Peyton Manning, Bountygate, & the Washington Redskins

First off, apologies for the lack of anything ACLB-related, all you Armchair Linebacker backers out there. Neil is burned out and working on some sort of psychosis-induced novella about sasquatches and Russian women taking over Michigan’s upper peninsula in some sort of apocalyptic thing (set two years from now, so be forewarned bros). And I am just I, sort of sick of humanity and sharing medicine with native shaman as often as possible because I can see the underlying concentric circles that unite us all molecularly, but seem to be frizzed by the electrosmog. I also had my neighbor’s son who used to live in her basement and has a backhoe come help me bury a shipping container in the hill in my pasture, which I’ve turned into my “lab” for writing-related endeavors. Which has meant I’m writing a lot, but outside of the nefarious reach of wi-fi or internet (and I’ve purposely positioned exactly 36 orgone generators in an hexagonal shape around the top of it), so none of that is here or now.
But I have kept abreast of all the wonderfully depressing developments of the NFL’s offseason. Who the fuck even played in the Super Bowl? Oh yeah… that actually took me about 13 seconds to remember it was Eli Manning and Bradyboy Bodean.
So yes, the two big topics of discussion are the Bountygate non-scandal of a scandal, which is actually a completely different and depressing scandal than you realize, and Peyton Manning, which has only depressed me to no end because if the Dan Snyder era of football ownershipping has taught me anything, it’s that if there’s a famous name who is half-crippled and will probably be a hollow shell of his self for the rest of his professional career, Dan Snyder is going to give him an extra two years and 39 million to come play for the Redskins. Which has meant I have actually gone through the process of emailing my man Will and we both going, “Will this be the end of our fandom of Redskins?” to mocking everything ever to begrudging acceptance to where I actually had at one point convinced myself that Peyton Manning would help turn the Redskins bad luck around and we might be a viable franchise again, right away, magically. This might be because I work with a lady who is a HUGE Peyton Manning fan, and in an office full of boring squares and normals, there’s a hidden quirkiness to her, so of course I love her in the secretive ways of a mental predator.
But honestly, now that the release has happened, and the Redskins are bandied about as a possible landing spot and making a hard pitch to Peyton, I am like, “C’mon Miami! C’mon Seattle!” I’m not sure there’s been a player in the past 15 years I’ve disliked as much as Peyton Manning, and probably no one before since Deion Sanders, and to have both of them sporting the maroon and black would just further piss on the grave of my football optimism.
Oddly enough, as the questions about Peyton’s ability to come back from multiple surgeries and experimental European treatments outlawed in America, Tony Dungy and his freakishly freckled face said he thought it all started with a Redskins tandem sack of ol’ Peyton a few years back, and how Peyton was never the same. This filled me with pride, as I remember that sack, because it pumped me the fuck up at the time. That game was painful, because you just wanted to see Peyton crushed left and right, but that dude avoids sacks like a champ, there is no doubt about that. But on one play, he got stuck, and in comes Andre Carter from one end and Philip Daniels from the other, Carter goes low which crumples Peyton just in time to catch a menacing Road Warrior Hawk clothesline from Daniels right across the neckbones. Sadly Peyton jumped right back up, and called a TO, but you could see he was visibly shaken, even if he was not in a crumpled heap between the hash marks. And if that was the beginning of the end, then so be it; we could proudly say that this Redskins team put both Peyton Manning and Troy Aikman into their final football chapter. Shit man, that’s about all I can hang my hat on from the past fifteen years.
But then the Bountygate story became a media moment of politically correct shocked hysteria, and Gregg Williams was cast as the NFL’s coaching boogieman, who cared not about the honorable tradition of playing football, and was a nefarious coaching Hitler with some sort of twisted pyramid scheme that rewarded maiming innocent people. But really, it’s not like Williams or this scandal was an extraordinary situation. I would imagine a ton of guys like Jack Del Rio and Mike Singletary and Jerry Glanville and Rex Ryan and even respectable dudes like Jeff Fisher and the Harbaughs and even probably Bill Belichick did the exact same thing, in one form or another. It’s not about paralyzing people, but if you can knock them the fuck out, then so be it. That’s what football is.
