in the NFL who are capable of beating anyone they face. That’s all we’ve accomplished so far – we’ve managed to pull ourselves up to the level of just about every other team. The truly good teams – the Patriots, the Colts, the Steelers, etc. – all go out and actually win those games. The teams like us win sometimes, but sometimes they lose and at the end of the season they sit home and watch one of those aforementioned teams play in the Super Bowl.

This is a big test because right now the Jets kind of feel like they could be one of those Super Teams. They certainly have the hype. They have a defense that is hyped up as the greatest thing since the ’85 Bears, they have some famous wide receivers, they have a quarterback who is being groomed to one day own the city of New York, they have a boisterous jackass of a head coach who is beloved by the media because he will say any stupid shit that comes to mind. They were on HBO. They are the It Team, exactly the sort of team we’re expected to just roll over for. In the past, we have just rolled over for dudes like this, tightly shut our eyes and tried to find our happy place while they reamed the shit out of us. And people will continue to expect this until one day we get the butcher knife and cut that son of a bitch’s dick off.

I’m sorry, that all got weird and ugly, but fuck it, that is what I do. The point is, is that we’re never going to be where we want to be until we rise up and stomp one of these damn fool teams. We’ve already shown that we can beat flawed teams – the teams that are basically just like us – and hey, that’s great. That’s progress. And we have shown that we can at least hang in there with teams who are better than us. But we haven’t beaten an elite team yet. We haven’t left a Super Bowl contender standing stunned on the field wondering what the fuck just happened while we dance around and celebrate yet.

The good news is that I don’t think the Jets are nearly as good as they want you to believe. Their defense hasn’t honestly been that good this season. Darrelle Revis somehow went from underrated to overrated within the span of one contract squabble, Braylon Edwards still drops too many passes, Santonio Holmes is still rusty after coming back from a suspension for being a degenerate, Rex Ryan is more talk than action and oh yeah, Mark Sanchez, their golden boy quarterback? He suuuuuuuuuuccks.

Fuck Mark Sanchez. While everybody is busy fellating him, he’s busy riding the coattails of the Jets defense. His completion percentage this season is 53.0. For perspective purposes, among quarterbacks with 100 or more pass attempts this season, that is the second worst in the league next to only Bruce fucking Gradkowski. Derek Anderson has a better completion percentage than Sanchez. Matt Moore has a better completion percentage than Sanchez. Ryan Fitzpatrick . . . okay, you get the point. That is fucking atrocious. What a goddamn fraud. That motherfucker is being fitted with his Joe Namath cock ring and being held up as the breakout star of his draft class. And that, right there, is why he can kindly go straight to hell. Because we happen to have a quarterback by the name of Matthew Stafford from that same draft class who doesn’t get anywhere near the love that Mark Sanchez gets. While everyone was busy lovingly caressing the holy balls of Sanchez, they were shit talking Stafford for his interceptions last season. And yet, Sanchez’s numbers were a gigantic pile of shit. If you offered me a chance to take Sanchez straight up in exchange for Stafford I would chase you with a whip made from my garden hose, piranha teeth and hatred. I would shoot you in the back with a cannon and then shit in the giant cavity of death that used to be your chest. If Matthew Stafford played for the New York Jets, he would be getting his dick sucked on live TV right now. I mean it. You could change the channel and there would be Matty with a smile on his face and his pants off while a gaggle of fame whore blondes fought over the right to blow him for all the world to see. If Mark Sanchez played for the Lions right now, fans would be tossing batteries at him, Dominic Raiola would be challenging people to fights and the media would be shitting all over him as just another Joey Harrington. So yeah, I want the whole world to be able to see my man Stafford shine while Sanchez shits the bed. I want there to be no doubt. I want Jets fans to curse every deity known to man for their misfortune. I want them to know that our man is better.

