Week 6 in Review, Plus Week 7 Picks

I didn't watch even remotely enough football on Sunday to do any kind of proper re-cap of the Week 6 games. To be honest, I couldn't even tell you most of the match-ups, let alone what actually took place in the games. There are a few reasons; I didn't do a picks post, so I wasn't as aware of the match-ups as I usually am; the Redskins completely imploded, which took the taste out of my mouth for NFL football pretty much all Sunday; and I was at the Redskins game, celebrating both my wife's birthday and our 5th Anniversary. What a joyous celebration that was; next year, I'll take it a step further and hang myself.

So, instead of doing a full NFL re-cap, I'm just going to ramble and wander a bit on the topic of the Redskins.

Chiefs over Redskins, 14-6
(I did not make any picks in Week 6)
I purchased my tickets on StubHub Friday evening. I had a hunch good seats could be had for this game for relatively cheap, especially at the last minute. See, it had been raining and the weather was absolutely dismal in the last few days of the work-week, so I figured there wouldn't be a whole lot of interest in tickets for an outdoor game. Second of all, it's a non-division game, against a team with very little local following. Third (and I can't stress this enough), Redskins fans are about as disillusioned and disgusted by the current state of their franchise as they've ever been, and in this economy, with these ticket prices, in a stadium that large, well, you do the math.

So we wound up with 50-yard line aisle seats about 24 rows back from the field, about 8 rows in front of the owners box. If the crowd had been a bit smaller, we would have heard Dan Snyder's conversation in the box throughout the game. I paid about $80 a piece for those tickets, which makes them officially not cheap, but compared to their regular prices, that's an unbelievable bargain. I was feeling pretty good about this, especially when the weather report had the rain coming to a stop about 40 minutes before kick-off. Somehow, we'd come away with nearly perfect seats on the home half of the stadium for what should have been a get-healthy win, and the weather was turning our way.

Stupidly, we left for the stadium on time but with only about $8 in singles stuffed into our collective pockets. That's a problem, because parking at FedEx Field is ridiculously expensive, and if you don't already have parking passes, you must have cash to pay for parking within (I shit you not) about 15 miles of the stadium. And we're not talking chump change, here; I wasn't the guy with $8 who needed $15. I was the guy with $8 who needed at least $35, and that was for an off-brand parking lot manned by shady Ethiopians, where I'd have to find a spot on a big, grassy hill ridiculously ill-suited to parking for cars smaller than a Hummer.

Of course, this ain't Disney World, which means the signage and flow of the whole thing is confusing as all hell. You're basically on top of the stadium before you realize you need to quadruple your cash on hand in order to park, by which time it is virtually impossible to get turned around and headed back towards civilization, which is roughly a billion light years away and is similarly inadequately signed. I needed a shady Ethiopian to halt no fewer than four lanes of traffic and put his life in immediate mortal peril so we could access some gravelly off-shoot, which may or may not have led directly to The Blair Witch Project, but had the happy distinction of, at some point, at least leading off of Redskins' property. Sometime later, we happened upon the real world, found a gas station with an ATM, and had the appropriate amount of cash in our pockets to then return to the stadium and enjoy the game. Of course, there's no way back to the stadium from civilization (why should there be?). Did I break about 15 different laws just to get back in the neighborhood of the stadium? You bet.

Once you park, however, it's a quick little walk over to FedEx Field, and FedEx is actually a fairly easy place to navigate, even with construction fences guarding what looked like a modest refurbishment to the exterior. We found our tickets, walked most of the wrong way around the stadium to find our section, then found our seats (or rather, the nearest set of unoccupied seats in the section, which turned out to be significantly better than the ones I'd purchased). All in all, we missed a drive for each team and a Clinton Portis fumble. All was well.

Now, I've known this for a while, from listening to Redskins radio and occasionally reading and frequenting Redskins forums and chats, but experiencing it in person is a bit different; Redskins fans are unanimously furious about the state of their team. And there's something different, too, about experiencing that anger in person, at the stadium, right next to the owner, surrounded by normal (looking) folks in Redskins beanies and scarves, when you've just forked over more than $200 (with tax) for the privilege of watching your home team suck and die; it feels a thousand times more justified when you're there at the source. When I hear it on the radio, I almost always just flip the channel. In general, I have no patience for entitled sports fans and their bitching. On the internet, on television, and on the radio, I have uninterrupted contempt for angry asshole Redskins fans. At the stadium, though, it was a completely different experience. Suddenly, I was connected to the mechanism that ties fans directly to their team, and the connection brought with it a whole new range of feelings about this franchise. When you're there, especially if you're worth a damn, you take ownership over your role in helping the home team. You stand up and scream yourself hoarse on third downs, you wave your arms to the crowd, you applaud the positives, you try to do your best to reign in the clueless fans around you who want to yell and clap when the offense is on the field. You're interacting with the team, with the game, and you've paid handsomely for the right. It's the payment part, obviously, that brings home the connection, though. Sports fans pour untold millions, or even billions, of dollars into their teams. We spend our entire lives caring passionately about them. In many cases, those teams become a strong part of the local culture and a tradition that is carried between generations. Sitting in that stadium on a cold, windy, awful-looking Sunday afternoon, the history and silly-yet-significant tradition of the Washington Redskins and their link to this area were hammering me from all angles.