Or that’s what football was, I should probably say, because ultimately this has nothing to do with player safety, nor outlaw coaches. It is entirely about liability in regards to the poor health, specifically mentally, even more specifically neurologically, of former players. You see, I am a scientist, and at an army sponsored meeting regarding new trends in battlefield neurological assessments of blasted soldiers a couple years back, I had the joy of seeing a dude who was the Pittsburgh Steelers team neurologist speak. And I won’t tie any specific claims to him directly, but the gist of what I got from it was that the concussions and mental injury players were receiving was something no one really understood completely even six or seven years ago. But the MRI data is overwhelming – dudes are fucked. Which means dudes from every previous era of football are also fucked. Which means when dudes go off on suicidal binges or become raging drug addicts or just completely wreck their own lives like a textbook post-traumatic stress disorder Vietnam vet, there is a very identifiable cause to this – constantly bumping brains with dudes. And NFL helmet technology is pretty much based on army helmets from earlier world wars, which is designed to protect the cranium from projectile impact, not cushion the skull from jarring blows. So players have been playing unprotected to an extent, even with the new rules.
Ah yes, the new rules. Many like myself and what I assume is your average ACLB reader are like, “Man, this is bullshit. What happened to football?” And you are right in the sense it is not like the football you knew. But the change in rules and Bountygate’s eventual sacrificial lamb of Gregg Williams is the beginning of this new era of football, where the NFL is looking to establish a very public record of Zero Tolerance for head blows or on-the-field trauma to players, so that it can say – legally – that as soon as it knew from a scientific view that this was an issue, it did everything in its power to stop the trauma. Thus, the NFL avoids what could possibly be a crippling class action lawsuit from previous players and their families. That is what this all boils down to. There’s no real care for the players or anything like that. So the NFL will take steps towards making the entire season more like the Pro Bowl game, which I’m sure is going to require a good amount of re-training on all our parts to try and enjoy.
The NFL does a good job of encouraging beat writers and TV NFL guys to follow the league talking points though. Imagine you are a local reporter for like the Cleveland Browns, and you want to take the stand that the new NFL is fucking pussy, but then the Browns are like, “Look, you talk that shit and we’re going to limit your access to the team,” which then causes that reporter trifles in his ability to do his job. That shit happens all the time, and is why most “news” reports are nothing more than a re-wording of press releases with some googled-up stats thrown into the mix. And because of this, I would imagine your local NFL columnist, or the dude you like on the sports TVs, has already come out and been SHOCKED and GASPED at what Gregg Williams did. He’s supposed to react that way.
Mostly I feel bad for Gregg Williams. When Joe Gibbs retired again, I was a Redskin fan who really wanted Gregg Williams to be the head coach, but Snyder went with the Jim Zorn era instead. Yeah, Gregg Williams is a nut, but when he’s your defensive coordinator and you have guys like Sean Taylor and London Fletcher just salivating to crack a skull, on every play, you know, it hypes you up. The ol’ adrenal gland gets to pumping, which is one of the great benefits of a quality football product.
A Pro Bowl-style NFL football, which we were also conditioned towards last season with the exuberant passing performances of Brady and Brees and Rodgers and others, that doesn’t exactly get your adrenal glad pumping. It’s like watching the NBA, which is unfortunate for football fans, as well as the NFL ultimately, because most people don’t watch the NBA. But Williams is about to be laid out as a warning to everybody else, that this won’t be condoned by Sheriff Goodell, who really needs to not be thought of as a Sheriff so much as a dude just trying to completely recreate the backbone of an established sport. It’s wrong to me, and it’s wrong to you, but it’s what’s going to happen.
So basically forget about this being shocking, because it ain’t to anybody who, you know, has actually watched football for more than three years. And forget about thinking football is going to go back ever to that hard-nosed rugged smashmouth way. It’s over, bros. The lawyers have gotten involved and doled out the proper ass-covering warnings, and that era is as dead as Justin Strzelczyk and Rickey Watters.