I want to watch Ndamukong Suh eviscerate Mark Sanchez and then run into the endzone holding the man’s internal organs and then I want to watch him spike Sanchez’s heart while Rex Ryan falls to his knees and pleads for mercy. I want to watch Alphonso Smith intercept Sanchez and then do The Carlton on the Jets bench. I want to see Darrelle Revis suffer a massive panic attack and have to be stretchered out with a stick in his mouth so he doesn’t bite his own tongue off after St. Calvin abuses him over and over and over again. I want to see the Jets, in all their arrogance, try to cover him one on one with Revis. I want them to do it. I want them to come out and think they are just going to roll over the Lions because, ha ha ha, Same Ol’ Lions amirite? I want Rex Ryan to have a big fat smirk on his face and I want Jim Schwartz to expose him as the dumb hillbilly he is. I want blood and I want the future and I want Ludicrous Speed and I want the pelt of the New York Jets on our wall and I want the whole world to believe in possibility and I want HBO to film it all and I want Roger Goodell to give us medals like at the end of Star Wars and I want this to be the start of a decade of utter conquest and destruction, a decade which sees us pay everyone back for a lifetime of hell. I want to win and I want to win so, so badly.

Will we? Like I said, probably not. The Jets are a good team, even if they aren’t a great team, and . . . you know what, fuck it. Mark Sanchez can kiss my ass. Lions win and the whole world can sit in slackjawed confusion and Chris Berman can do his Lions??? routine all he wants and I can wrap myself in the flag of the Detroit Lions and we can all get drunk and make such a scene – Such. A. Scene. – and five years from now, we’ll stop to take a deep breath and we’ll look back and we’ll know that this is where it started. The Detroit Lions are here, and I am the herald of their doom. We will sack your city and we will enslave your children. We will crucify your quarterbacks and we will eat the dead. I am going to ride this fucker until he throws me. The road might go on for another million miles, but right now, I’m willing to believe that its end is just over the next hill and damn it, I am going to run, run, run . . .

FIVE NO DOUBT TERRIBLE PREDICTIONS

1. Matthew Stafford will be surprisingly effective against the Jets pass defense, throwing for 275 yards on 28 of 40 passing with 3 touchdowns and 1 interception.

2. Jahvid Best, on the other hand, will be completely shut down on the ground against the Jets, rushing for only 27 yards on 12 carries. He will catch 7 passes for 75 yards however.

3. Calvin Johnson will catch 7 passes for 130 yards and 2 touchdowns and Darrell Revis will break down at midfield and have to be taken out of the stadium on a stretcher with a stick in his mouth.

4. Mark Sanchez will complete 12 of 27 passes for 135 yards and 1 touchdown to go with 2 interceptions. He’ll be sacked 4 times and after the game he will be publicly bitchslapped by a disgusted Joe Namath, who will demand that Sanchez hand in his penis as punishment for being a pretender to his great throne.

5. I will be committed shortly after completing this post.

PREDICTED FINAL SCORE: LIONS 24, JETS 21. YEAH I SAID IT.

Meat and Potatoes

(all a motherfucker needs!)

