(This is taken from the stupendously tremendous
Armchair Linebacker NFL blog.)
(This is the little old lady Dan Snyder was suing for $72,000.)I take all of this shit seriously - the Redskins fanning, and this dork blogging over my fanning of said team. I am a diehard, with both my opinions for you and my Redskins, who I may joke about going free agent on, but when I die, bury me in my customized #72 CONMACK XXXL jersey that looks like a nightgown that my dear mama boughted me a number of years back, and bury me within 48 hours of death so that I can legally be buried on my own property, down in the field underneath the red maple tree where my goats are all buried as well as my more favorite all-star chickens will be buried as well. Let our bones commingle and be reanimated by a confused mad scientist who creates a rural southern techno-savvy ill-witted rooster goat man that doesn’t cause ill will on the world so much as perform strange linquistically questionable raps during Def Poetry Slams.
But I take notes during the Redskins games, to try and get a good gauge of who I’m gonna respect knuckle and who I’m gonna make little mental window stickers of Calvin peeing on their jersey number of. But I try to wait a couple days, to get the post-game follow-up and Monday media barrage, which is becoming more and more enjoyable with each week of the Redskins descent into franchise chaos. This week was no exception. The Redskins are loaded with internet-savvy fans and sports radio dorks, and Dan Snyder has manipulated this well, owning DC talk radio pretty much, as well as pulling mad strings at the Washington Post to get favorable love, and to see the ground swell of anti-Snyder sentiment start to reveal itself in the past three weeks, even within those Snyder-controlled domains, it is pretty cool. There are those within internet nerd fan worlds calling it “The Revolution,” as if rooting for a stupid football team had anything to do with anything important in an overall sense at all. It’s just some shit we attach ourselves emotionally to far too much. And in that spirit, here is my fan-based meta-scientifical, semi-psychic, over-analysis of the Washington Redskins after five regular season weeks of their very regular year...
2ND DEGREE POSITIVE - CARLOS ROGERS. After the game, in no way, shape or form would Carlos Rogers have achieved any positive commentary from me, as he yet again dropped an easy interception, and continued to prove himself a very adept, middle-of-the-pack #2 corner making shutdown cornerback money, at least at the time his contract was signed. What set him on a high personal pedestal was the post-game fall-out, where Carlos, as everybody on the team was saying it was this or that, Carlos said it was everything, but that everything starts with the owner, so that ultimately it all starts there. To hear a player blame the owner, in a situation where the owner needs blaming, it shows Rogers has far more heart than I ever thought. I’m sure he has been called up to the Office and talked out of what he knows in his heart to be true already by the guy that stamps his signature on the paychecks (because rich dudes like Dan Snyder don’t actually sign things, they have rubber stamps with their signature and use special ink made from the blood of their enemies darkened with crushed elderberry juice). But mad fucking props to Carlos Rogers for saying the obvious, from inside the belly of the beast.
1ST DEGREE POSITIVE - LONDON FLETCHER. #59 is all man, and the one solid dude on this team that even as things fall apart like Chinua Achebe wrote the playbook, London Fletcher holds tough. He’s the best thing that’s happened in free agency under Dan Snyder’s ownership, and I would imagine because of that, he won’t end up here in the end. He’ll probably finish his career field generalisimo-ing the Saints the next two or three years, and winning another ring to join the one already on his very underappreciated NFL resume. Fuck finally making a Pro Bowl, London Fletcher should be in the Hall of Fame.
EVEN - BRIAN ORAKPO. You know, Carlos Rogers’ owner-directed tirade sort of shook up the top half of my list, and honestly, either Brian Orakpo or Andre Carter could’ve gotten props at this spot. Both of them are showing fire in recent weeks, and it’s not just the overinflated value of Albert Haynesworth, because Carter’s getting sacks while Haynesworth is one-kneeing his fat body by the oxygen machine on the sideline normally. But Orakpo shows signs of being the hybrid defensive monster post-draft local newspaper hype suggested he might be. He blows coverages sometimes, and shows signs of being a rookie, but he also blasts past very respectable O-linemen at times and has the potential to crumble QBs into dust.