For the first time in maybe my whole life, I now have a feeling of righteous anger and, yes, entitlement regarding the Washington Redskins. Dammit, Skins fans paid for that stadium. We're paying for the players. We're buying the merchandise. We're pouring our guts out for home dates. We're engendering this passion in the next generation of Redskins fans, ensuring the team remains profitable well off into the future. Ridiculously, we hold ourselves accountable as fans for our level of commitment. I'm sorry, but that buys us something. It does. Owners, players, coaches, PR people . . . they owe us something. We are the lifeblood of their endeavor, and it's our tradition they're using to rake in their fortunes. When every player and coach and owner and executive, everyone associated with this team is long dead and forgotten, there will still be a strong culture and tradition surrounding the Washington football team, just as they'll still be blowing up paper mache sculptures for Las Falles in Valencia 200 years from now. Are there just a few select people who make those sculptures, and fewer still who organize and run the festival? Sure. But the tradition does not belong to them. It belongs less to them than it does to the viewer, because without the viewer . . . well, you get the point.

So I'm sitting there in the stadium, taking it all in, and around me on all sides are incredibly angry people. Many of them are drunk beyond the ability to regulate their behavior, but their anger is real and serious. It's riot anger. And yes, they're angry at Jason Campbell. When he bounces an out-route or checks down on 3rd and long, their anger turns into either sarcasm or rage. They're angry at Jim Zorn, but generally in a less certain, less vocal way. They hate the playcalling, but they know enough to know they can't call an NFL game, so they're a bit more quiet about it. They're angry at DeAngelo Hall for being a lousy cover corner who can't tackle for shit and looks like he's tiptoeing around out there. They're quite angry at Albert Haynesworth. If his hand goes anywhere remotely near his hips at any point during a game, they're all over him like flies on shit. But there's something loving about the anger they direct towards the field, as strange and gay as that sounds. They pick on their players and coaches, but they'll applaud gratefully when and if they produce on the field. Ultimately, rational Redskins fans want their team to do well and win, and they'll cheer just about anybody out there who is honestly working towards those goals.

The anger directed towards the owner's box, however, is a completely different story. I'm not kidding when I report that there were dozens if not hundreds of fans around us, just in the lower bowl, who spent no more than a tenth of their time watching or caring about the game at all, the rest of the time spent shrieking in unrestrained rage at Daniel Snyder and Vinny Cerrato. One guy to our left might have turned away from the owner's box for 30 seconds in the entire game. Redskins fans have long passed the point of distrusting the owner, passed the point of no longer affording him the benefit of the doubt, long passed the point of giving him points for wanting to win and being willing to spend a lot of money to win. Redskins fans have rounded the bend on being willing to forgive Snyder for all the disorganization and stupidity and failure that has defined his ownership of the Redskins, and are quickly closing in on the point where some one or some group actually attempts an assassination. I wish I were kidding. If a full-blown riot had broken out inside FedEx field, complete with people hurling burning debris into the owners box and literally attempting to kill Snyder, I would not have been surprised at all. Horrified, but not surprised.

There is nothing justifiable or defensible about homicidal rage, but tradition is tradition, and the same passion that makes the Redskins such an incredibly profitable franchise also makes their fans deranged, volatile lunatics. Up to the point where Dan Snyder's personal safety is at risk, I can defend this; who the hell is this guy to fuck around and experiment with our proud tradition? We were here before him, and we'll be here after him, and all he's doing is molesting a proud piece of our local culture, poisoning and fracturing and maiming it and making it something to be ashamed of. What else is there? Right or wrong, for better or worse, this team is a part of our culture, and this guy is making it an embarrassment.

The first quarter progressed pretty much the way the last few have for the Redskins; they barely held onto the ball at all, the defense generated a promising pass-rush but was inevitably let down over and over again by the secondary, and though neither team scored, the Redskins spent the whole time backed up on the losing end of the battle for field position. Nobody was encouraged at all.

The second quarter was even worse. The offense was completely out of synch. The Redskins have absolutely nothing working on offense. Every passing play is a disaster. The offensive line is about as effective at slowing the rush as an inch and a half of cool water, Clinton Portis can't make anybody miss and has no explosion whatsoever. Washington's receivers have the worst body language I've ever seen on a football field. They run up to their break, then they sag and just sort of loaf around; they're not expecting the ball and they know they aren't open. Jason Campbell looks totally rattled in the pocket, and his mechanics are getting worse every Sunday. On the opposite side of the ball, Washington's defense in the second quarter started to sag a bit, and the Chiefs found themselves repeatedly in scoring position or starting drives near midfield and only turning the ball over when wide-open receivers dropped well-thrown balls. I think everyone in the stadium knew where this one was headed by the time Jim Zorn threw away three timeouts in 15 yards and blew any chance the Redskins had of scoring before halftime.