There is a thing that is happening here with this 2010 Washington Redskins that has not happened for a number of years. No, I am not all geeked up on Homer McFanboy Kool-Aid thinking we are playoff bound and will return to Super Bowl glory. I mean, with the NFC the way it is, and the whole NFL really, the playoffs are not out of the question for anybody. And I guess somebody will have to back their way into a Super Bowl, but I certainly don’t see the Redskins doing it. The offense has been too hit or miss and is missing a full cast of playmakers plus is playing with like an expansion franchise’s offensive line basically, since nobody bothered to draft anybody worth a shit for the O-line the past ten years until this past spring.
But the defense has got me geeked as fuck. And not because they shut people down, because shit man, people been throwing like mad on us all year long. But when necessary, the defense shuts down the scoreboard, which is all you can really ask for. But even more awesome than that is how they’ve been crushing motherfuckers. Two weeks ago, Michael Vick got knocked the fuck out. He’s been gone ever since with his ribs separated from his heart or some bullshit. Last week, Aaron Rodgers got concussed, and they are saying it was on the last play of the game for the offense, but there was a shot earlier in the game where Rodgers looked pretty dazed and confused afterwards. With new NFL concussion rules, they have to act like they took people out immediately, but you know the deal. But that’s two weeks in a row where the opposing team’s starting QB is gone from the fucking line-up the following week. Gone.
This is Meat and Potatoes football, which is a played out cliché that people use for blue collar types, eating simple man meals and putting in work all day every day. “Meat and potatoes” became famous around Redskinsland because it is a phrase that Laron Landry pretty much says all the time. “Meat and potatoes” means just putting in work. He uses it so much that last week on Saturday night before the Packers game, a little before midnight, he posted a picture of actual meat and potatoes inside his Twitters, saying he was gonna eat and then work out. Apparently it is his custom, in the team hotel, to order a steak and fries right as room service is shutting down for the night, get his eat on, and then holmes works out late into the night, alone in his hotel room, pumping slow jams. Seriously. And this is not a euphemism for having sex. Holmes is crazy intense and pumps fucking booty-knocking music while working out like a madman in his hotel room the night before games well into the early morning.
That intensity does not diminish during games. If you have not seen the Redskins play this year yet, let me just tell you that Landry is on some next level shit. There are deep secondary headhunters who take shots a couple times a game and get a rep, but Landry is seriously lurking on every play looking to decapitate a motherfucker. I said the other day how this season for Landry is reminding me of Sean Taylor’s breakout season, but there was a difference. ST 21 seemed like a dude who could be chill off the field, at least after he had a kid with that chica caliente. But Laron… I don’t know. I seriously expect this guy to be involved in some sort of ridiculous criminal enterprise at some point. He seems slightly sociopathic, which, for me at least, in the context of football, is completely a positive.
I know in this era of brain damage concussions and IED caused problems, we are supposed to be extra cautious with shit like this. But I say fuck that. First of all, it’s football, and really this is the final era of real football. The brain damage shit is coming to light, and in twenty years time, to choose to be a football player will seem as retarded and reckless as choosing to be a boxer. But in this transitionary period where the NFL has concussion posters in every locker room, having a motherfucker on defense set the pace with a crush or be ashamed attitude, this is a great boon to our Redskins. Fuck other teams and their players. Also, earth is overloaded with the self-important and overly indignant. Perhaps what we could use is some more mentally decapacitated people to take us back to the simpler things in life. Fuck all these smart phones and bitly urls and 3g wi-fi zaps to our sub-unconscious. Every retarded and autistic and half-wit child born to our grand village is the gods saying “fuck you assholes,” nudging us back the other way.
So L-Double (all the great young players getting me hyped seem to have double initial – Laron Landry, Brandon Banks, Anthony Armstrong) brings the Meat on this Jim Haslet defense. What of the potatoes?
Potatoes are a simple tuber and a staple of many diets. Shit fills you up, so you can slice up a small chunk of pork, fill the meal out with potatoes and cabbage and a little salt, and you and the fam are set. Bake you a loaf of bread in the wood cookstove, and yall is set for three days, and feeling good enough that you make the kids sleep downstairs by the fireplace so you and the ol’ lady can try to loosen the bed ropes holding up your goose feather mattress one time. Feeling good.
Potatoes are also a slang bareknuckle fighter term – you know, those dudes who wear suits from the Goodwill but without a tie and ride freight trains and have fights for wine bottle money in abandoned stockyards – for a knock-your-ass-back punch.
In my brain, I consider the potato of this defense to be one Mr. London Fletcher, small college alumni, and unheralded master of the middle linebacker position. In the time he’s been in the NFL, defenses have become far more complicated, and the MLB position has become considered the defense’s equivalent to the QB – a highly cerebral and ultimately important roster spot to fill.
London Fletcher is not a homegrown talent, having put in work in St. Louis and Buffalo before coming here as Gregg Williams right hand in the huddle during that time. And the Gregg Williams era of Redskins defense, featuring one ST 21, gave us some swagger on that side of the ball, and had some solid moments, but never really hit the NFL big time. Once Williams got run off so that Snyderratto could fuck the team up with their Jim Zorn puppet, and Greg Blache (who was one of the Cosby Show’s 19 grandfathers), the team sort of coasted on their talent, basically playing not to fuck up too badly on defense, which of course left them fucking up. You can’t play to not lose; you gotta take that shit from somebody. Smash a motherfucker in the jawbone and make what’s his your’s, and dare him to look at you funny. That never happened with Blache, which is why a guy like Albert Haynesworth was in 7th Heaven, because he really didn’t have to do anything except be a big name who performed every now and then.
Fletcher stayed on and was fiercely loyal to Williams, and then Blache, and then Jim Haslet when he rolled into town this offseason. That’s #59 – the consummate professional football player. He understands what’s going on two steps ahead of most others – the consummate MLB. And he finally got a Pro Bowl invite last year after another dude dropped out of the game since it was only in Miami, after 12 years and leading every team he played on in tackles every year he has played in the NFL. He is where the ball goes.

