Redskins 5-5 Positives/Negatives Metasciences Week 11 Recap

A clusterfuck of a Redskins game experience, again, as I had to make the trip to my mom’s to pick up my kids with my ol’ lady, and we are in the no-sell zone for AM stations carrying the game. This meant our quick jaunt to get the kids turned into me stalling and hedging as I watched the 4th quarter and overtime on my mom’s TV, which allowed me a good half hour or so of being like, “Damn, Dick Stockton and Charles Davis suck even more than you’d expect them to suck.” Seriously, they are bad. Stockton was screwing up people’s names and Charles Davis, I think, is the first internet message board nerd to actually get a commentating job. This is unfortunate for all other internet message board dork’s future dreams.
Anyways, I told my wife before the game started, when she was mocking me for thinking it was worth paying attention to, that the Titans were quarterbacked by a guy who was very much like the Redskins team – overrated, self-important, and a huge disappointment, so that this game was truly a battle of which downward spiraling force was more immense. Apparently, that would be Vince Young, complete with post-game outburst, storming out the locker room, and post-hissy fit twitter apology to his teammates. Man oh man.
But I am not a Titans fan; I am a Redskins fan. I am thankful they have won one game towards not meeting my criteria to declare free agency as a fan, because I have far too much Redskins paraphernalia in my life to be switching shit up at this point. They still have to win another, but I’m sure they’ll stumble into a victory somewhere along the way. This is the modern parity-ized NFL after all. Here are the positives/negatives from yesterday’s game…
FOURTH DEGREE POSITIVE: TE Chris Cooley. Man, Cooley broke the fuck out in the second half, in his normal rumbling, stumbling manner. After Fred Davis had a couple of big tackle-busting catch-and-runs, I couldn’t help but wonder if Captain Chaos was all like, “Fuck this, I can’t lose my alpha TE status.” The thing is, Cooley is what every NFL team’s fanbase wants – a big goofy double tough white guy to get behind. It’s not like the average American is racist to the extent they’re like, “Man, fuck black quarterbacks,” because we do have a mulatto President. But they do like to have a white boy in a prominent position of awesomeness. And the sad part of all this is I don’t think I’ve seen Cooley with his big shit-eating grin since Joe Gibbs 2.0 was done. If you can’t get a guy like him stoked to play football, then I don’t know. But seeing him wreck motherfuckers yesterday filled my heart with happiness, and reminded me, that of all the goddamn players that come and go, if there was a jersey off this team that I should have on my back, it’s a goddamn Chris Cooley #47.
THIRD DEGREE POSITIVE: RB Clinton Portis. Before getting his groin wrong again, Portis showed why he was still the feature back, and the only vet who survived training camp. Plus, he looked perfect in that white jersey/yellow pants combo. Whenever I played Madden, I always played those alternate uniforms, which they’ve been wearing this year on most home/away games. Very nice. Of course, if they do this regularly, I will have to be contrarian and complain about it. But C.P., he is a rock solid dude, and one of the best blocking star HBs the NFL has seen in a long time. I know injuries have probably ended his run in D.C., but honestly, I’d like to see the guy collect a check for another couple years and retire a Skin. He has been the best long-term presence this team has had since Snyder took ownership, which probably speak to the troubles we have had as a team, but also is a compliment to Clinton, not a backhanded insult.
SECOND DEGREE POSITIVE: KR/PR/WR Brandon Banks. If the Little Assassin starts playing on offense as well, as he did on a big reception in the 2nd half, then he will be the fan favorite on this team. That little fucker brings adrenaline every time he has the ball. This is what a goddamned football team should be trying to get EVERY TRAINING CAMP out of a handful of undrafted long shots. EVERY FUCKING TRAINING CAMP, not having it be a refreshing change of pace once every 15 years. Stupid fucking Vinny Cerrato.
FIRST DEGREE POSITIVE: LB Lorenzo Alexander. When they showed that white dude punt returners TD return for Tennessee in slow motion, the most terrible thing I noticed was #97 the One Man Gang pulling up gimpy while in chase mode. Lorenzo Alexander is the most all-around guy on any NFL team, who has done all types of retarded shit to stay on this roster. If he is not a special teams captain by this point in his career, even though he also starts on defense, then there is something wrong with the NFL’s captain electoral process, because Alexander is motherfucker leader by example. Not to mention the fact he stripped Vince Young of the ball in the beginning in what could have easily turned the game into an extended remix of the Monday night’s asskicking by the Eagles into a chance for redemption. Single-handedly he did that, redeemed the team from shame. If he hadn’t pulled his hamstring, he probably would’ve been my super positive of the game.
