13

That may have been the worst day of Thanksgiving football ever. Thank God you aren’t a Lions fan and if you are God bless you, the Cards couldn’t show up for Skins fans and the Dallas game was a joke. That is the point; why wasn’t our Seattle game a stomping as well? The lines are the whole thing. The absolutely essential part of any football team, especially approaching December and hopefully January into February, are the O and D lines. Ours are atrocious. The O-line is older than Moses and Carter and J. Taylor are skilled pass rushers but can’t stop the run. We have a ton of talent elsewhere, but we haven’t put the biggest pieces in place (no pun intended) and it looks like it is going to come back and bite us in the butt.

Same goes for the Caps. We are atrocious for a few years and manage to pick up Semin, OV, Green and the rest of the cast. Unfortunately we have no goaltending. Johnson is fair but won’t win it down the stretch. Theodore is worse and lets not even talk about him. The Caps and the Skins are teams that assembled a lot of talent but somehow forgot about the most important parts.

As a side note, a year and a day after Sean Taylor’s passing let’s remember him again. Joking about this guy’s death is off limits. He was a guy who had turned his life around from the “U” lifestyle and was taking care of his daughter and the girl he wanted to marry. Joking about his passing to a Skins fan is akin to saying something about a guy’s mother. His passing gives Skins fan one thing. Everyone with a home field has 12 guys. We will always have 13. Can’t wait to see Taylor on the wall of fame at Fedex and hopefully we can win it for him against the Giants.

There may be a few MVPs in town

The first of whom may be Alexander the Great the Second. Semin is having a great start to the season with Ovie taking a secondary role and setting the guy up. The most important thing is the team, which just took first place from Carolina last night, but Semin also took the lead in scoring from Malkin last night and now leads 27-24. However, all five goals came from the under 24 stars Semin, the Great 8 and Backstrom on the ice. That is encouraging news for Caps fans. If they can keep that triumvate together for a while we might be able to hang a bunch of banners up in the phonebooth.

If the NHL was smart, which they clearly are not, they would have the Caps and the Pens playing as often as possible. Ovie and Princess Crosby are the obvious draws, but having other stars on the same teams is great for these franchises. Malkin, as contrasted with Crosby, is actually a real and respectable hockey player. To have two guys who play wingmen to the guys that are "the future of the NHL" racing for the points lead is great. The best PR stunt the NHL has is their outdoor games. The NHL has the 'Hawks and the Wings playing the outdoor game this year on New Year's Day, but honestly, who cares about those teams? The Wings might be the best team in the league but no one cares until the playoffs. Why wouldn't you have two outdoor games between the Pens and the Caps and do a home and home outdoor fiesta? You could hold it at Heinz Field and RFK, watch the Princess cower in fear when Ovie wants to fight him again, and see the top two scorers in the league. The biggest thing is getting to the playoffs and basically starting a whole new season. Beating Carolina twice in six days is huge, even if it is only November. While Theodore shutout the Canes' 13 shots after Johnson went down, I stick with Johnson if he is healthy until he proves he is not worthy of being the starter. Once again it is only November but it is an encouraging November.

The other DC MVP favorite is Portis. The favorite for the league is Kurt Warner, who while deserving, should be second to Kerry Collins and Eli Manning, both of whom have their teams in the driver's seats. But Portis, if he plays, will go over 1,000 yards for the season against Dallas Sunday night. He is having a great year with a team that wasn't expected to do much and has been carrying the Skins on his shoulders, so he is just as MVP-worthy as Warner, Collins, and Manning (Jr.). However, the biggest banged-up guy to worry about this Dallas week is Moss. He is a Cowboy killer. They should have cast him in Tombstone as Wyatt Earp instead of Kurt Russell. He beats them deep every time, shows up TO every time, and has silenced the Norv Turner curse where we lose to Dallas almost every time. Portis is the offensive MVP (I still think if Rogers can rebound from the Pitt game he is the team MVP) but Moss always seems to be the soul of the team when Dallas comes to town. (By the way, the whole reason the Skins used to wear white at home was to make Dallas mad. If our boys do that burgundy on burgundy crap again I am going to be distraught; they look like dirty women's feminine care products, excuse my french. Go back to the white jerseys and burgundy pants at home.)

So on to the Nattos potential league MVP. Ok there is none. I like the trade sending Bonaficio to Florida for Olsen and Willingham. Bowden initially touted Bonaficio as the "second baseman of the future," but Anderson Hernandez hitting .333 in the bigs in '08 looks like a decent replacement for a club that just doesn't look that decent. Olsen is the big pickup. He is the big lefty we were looking for, and at 24 he should be coming into his prime and be around for a while. Willingham is the power hitter we need for the middle of the lineup, most likely will play first base, and raises questions about the futures of Young and Johnson. This is a good trade, considering we got Bonaficio for Rauch, but there is more to do. The Nats still have to sign a big name guy to get people to the park. Prospects are great but they often don't pan out. Look at Josh Smoker who after pitching a 5.48 ERA in Class A Hagerstown just underwent shoulder surgery. These guys may pan out, but there is no guarantee. Get some guys that can keep us from being the worst team in the league again, or keep us around .500, or I don't know, maybe even challenge for a pennant.