(two weeks ago, bitch ass - REAL MEN FIGHT COCKS!)

Which is what makes this year’s defense seem like some next level shit for a Redskins fan. Because the headhunter Landry is commandeering tackles all over the field, playing like a London Fletcher, but with rabies. And London Fletcher has hit people a couple times very much unlike a dude with over a decade in the league. He’s looked like a tinier Ray Lewis more than a couple of times this year. Meat and Potatoes. And that shit spreads throughout the 11 on defense. Neither of these high profile dudes were involved in the hits that knocked out Mike Vick or Aaron Rodgers. But the defense has that mentality now. You will not score, and we will break you. We will fuck you. Shit, you are probably better than us, but we are going to cripple you and then fuck you in the end.

(last weekend, punk ass bitch looking my sister's crackhead ex-boyfriend!)

All of this has me excited as hell for this week. Sunday night football, which means I have all day to prime myself with homemade fermented beverages. I have some gruit ale I made, which is a mildly psychotropic beer bittered with herbs instead of hops made by Norwegians. It gets nasty the longer you have it, and mine has been sitting in the hall closet for close to five months now, and I’ve still got like 15 24 oz. bottles of it to kill. I have found it is not so foul-tasting at this point with a bit of ginger ale mixed in, and I plan to drink it in abundance, starting around 10 am on Sunday morning when I cook up some of my slaughtered pigs out of the front porch freezer, make a nice omelet with some eggs straight from the coop in the back yard, get myself feeling good about life. Shit man, with a night game, I’ll probably drag the radio into the back yard and stand around playing horseshoes with some homeboys during the day, try to win me a few $5 bills, and get amped and amped and amped for Colts vs. Redskins.

(welcome to D.C., fuckwad!)

Understand two things about this… First of all, it is Tuesday and I am anticipating the following weekend’s game. I do not remember this feeling as a Redskin fan from my adult years. I am excited. And secondly, I do not think the Redskins are better than the stupid Indianapolis Colts. In fact, I fully expect us to lose. But Peyton Manning has lived a relatively unblemished career so far as the injury report is concerned. He is like an Americanized European explorer, forcing his way onto the natives he conquers every week, every year, plundering defenses for whatever the fuck he wants, and getting all the glory. But he’s running into some headhunters this weekend. And it will be a night game, hopefully giving whatever faggots can afford to be in-the-stadium Redskins faithful a good chance to destroy their inhibitions with alcohol. And giving Laron Landry plenty of time to work his way through a few Sade playlists on his iPod all afternoon, getting jacked the fuck up. Precious Peyton Manning is gonna run into some motherfucker headhunters this weekend. And he may roll out with 5 TD passes and blow us out in the first half. But we will see what type of condition Peyton Manning’s condition is in come next Monday morning.