1ST DEGREE NEGATIVE - FRED DAVIS. So after Chris Samuels was injured out of the game early on this past Sunday, my man Chris Cooley was held up at the line, helping out with blocking schemes. This meant Fred Davis, the guy who overslept the first day of his NFL training camp career last year, finally got a chance to prove his alleged ability, which in preseason, meant good catches followed by reckless runs that resulted in fumbles. Well, that pattern held true, and after some highlight reel helicopter flips from body-on-body violence with the Panthers defense, he coughed the ball up yet again. Go back to sleep Fred.
(Being I’m not gonna talk about him separately, I’d like to address Chris Samuels briefly. His injury has brought to light the fact the dude has been playing the past three years with spinal stenosis, which is why he has Craftmatic beds for a neck brace coming out his jersey, and probably has shaved a good decade or two off his healthy adult life by doing so. What the fuck? I mean, I knew I thought dude looked stupid, like a fetal alcohol syndrome black caveman, but damn man, he really is that stupid. And for what? It’s not like he’s playing for the Steelers or Colts or Giants where his personal sacrifice might result in team glory. He plays, and basically commits suicide, for the fucking Washington Redskins. Dude, don’t kill yourself for Dan Snyder. And my bad for bitching about all your false starts. I’d probably try to get an extra half second jump on the defense too if I were a walking paraplegic.)
2ND DEGREE NEGATIVE - MIKE SELLERS. Our Pro Bowl backfield of Clinton Portis and Mike Sellers were having words last week in the locker room because Portis went to the coaches about how shitty Sellers’ blocking had been this year, and Sellers took it to Portis for snitching on him like that. It was Portis who helped lobby for Mike Sellers to get a new deal this year, to get him paid like no fullback normally gets paid, so I can’t fault Portis for holding Sellers accountable. But what was worse was watching the Fox coverage of the game last week and the commentators going back through bad goal line plays of recent weeks and this week too where Sellers didn’t do shit as a lead blocker coming out the backfield. You’d be like, “Why is Portis running sideways on a run from the 2 yard line when he could get safetied?” like he did against the Panthers, and they’d show the replay and you’d see Mike Sellers, as lead blocker, running sideways AND NOT EVEN TOUCHING PEOPLE FROM THE OTHER TEAM! What the fuck? Mike Sellers has seemed like an upfront, potential professional wrestling type dude who makes for good fan talk, because he’s the kind of guy you want to have on your team. But I guess Dan Snyder’s money softens everybody.
3RD DEGREE NEGATIVE - DEANGELO HALL. Okay, I see the MeAngelo talk now. Sure, DeAngelo gets an interception a game, usually with a strong runback (though he’s taken none “to the house” this year, like he’s been bragging he needs to do, which he does, a couple times a game for this team to score enough to win a game); but he also plays soft man-to-man coverage that gives up a ton of first downs on third downs. But most negatively, at the end of the game, when the Skins needed a stop on third down to get the ball back for a chance to let me down on one last drive, everybody is covered, so Jake Delhomme’s crippled, fumbling, bumbling ass takes off, a good 12 yards from the first down marker. DeAngelo Hall has him in his sights, a good five yards short, and Delhomme drags DeAngelo to the first down marker like he’s Jerome Bettis and not stupid fucking half-retarded Jake Delhomme. DeAngelo Hall could’ve had 9 interceptions in this game, and to end with a piss poor punter-esque tackling display like that, allowing the Panthers to go into kneel-down mode, you’d be on my shit list.
4TH DEGREE NEGATIVE - ALBERT HAYNESWORTH. You know, this guy isn’t that bad in the one out of three plays he actually plays, but he has no fucking fire. Dude meanders on and off the field, lolligags from the locker room, and just generally looks like playing a football game is a giant pain in the ass for him. Now I know dude is going through some court-related bullshit with his soon-to-be ex-wife, but goddamn, he looks lazy as fuck. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lazier pro football player in my life. And I guess the rap was in Tennessee he was lazy as fuck every year except last year, when playing for a new contract. Well, kudos to Dan Snyder for signing this guy to a 19-year contract so that he can lolligag his way to the bank with a wheelbarrow full of leather satchels with dollar signs on the side for the next decade of my life.