STAY MEDIUM DEGREE: Head Coach Mike Shanahan. I’ll give Shanny his props – like a quarter of the team was injured off the field against Tennessee, and he cobbled them together and eked out a win. It’s only Tennessee, but we’re only Washington, so in a battle of two mediocre forces in the modern NFL, on the road, the mediocre Skins showed they were more high mediocre than low mediocre by getting the OT victory in Nashville. The thing I like most about Shanahan’s first year is all these minor characters developing on the team – Brandon Banks, Anthony Armstrong, Keiland Williams, etc… guys who I never heard of, even after the draft, and yet here they are fighting and clawing their way into contributions on this team. The biggest problem with the Redskins has always been those roster spots from #11 through #53, always have the alleged superstars but no solid depth and no real blue collar types steadily being injected into the mix from the bottom of the roster up. It is really fucking nice to finally see somebody pay attention to that after however many years we had of Dan Snyder pretending he wasn’t involved with Vinny Cerrato pretending he wasn’t making the personnel decisions, which set this team back a decade, to the point now that shit man, being 5-5 is really kinda amazing.
FIRST DEGREE NEGATIVE: K Graham Gano. If you kick the game winner in overtime after missing the game winner at the end of regulation, I have no super adoration for you. Basically, G-double did what he should’ve done already, and this Thanksgiving he should be thankful that Rusty Smith the third string QB for Tennessee was an incompetent rookie who looks like he had fetal alcohol syndrome, and that Gano got a chance to make right what he did wrong.
SECOND DEGREE NEGATIVE: QB Donovan McNabb. Much like Gano, McNabb looked good in making some drives at the end that allowed the Skins to win, but he also simply was making up for previous fuck-ups. McNabb is still apt to throw stupid INTs, and he consistently misses what would be a deep strike for 6 points by about 7 yards. He may be a six-time Pro Bowler, but he will not be making the trip to this year’s Pro Bowl, that is for sure. I think that’s the thing that is lost with my fellow Redskins fans in the muck that is Dan Snyder owning the team – just because a guy has been awesome in the past, it does not mean we will be getting jackshit out of him. And it is not necessarily better to have somebody who is slightly better at being middle-of-the-pack than the obviously middle-of-the-pack guys we used to have (as in the argument for McNabb compared to Jason Campbell). We should probably be hoping that somebody who has some fucking football sense is put in charge and we can try to be better than high mediocre. But that’s what we’ve become… people who are stoked that we might still not be mathematically eliminated from the playoffs two Sundays before Christmas.
THIRD DEGREE NEGATIVE: DT Albert Haynesworth. Having the guy go back to Tennessee and talk about how he loved the Titans, it reminded me of what a piece of shit this guy has been. After that laying on the ground shit during the one Michael Vick TD pass in the Eagles Monday Night game, I really honestly would have had no problem with them straight up waiving this dude. I know you are financially obligated for things, and want to get any value whatsoever for valuable things, even if it’s just like a 5th round draft pick to use on a flyer player out of college. But you also have to make a statement about shit like that and how the culture of tolerance in D.C. has changed. Or anywhere. Fuck a guy like Haynesworth, although he is the perfect trophy player for Dan Snyder. I wish NFL owners were like a secret country club and they all hung out once a week so the other owners would mock and molest the shitty owners when they do terrible things. That way once a week Dan Snyder would mostly be catching, “Hahaha, you dumbass,” from his mega-millionaire brethren. Also, you would hope this would motivate him to do better by doing less. I wish Snyder would lay down like Haynesworth, and take the rest of the year off. But these are things I always bitch about, and should have bitched about yesterday or Sunday night in our immediate internet opinions for you culture. But I dallied and real lifed it up and only now blew off work for an hour to updated you on my metasciences bullshit. So fuck you.

Season-to-date totals: LB Lorenzo Alexander (+14), TE Chris Cooley (+12), LB Brian Orakpo (+13), LB London Fletcher (+11), PR Brandon Banks (+10), RB Clinton Portis (+7), S Laron Landry (+7), RB Ryan Torain (+7), WR Anthony Armstrong (+6), Radio man Sam Huff (+4), LB Chris Wilson (+4), GM Bruce Allen (+3), DE Philip Daniels (+2), K Graham Gano (+2), LB Rocky McIntosh (+2), S Kareem Moore (+2), CB DeAngelo Hall (+1), P Hunter Smith (+1), CB Phillip Buchanon (+1), T Trent Williams (even), WR Santana Moss (even), DC Jim Haslet (-1), fan Raven Mack (-1), WR Malcolm Kelly (-1), S Reed Doughty (-2), P Josh Bidwell (-2), head coach Mike Shanahan (-3), OC Kyle Shanahan (-3), CB Carlos Rogers (-4), T Stephon Heyer (-7), DT Albert Haynesworth (-9), QB Donovan McNabb (-10), owner Dan Snyder (-13).