Redskins 3-2 Positives/Negatives Metasciences Week Five Recap

(Wisconsin bitch, scalped of a victory at the last second,

not worth raping because her vagina smells like apple sausage)

It is so much easier to bitch than be happy on this earth, especially inside this internet. But the Redskins eked out a big win over the NFC’s anointed in the Green Bay Packers. And there are things that bother me about the psychological condition of this Redskins team under Dan Snyder, things that have bothered me the past few years and have not made me feel good even when we won this season. And I can’t say I feel great about today’s win, because if Clay Mathews does not get hurt, we does not win. But at the same time, there were signs of this team turning a corner on something that has been the greatest signifier of their non-path towards success. And we shall break all that down in the positives/negatives, which I upped to 5-positive/2-negative, because fuck man, in this year of the NFL, even a high mediocre team with a few lucky breaks will win the Super Bowl.
FIFTH DEGREE POSITIVE: PR Brandon Banks. B-Double gets top honors for two reasons on this one. First off, he made the news this weekend as overhyped Devin Thomas was finally cut from the roster on Saturday afternoon, hopefully the beginning of a good purge of this team’s self-important types. B-Double was brought up because during a receivers meeting in which Devin Thomas had fallen asleep, Banks took a cell phone pic and put it up inside his Twitters, which got back to Old Man Shanahan and got Devin Thomas a meeting behind closed doors that did not go as well as the old Charlie Rich song. So as Thomas was on his way out, people suggested Banks of being snitchtastic, and that having something to do with him still holding a roster spot. Well, in response to that, I bring up the second reason I put Brandon Banks at the top of this list this week, and what has plagued these self-important Redskins who never understood why they lose games they should never have lost in their own minds. This team, as I mentioned last week, has not developed kill mode, step on somebody’s throat and take your motherfuckin’ way with them. They eke shit out at best, and lose more commonly. But as the Redskins are trailing, the D holds the Packers tight (as they did the whole second half), and here comes a punt, not close enough to handle really. It hits the turf and as people are blocking and trampling all around him and at him, Banks sees the ball bounce and looks upfield, and rather than being like, “Well, the safe thing is to let it go at this point,” or absolving himself from guilt by not actively fucking up, Banks snatches the punt anyways after the bounce and shoots up the sidelines to get the ball up near mid-field. Devin Thomas never did that. Nobody on this team has done that. And the littlest motherfucker in the entire NFL gave this team an injection of heart that got me fired the fuck up.
FOURTH DEGREE POSITIVE: S Laron Landry. Plain and simple, Landry is a beast. A fucking beast. Honestly, this year is like Sean Taylor’s breakout season was, almost eerily similar. The main difference is Sean Taylor was still somewhat loveable it seemed, like a solid dude off the field. Laron Landry is fucking scary in an around-the-clock, 24/7/365 type way. The alligator arms seem to be getting more common around Landry as the weeks go by, and it was nice to see him cut off the heat-seeking missile status for once to grab that key INT in OT. Clutch. Really, my only gripe with Landry this year has been that sometimes he’s so keyed in on crushing a motherfucker, he misses a prime opportunity for a turnover. Just like Sean Taylor did at first. And the year Sean Taylor turned the corner and could be scary evil headhunter but also snag an INT or fumble return for TD? They made the playoffs. That’s how my brain be starting to want to think in this watered down year of NFL competition.
THIRD DEGREE POSITIVE: WR Anthony Armstrong. After that B-Double punt return, with the Skins still down, I thought to myself (shit man, I can’t lie, I was talking out loud like I always do when watching football by myself, kids popping in every now and then to laugh at me if they are doing good or try to calculate how far to hide if they are doing bad), “49 yard line, take it right here, take it all.” That’s the mentality that’s been missing. Little piddly this, podunk that, nickels and dimes but never dollars. But Donovan dropped back, and let loose with a tall floater, and my immediate thought is, “Oh wow, here goes Santana Moss pretending he got pass interfered with again.” Except it wasn’t #89 underneath that lofty pass. It was #13, getting in the air and coming down in the end zone for 6. It was there, and he took it.