But back to Peyton Manning and the Redskins… Thinking about Gregg Williams being overlooked for the head coaching job when Joe Gibbs retired, so that Snyder could hire Jim Zorn as an offensive coordinator, and then promote to head coach, that was a painful thing to endure as a Redskins fan. But I’ve come to expect that. Which is why I imagine even though it would be terrible for Peyton Manning himself to come to Washington, that’s exactly what will happen. Dan Snyder makes offers you can’t refuse. And Peyton’s doing an “aw shucks” routine like always, asking if you’re supposed to go take tours of teams or what, as he’s never done this before. That motherfucker knows the deal. He just got let go by his owner of forever, and he’s being as publicly classy as possible, to maximize his value to another team. A disgruntled crippled QB looks like the new Brett Favre, but a dude who is like, “Hey, I just want to keep playing football, and I understand why this happened but I’ll always love the fat ugly white people of Indiana!” is working the marks and being a company man so that another owner knows just how hard Peyton will work to try and be a good player, but at least be pleasing to the type of white people who pay $95 for a jersey with a number 18 on the motherfucker.
Which is funny too, because the Redskins have tried the savior routine so often it’s like the little Russian boy who cries “FIREWOLVES!” in a crowded school bus, I just don’t believe it. Just like football itself has changed forever, and will not go back, perhaps the Redskins have too. I mean, what’s the likelihood of me outliving Dan Snyder. That dude probably eats organic arugula daily, and I do peyote with drunkards. I’m doomed. So maybe it’s for the best the NFL is becoming the new NBA, because I certainly wouldn’t give a fuck about the Redskins if they were an NBA team. Maybe the Universe is doing me a favor, and maybe it’ll further do me a favor and make Peyton Manning a Redskin, to help aid and abet my break from this godawful pro football road I seem to stumbling down.

So It Has Come To This...

(I know how you feel, grandma)

So it was somewhere during the 3rd quarter of the Redskins/Panthers game that I realized that I don't even love this team anymore. I had no care in them succeeding, and when Steve Smith continually just outran our allegedly Pro Bowl CB to get a big catch, I was actually thinking in my head, "See! You pieces of shit." Of course, out loud I was cursing and steaming and stomping and pretending to still have hope the Redskins could pull off a miraculous comeback that contradicted the actual energy of the entire game. But inside, I was happy to see what was going on. It served them right. It was in that moment that I thought of the line I used in the metasciences recap about being in a loveless marriage, laying there, staring at the ceiling, wondering what the fuck you were doing, pretending it was going to get better.
It makes sense this happened during a Panthers game, and not just because the Panthers looked like the better team, with a more upward trajectory as a franchise. When Carolina was given an expansion franchise in the mid-'90s, I actually contemplated shifting my rooting allegiances. I've been a lifelong Redskins fan, following the lead of my father and maternal grandfather. My dad used to have some drinking buddies who came over for every game. They'd split a half-gallon of Jim Beam, smoke weed, and get loud and belligerent over every play of every game. It was beautiful. This was during the '80s heyday of Joe Gibbs, and there were three Super Bowls during that decade where a late January Sunday turned into a euphoric experience (except for the Raiders one, which was probably the most depressed and helpless I ever felt as a kid while watching TV). It was good times.
But the fact of the matter was, by the time I became an adult in the '90s, I knew where I was from culturally - southside Virginia - and what the D.C. suburban sprawlish much of northern Virginia and Maryland was like. These were two different places. And though I received Richmond TV stations in my various homes through the antenna on top of the houses, which was considered Redskins market, I felt a closer tie south, to the Piedmont area of North Carolina. Two completely different places, but definitely the Carolina roads felt more like home to me from how I grew up than the immense clusterfuck that you hit once you got within 50 miles of D.C. proper. So I contemplated jumping to the Panthers (and this was long before Dan Snyder ever came on board), but couldn't bail on that lifelong history with the Skins, and actually the day before Christmas in 1995, there was a game between the two franchises, and I told myself that whoever won would be my team. The Panthers had done better under Dom Capers than any first-year expansion franchise ever, mixing in a good collection of veterans with the youngsters they drafted together, and it was actually a legitimate game in question for the much-storied Redskins. They prevailed though, and even though I felt weird even letting my allegiances ride on a single game, I stuck with the Skins.