When Campbell's desperation heave was intercepted at the one to end the half, the boo-birds came out in full force. In a matter of seconds, however, they were turned away from the field and up towards the owner's box. Seconds later, boos turned into a chant of "Sell the team", which lasted a good 5 minutes and brought nervous smiles to the faces of the local broadcast team, uncomfortably seated a mere 10 feet over from the owner himself.

I have a rule about not booing the home team. I will not boo the players on the field, not as long as they're wearing my team's uniform. I will sometimes boo a coach, but only for a bad decision. For instance, I'll give a little grief for punting on 4th and 1 from inside your opponent's territory, but it's not "I hate you, coach, go to hell!" It's about expressing my light-hearted disapproval of the decision. On the other hand, I have no qualms whatsoever about booing Daniel Snyder and Vinny Cerrato, so I was in there leading the section. I can really project when I want to, and I was seated close enough to the box and high enough up that, when I waved my arms for more noise, I got more noise, and there's no way Snyder didn't hear my voice ringing above the chorus. I like to think about that, about speaking directly to this guy in a loud, angry voice. I did it, even if he was cowering in the back of his box, where we could only see the top of his head. Despite the awfulness of the first half, we fans were in pretty high spirits headed into the second half. We'd had a talk with the owner, expressed our feelings for him as directly as possible, experienced a moment of solidarity.

Then, Todd Collins came out with Washington's offense, and I stopped enjoying the game at all.

You saw the rest. The exhausted fans left in the stadium cheered sarcastically at the sight of him, but expressed to each other their pity of Campbell for ultimately bearing the worst part of the responsibility for the team's awfulness. Few if any in that stadium thought Collins gave the Redskins a better chance at a victory, but were energized by the sight of something different out there. I was not among them in that regard. I was horribly depressed, to the point of not really even being able to speak about it. Collins played terribly, Washington continued to suck, and eventually the better team won.

In the days since that game, Zorn has had play-calling duties taken from him by his utterly clueless bosses. Jason Campbell has been reinserted as the starting quarterback. A new left tackle has been signed from the scrap heap. Vinny Cerrato finally publicly asserted Zorn's job security through the rest of the season, but somehow managed to emasculate him further and embarrass the team further in the process. There's also talk of prying Joe Gibbs out of retirement for a Bill Parcell's-like management role with the franchise.

Here's where I stand with these Washington Redskins; the entire team needs to be torn down, sold off for parts, and rebuilt. There might be 5 guys on the whole team worth keeping through that rebuilding; Brian Orakpo, Jeremy Jarmon, Chris Cooley, Chris Horton, and one or two of the sophomore receiving options. Everybody else either must go, will go, or should go. Jason Campbell deserves better than this, so he's gone. Nobody on the offensive line is worth paying a veteran's salary. The veteran receivers offer no value to this team. Portis is completely washed up, and he doesn't have a valuable replacement anywhere on this roster. Every member of the defensive line not named Orakpo or Jarmon should go. London Fletcher deserves better, he should go, and there are no other linebackers worth holding onto, but I'd take a flyer on keeping Chris Wilson. Laron Landry is a bust. The corners are awful, but I'd see about keeping Justin Tryon and Kevin Barnes, because they're young, fast, and cheap. The entire rest of the organization should be blown all the way up and rebuilt from the bottom, complete with 3-4 years of bad, losing football and lots of draft picks.

In the meantime, I cannot root for this team. I can't. If Jason Campbell is in the game, I'll root for their passing game. I'll root for their young players and good guys the same way I do with any other NFL team. I can no longer support this franchise in its current state. To support them is to indirectly support their abysmal leadership structure and systemic dysfunction, and I can't do that. It puts me in a bad mood and keeps me there, and nobody needs that. I feel sad about detaching myself from this part of Washington's local culture. Once upon a time, I watched Redskins football with my mom and dad on Sundays, with uncles and stepdads and grandparents and friends and siblings. I shook the hands of Redskins in parking lots and grocery stores and Blockbusters, imagined I could combine the unique talents of Art Monk and Gary Clark and become another member of the Posse. It's always silly, it has never been anything but silly, but it used to feel good. Why would anybody keep something silly like this in their lives if it just makes them feel rotten and angry for half the year?

So there it is. I'm still a football fan. I just no longer count myself among the Redskins' passionate fan-base. I don't care enough to be as angry as I was on Sunday, and I'm not stupid enough to ignore the shameful, disgraceful dysfunction of this franchise.

I'll put up some picks for Week 7 later on today. I'm still interested in the 2009 season, but I'm much, much more interested in the off-season, the draft, and the faint hope that some sort of light will emerge at the end of the tunnel for this wayward, disaster of a team.

Peace!