SECOND DEGREE POSITIVE: LB Brian Orakpo. Ain’t nothing to say about Orakpo except dude is a monster. He doesn’t have the sacks he had last year in his rookie season, but that’s because dude is held about 19 times a game. Seriously, every highlight they showed of Rodgers being rushed had Orakpo with 300 pounds of some dude in a white jersey hanging off one of his arms. I heard Aaron Rodgers was concussed during the game and I certainly thought that might’ve been the case on the play where Orakpo Awesomebombed him to the turf deep in Packer territory there that one time. Rodgers came up looking glassy on that. And that overtime sack was fucking clutch.
FIRST DEGREE POSITIVE: P Hunter Smith. It may seem stupid to put a punter in the mix, but after the way Josh Bidwell flubbed up anything he had his foot or hands on this season, having old Hunter the Punter back in there, and nailing pretty much every kick, not messing up any holds, and looking quite hillbilly with his half-truck driver, half-gay pride facial hair.
STAY MEDIUM DEGREE: QB Donovan McNabb. Hey, we won, and McNabb had a ton of passing yards, but you know what was pretty obvious a few times? McNabb is not dialed in at all times. On the positive side, he was gimpy but hanging tough and getting things accomplished down the stretch. On the negative side, he overthrows shit, underthrows shit, misjudges shit, all of that on the regular. Poor Chris Cooley got stiffed on a couple of McNabb errant tosses, and when Cooley missed a catch he would’ve caught 19 times out of 20, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a trust factor involved. Like how do you get ready for a guy who might overthrow you by 9 yards, but then make an amazing toss? Having five games under my belt watching his every move, I can say with complete seriousness that Donovan McNabb is probably the most successful wildly inconsistent QB the modern NFL has ever known.
FIRST DEGREE NEGATIVE: WR Santana Moss. I’ll be honest, I’m done with Moss. He makes catches, which he usually celebrates regardless of game conditions, but is not somebody you can count on to be clutch, unless clutch means begging for a pass interference call because he missed his 7-yard slant pass on a 3rd & 9. And with not many options in the Redskins receiving corps, Moss has held onto his spot as the go-to guy. But he’s also the first one to be all like, “I don’t know how we lost, we should’ve won,” when they inevitably lose. Holmes has only one Pro Bowl his entire career, and shit man, like a quarter of the league makes the Pro Bowl by the time they actually work through people that want to play nowadays. Moss has far more swagger than jack to back it up.
SECOND DEGREE NEGATIVE: owner Dan Snyder. Motherfucker had a fluff piece on ESPN this week, and I haven’t been condemning him weekly like I should. So now that those who don’t live with this team day in and day out think, “Oh hey, that Snyder guy, he’s not a complete fucking retard; he just wants to win.” Fuck that noise. Dan Snyder should be thankful for the NFL’s rampant mediocrity right now, because that’s the biggest contributor to this team being successful. And I guess I should be thankful that we don’t live in a different era where you actually bring in a solid personnel top to bottom and slowly build a complete team that can fuck shit up for half a decade at a time, because Dan Snyder is way richer than me, probably eats and lives far more healthily, and has access to actual doctors, not voodoo herbalists like myself. But hey, we won. But I want you to know Mr. Snyder with your half a Favre dick and megamillions – I know you’re still sitting up there. And I still fucking hate you, no matter how many games this team wins. I will never like you and will never accept you as one of my own.

Season-to-date totals: LB Brian Orakpo (+10), LB London Fletcher (+10), S Laron Landry (+9), LB Lorenzo Alexander (+7), WR Anthony Armstrong (+7), RB Ryan Torain (+5), TE Chris Cooley (+5), PR Brandon Banks (+5), RB Clinton Portis (+4), K Graham Gano (+3), GM Bruce Allen (+3), S Kareem Moore (+2), DE Philip Daniels (+2), P Hunter Smith (+1), head coach Mike Shanahan (+1), QB Donovan McNabb (+1), T Trent Williams (even), WR Santana Moss (even), fan Raven Mack (-1), WR Malcolm Kelly (-1), P Josh Bidwell (-2), CB DeAngelo Hall (-3), CB Carlos Rogers (-3), owner Dan Snyder (-4), DT Albert Haynesworth (-5), and T Stephon Heyer (-7).