Since that point, Jack Kent Cooke died, Dan Snyder took over, and it's been a comedy of errors ever since. My waning love for a team that still looked like it could be the great presence I knew in my youth has deteriorated into a bumbling, stumbling mess that has tarnished the white jerseys of Super Bowl victories, Joe Gibbs, and any good memory I have ever. They moved into a new stadium, free of history, that's actually located in Maryland (the shittiest of all states in my travels, except for maybe Indiana), and they've signed a ton of guys who were not actual Redskins in spirit or aura, ever, no matter how many Dan Snyder checks they cashed. I can go through the list if you want, but we've all been through it - the same tired free agents that were brought in as "the missing piece" only to be a Goodwill jersey three years later. The entire culture of the team has changed, and that long-term history that used to make you feel so strong as a Redskins fan... I don't know, it seems like that chronological line has been stamped out to be honest. It doesn't even feel like the same team any more.
After last season, I had contemplated doing a group of pieces on Armchair Linebacker about testing the free agent markets as a fan. I know that sounds ridiculous, because alpha male sports fans will say you stick with your team, through thick and thin, because that's how it's supposed to be. But is the NFL like that any more? Sure, in the early days and into the '80s, a player tended to spend the majority of his career with one team. In fact, it took rabble-rousing renegades like our beloved John Riggins to force the free agency issue and allow players to move to other teams where they might find more happiness. And at first, it seemed like the motivation was more personal happiness, and I cannot deny it seems free agency has degenerated into players just jumping for money, with no real allegiance to any team. And I certainly don't want to contribute to a more fickle fanbase that switches favorite teams twice a year. But I do feel there's some legitimacy to my desire to have more happiness as a fan of an NFL team. So I don't necessarily think it completely outlandish to suggest I could become a free agent somewhere down the road.
And there is personal precedence for this, as my favorite baseball team growing up was the San Francisco Giants, simply because my first little league team was called the Giants, and I thought there was some connection in my naive little CF mind. But when the Expos moved to Washington to become the Nationals, I adopted them as my baseball team, because they were closer, and I didn't feel much kinship to the Giants any more after the Barry Bonds era, and shit man, they were across the fucking continent, whereas I could drive to see a Nationals game as an afternoon excursion. So I switched, and never looked back, even as the Nationals piled up terrible seasons, and even as the Giants won last year's World Series. I never once questioned my change in allegiance, because I arrived there sensibly, and planning on being loyal, and understanding you make this decision expecting the worst but hoping for the best. So there was no switching back when the Giants became a contender before the Nationals did.
There's precedence in Virginia too. You get down below Roanoke, and you tend to see more Panther flags in yards than Redskin ones. Sure, the Redskins "market" used to stretch from DC through Virginia and the Carolinas, which is why there were so many Redskins fans at the Panthers game last week, because there's still heavy enclaves of burgundy and gold allegiance throughout the south. And I can respect that.
But there's nothing left in it for me. I see the writing on the wall, that if you took away the historical importance of this franchise, we are no better than the bumbling Bengals of the past 15 years, and in fact, probably worse. Any stat you look up to see how unstable a team is - lack of playoff victories, number of starting QBs, number of head coaches, W/L percentage - the Redskins are contenders for incompetence in all of them.
So what we have now is a team that does not represent my cultural/geographical awareness, and also on top of that is a fairly incompetent organization spearheaded by a man who will most likely live as long as, if not longer than I do. That means the inner-conflict and emotional frustration I experienced watching the Panthers game will most likely remain with me for the rest of my breathing life. That's a tough prospect to swallow - no hope, no joy, just remaining in a relationship because it's the only one you know.
I can't accept that. So I'm saying here and now, after this seventh week of this 2011-2012 year, that I remain committed to this Redskins team through the end of this season. But once the playoffs are done and a Super Bowl champion is crowned, who will certainly not be wearing burgundy and gold, yet again, not even close, then I'm going to test the free agent waters, to direct my allegiance to another team. And it's not going to be some goofy, "Hey, I like this one player, so I'm gonna be a Team X fan!" because this is not the NBA. I am a loyal motherfucker, to a fault, and a good fan who can remain positive even in negative swirls of tornado-like energy. But I'd like to give that fandom and that positivity and that energy to a team that would give me something back, if nothing more than a little glimmer of hope. Hope that things will get better, and hope that I'm appreciated. I don't feel appreciated as a Redskins fan, that's for sure. I feel like I'm supposed to co-sign everything mindlessly and spend my money on whatever new jersey is available this season as the missing piece and not be bummed that my jersey from three years ago is in a trash bag marked "Goodwill donations" waiting to be dropped off. I'm tired of it.