5TH DEGREE NEGATIVE - JIM ZORN. I could talk shit about Jason Campbell again, but at this point, complaining about Campbell is like being mad at your girlfriend who doesn’t like to do it doggy style because she was molested by her uncle as a kid and refuses to engage in sex in any way she can’t see your face because it dredges up harsh memories. Campbell is damaged goods. He’s had too many coaches, too many shitty lines in front of him, too much questioning from his bosses, and not even out-in-the-open questioning but secretive media rumors questioning, on some bitch shit. Hopefully for Campbell, he has learned well from Todd Collins, career back-up, and he can salvage another nice decade of career clipboard holding in the NFL, and make a solid mill a year as the type of guy who comes in when the star QB is injured, and doesn’t completely fuck shit up, which is Campbell’s wheelhouse.
But as for Zorny, I feel bad for the guy, getting throwin to the wolves as he was by Snyder and Cerrato, but the fact of the matter is a lot of the Redskins problems are coaching-related, not that he has a whole lot to work with. But too many times during a game, you see Campbell looking to the sideline with his hands out, like “Hurry the fuck up and call a play.” Too many times the Redskins are out of time outs with 9 minutes left in the half. Too many times they run retarded shit like an off tackle run from their own 2 yard line that results in a safety. Zorny is not head coaching material. He is, however, a great guy for press conferences, and it’s too bad those Coors Light commercials are corny and not very creative, because Zorny would make for a great couple of them. That dude is always saying retarded shit or acting bug-eyed and crazy, but real mellow. Ultimately, that’s the problem, his whole “stay medium” attitude. This is a team of soft-ass millionaires with an over-inflated sense of how much better they are than the rest of the NFL. They need somebody to motivate them, fire them up, maybe even beat their ass with a whiffle bat with some thumbtacks reverse duct-taped to it every other Thursday. They don’t need some second-rate pseudo-Phil Jackson football dude.
6TH DEGREE NEGATIVE - VINNY CERRATO. You know, it’s too easy to just put Dan Snyder at the bottom every week, and that leaves GM Vinny Cerrato without getting his proper due as a piece of shit accomplice in running this franchise into shit. I understand that Snyder makes the decisions and Cerrato is a yes man who allows the owner the ability to separate himself from actually getting blamed for shit, but still. Cerrato has done nothing in his time here, nothing. You know, I don’t even want to talk about it. Fuck him and fuck Dan Snyder. Fuck them both. Let them fire Zorny and have their little Potomac River mansion sleepovers with potential coaches and ask him all sorts of stupid questions over hot cocoa all night long, like they fucking even know a fucking thing about anything other than jacking up parking prices. Fuck both of those guys, and until neither of them has their piece of shit goddamned names on any piece of stationary or business card related to the Washington Redskins franchise, I am doomed to be a sad sad fan of a team that will not live up to even the most meager of expectations. It sucks, and the unnecessary Sunday afternoon frustrations shave years off my life. So fuck you Vinny Cerrato and Dan Snyder, you are even ruining the future for my children, because after the last decade, I’m more apt to be a babbling, ulcer-ridden, elderly dependent at the age of 50-something, clogging up my offsprings’ best years with having to take care of my uninsured and dirty ass, and scaring the fuck out of my own grandchildren, who will associate it all with Redskins. Thus, you are losing a future generation of Redskins fans. Hell, the only one of my kids who doesn’t hate the Redskins at this point is the 20-month old who is too young to know the pain your games bring to our household on a weekly basis, and she runs around going “YAY EDSKIN!” every time she sees anything related to football, but trust me, she’s gonna learn fast enough to quit that nonsense.
ACCUMULATED INFLUENCES UPON THIS FRANCHISE 2009, BEST TO WORST (ties broken by my personal opinion): TE Chris Cooley (+7), MLB London Fletcher (+6), DC Greg Blache (+3), SS Chris Horton (+2), SS Reed Doughty (+1), P Hunter Smith (+1), DE/LB Brian Orakpo (even), DE Jeremy Jarmon (even), CB Carlos Rogers (even), WR/PR Antwan Randle El (even), HB Clinton Portis (-1), TE Fred Davis (-1), FS Laron Landry (-2), FB Mike Sellers (-2), DT Albert Haynesworth (-3), LB Robert Henson (-3), WR/PR Santana Moss (-5), CB DeAngelo Hall (-6), GM Vinny Cerrato (-6), WR Devin Thomas (-7), QB Jason Campbell (-8), Coach Jim Zorn (-19), Owner Dan Snyder (-20).