Being we are still in the season, I'm not even gonna entertain ideas of what team I might want to become loyal to, and I'm not discounting the Redskins eventually remaining that team. This is not a "fuck the Redskins, I quit" post. I want to think it out and see what the teams might have to say. Ideally, I'd die a Redskins fan, but I'm not entirely sure that's in my best interest.
But I'd also like to know what you think. Is this sensible? Do you think it's a cop-out? I'd like to know what a Redskins fan feels about this, and what any fan feels about this. Is it our duty as allegedly loyal fans of a pro football teams to just suck it up and take this fucking frustration for decades? And if so, why is that? What do we get out of it in the end? Is the point not to get anything necessarily but just emotionally attach yourself to one team and ebb and flow with that attachment? If that's the case, then why wouldn't we switch from time to time, to encourage joy and euphoria in our lives instead of frustration and hopelessness? I'm not sure about any of this, but I doubt John Riggins was sure what he was doing when he refused to play for the New York Jets back in the day. He just knew it didn't feel right, and all he wanted was a chance to have things feel right. I'm right there with you, Riggo.

Potential Free Agency Issue Looming FOR ME!

(this is Joe Lavender, who successfully sued the NFL for neurological damage from playing football back in the '80s - interesting precedent considering today's concussion culture; he has nothing to do with what I write below, but was one of my first favorite players as a Redskins fan, and pretty much the main reason I can't spell "lavender" correctly to this day" even though I guess he spells it correctly so maybe I'm just stupid)

Sigh… I don’t care. Monday night’s game was this year’s yearly watermark of when my balloon was busted. The Offseason Champs have yet again been regular season epicfails. And yet, I started that stupid positive/negative metasciences scale that really should see its way through the entire season, so I guess I won’t pull a Haynesworth and lay down while the rest of the season unfolds.
But what the fuck do I write about now? I consider myself a die-hard Redskins fan, but it feels like I’m literally dying hard. It is so hard to care about this team, with this ownership and this constant parade of self-important football divas who think they are entitled to my respect simply because they play professional football. There were some mumblings in the world of twitter amongst Skins players about how true fans stick with the team after games like last Monday, most notably Phillip Daniels was speaking this line of thought. And I got love for Daniels, because he has never been one of those football primadonas on this team. He goes after it, even now when dude is pushing well past normal fighting football age. But shit man, I’ve been a fan of this team since the late ‘70s, as far back as I can remember. This is not some last-five-years thing for me. No player on this team has been there as long as I have been, and many were not even born when I cheered for my first Redskins TD. I don’t feel like anybody owes me anything, because goddamn, we have no control over the games whatsoever. (Which brings to mind the very real point of why would we torment ourselves as fans so emotionally over something of which we have no control?) But I feel some psychic ownership, a bond to this team that has outlasted most any other brand allegiance in my life, sports-related or otherwise.
The thing is, football has changed. Players come and go. There is no more of drafting a player and watching his entire career, or knowing that when you buy a jersey for a superstar he will always be part of your team. It’s a business, and the bottom line makes everybody and everything expendable, including my opinions as a fan. Hell, especially my opinions as a fan.
And yet, some things have not changed. You still have to build success. It comes from the top down, or the inside out would probably be more appropriate. You have to have a solid foundation in place before any coaching staff or GM dude is hired. Those guys – the genius coaches and personnel wizards – are the drywall/paint/trim you put over the foundation and framework. Then you use that and start to furnish the place with the players that will look good and be ultimately functional as fuck, so that you can kick ass upon turf. The Redskins do not seem too structurally sound, so you could hire SNL skit Mike Ditka to coach and Vince Lombardi through a computer Ouija board to GM, and shit would still be fucked, and lucky to get a wild card.
(Side note: this brings to mind the whole McNabb/Vick comparisons that have been bouncing around this week. There was a clamor for the Redskins to sign Vick when he was being reinstated, but it didn’t happen. Good for Vick. If you think for one split second that his return to NFL glory would’ve unfolded in the same manner if he had been signed to the Redskins, you would be crazy. Vick is successful because of everything around him as much as himself, which is not to take away from what he’s done. And McNabb is a failure because of what’s around him, although he’s certainly not done much to help himself.)
What I’m getting at – and this is hard to admit – is, I am contemplating a break. I have never respected dudes who do that, who are fairweather fans or claim to be down with whatever is the flavor of the decade, but I think it might be coming to something closer to that for me than sticking with this Dan Snyder team. But I don’t want to be that type of guy at all. If I make a break, I want it to be a one-time thing.
What I am saying is this, if two criteria are met, there will be drastic consequences on my part.
CRITERIA #1: worse than 6-10 record. Before the year started, I pegged them realistically as a 6-10 team. And that’s being far more realistic than your average Redskin fan. If they fall below that, meaning they win less than 2 games for the remainder of the year, then I would consider that this football team’s ownership showing me they are not committed to actually winning, regardless of the money they throw around.
CRITERIA #2: no football next year. The pundits keep saying, “They’ll work out a deal,” and they probably should. But how many times have major professional sports leagues probably should have not had a work stoppage and still had a work stoppage. I would put the percentage at around 90% when it gets this far along. And people still keep coming back, because we are fans. What the fuck else are we going to do?
CONSEQUENCES: If these two pieces of very likely futurisms take place, then I am going to declare myself a free agent fan of the NFL, and I will be entertaining offers from every team in the league at that point. If this season starts getting uglier for the Skins, I’ll dig through the house, look through the bank statements, and try to figure up a yearly average for how much money I waste on my favorite team. And I’ll pick out some of the Armchair Linebacker highlights to pass along as examples of how hard I go for a team. But I just can’t see continuing to waste my emotions somewhere that isn’t going to give me anything in return. I just can’t.
There is a feeling of chumpiness to this, like I’m a punk who switches teams. I am sure the first guy who tried to force free agency on the NFL was made to feel that way in his team’s locker room. “Why would you betray us? You’re not a real member of this team, are you?” But damn man, I’ve got to look out for myself. These yearly offseason championships followed up by more and more creative ways to fuck things up, it’s really hurting me. I mean honestly, I could probably have myself evaluated medically – physically and psychologically – and I think in our overly litigious culture, there’d be grounds for a class action lawsuit against Dan Snyder by Redskins fans. But I’m not that type of person. I am willing to take responsibilities for my own actions. I do not feel entitled to anything except a chance to enjoy myself. (I guess accountability plus lack of sense of entitlement would not make me an ideal candidate for a Dan Snyder free agent contract, would it?)
I am sad it has come to this, but I just wanted to make my long-term intentions clear now, so it did not seem like some bullshit knee-jerk reaction. I would like to keep my talents in the extended D.C. area (really extended – into Southside Virginia, which doesn’t even have an AM station carrying the games anymore – again, I blame Dan Snyder’s greed for this), and I would like to end my career as an NFL fan right where it started, sporting and supporting the burgundy and gold. But I have to look out for my own emotional well-being, as well as the happiness of my family. My children do not like to be around me during football season. My wife hates the Redskins, not because she likes another team or thinks football is stupid or anything, but because of their ill effects they have on our shared lives. I showed her the gif of Albert Haynesworth laying on the ground, and her response was, “So that’s basically the Redskins in a nutshell right there.” And I really couldn’t argue with her.
Before any sad sack loser whose team has been even worse than the Redskins comes and shoots me down with their judgmental condemnations, understand I am not proud of this potential decision. And I understand your complaints. Most of my life, I would’ve said the exact same thing. But in this emotional clusterfucked mess of being an NFL fan of the most extreme prejudice, there comes a time where we must stand up for ourselves. We have to stop taking this shit at some point, don’t we? Whenver someone is like, “Let’s boycott the team until he sells it to someone else,” other fans are like, “LOLOLOLOL, u retarded!” So why not shop our allegiance and loyalties to the rest of the league, and try to find somewhere that won’t make us want to kick our dogs in the ribs and smash countertops and stomp around in a general funk every autumnal Monday (or Tuesday) for the rest of our goddamned lives? What the fuck do we, as fans, deserve for our fandom? Certainly feels like I should have a shot at something more than simply misery and cynicism.