As a last thought can we finally be DC sports fans and not even have the O's come into the dialogue? Baltimore copied the Nattos and changed up their uniforms the other day. They put Baltimore back across their jerseys and complimented it with a Maryland flag patch. Its a Baltimore team, not a DC team. I don't care if you grew up an O's fan, if you scream O during the NATIONAL anthem I am still going to want to punch you directly in the face. It is time for the Lerners to buy back the TV rights from that bastard Angelos who stole the rights before the Lerners even owned the team. The last time the O's had Baltimore plastered across their jerseys was 1971, the year the Senators left DC. They changed it to Oriole's in a stupid ploy to gain fans in DC after we had an owner up and leave us much like the Colts did to Baltimore. There is a team in DC now, no one cares about the O's give them up. If you are a DC sports fan, and more specifically a DC baseball fan, there is only one team and they are the Nattos. Even if there is no MVP in sight.

Snyder and Cerrato: At it again

Seriously these guys are like Crockett and Tubbs, except when Crockett and Tubbs were done blowing things up, they had caught the bad guys. Snyder and Cerrato just get bad guys. Everyone was scratching their heads as to why Snyder wasn't burning up the free agent market this year. The answer is that he was apparently waiting for the regular season, where he could make the splashy Taylor signing (good, despite the injuries) and DeAngelo Hall (just plain bad.) Losing before a bye week is the worst, because everyone is miserable for two whole weeks. I still have visions of Santonio Holmes streaking past Carlos Rogers, but Rogers is still having a pro bowl year despite that play and an overall bad game. Bringing a cancer into the locker room of a 6-3 team that is second in the toughest division in the league to the defending world champions isn't the greatest move. Why would you risk jeopardizing a team that has shown more promise than almost all of the Snyder-era teams?

Hall isn't even that good. He has been thrown to 66 times, and QBs have completed 40 of them for over 500 yards. The guy is only 24 and has already been dumped twice. Not by teams like the Giants and Steelers, but such franchises as the pre-Matt Ryan Falcons and the Raiders. When Al Davis would rather eat $8 million dollars than have you poisoning his 2-6 team in the league's worst division thus far, there may be a problem. When the Falcons still retain the rights to Michael Vick, but think you are a cancer, there might be a problem. Maybe the guy hung out with Michael's little brother Marcus Vick down in Blacksburg a little too long and picked up some bad habits.

Let me take you back to December 16th, 2006. There was an incedent where the ever-classy TO, Hall's friend, spit in Hall's face and never got flagged. TO then went to out-muscle the undersized Hall in the endzone before just straight burning him for his second touchdown in the first half. At time Romo was essentially in his rookie year and TO's head coach hated him. What could happen now? To add insult to injury, to make room for Hall, Cerrato released Leigh Torrence. This guy was no Deion, but he was a promising young player that we got for nothing and was improving. When is Snyder going to at least consider the philosophy that has made teams like Philly and Pitt perrenial contenders where you find these little known guys and use them as much as possible for as little as possible before they get the huge contracts? I would be willing to bet Torrence ends up with New York or Philly and it comes back to burn us this year.

Torrence was a Gibb's guy. He was community-oriented, and made such an impression on his teammates one of them cried upon hearing of his release. Instead, Cerrato kept his guy, one of the ten he drafted and kept on the roster, Tyron, who has done nothing. He could have put the nearly invisible Malcom Kelly on IR, but once again, it is his guy and he wants to prove something. I have said that all along Zorny has been winning with Gibbs' team, which is fine. Snyder and Cerrato seem hell-bent on ruining yet another good thing.

There are a few advantages to getting Hall. We paid almost nothing and lost no draft picks for once. Even if he doesn't learn the defense right away, maybe he can take the punt returning job from the anemic Randle El who has done nothing at that position this year. It is essentially a contract year for Hall, so hopefully he works hard to get some money. And finally, with Springs coming back against Dallas from his calf injury, maybe we can put him at safety with Rogers, Smoot and Hall as corners in the nickle package that the Skins seem to employ more than any other team in the league. But even with these positives, you can't shake the feeling that every time Snyder and Cerrato take one step forward, the entire Redskins organization takes two steps back.

Uppercut from the Steelers, left-cross from Snyder

The Skins got smacked around for the entirety of the game Monday night. It looked like an NFC East game from the days of Parcells, Gibbs, Buddy, and Landry except the Steelers looked like they were Super Bowl bound. It was one of the few games you see when you knock out the opposing team's QB and it actually hurts you. There is something about the local players who come back to play against their city's team that never works out well for the Skins; Leftwich on Monday, Westbrook once a year. The Skins were lucky there weren't two starting QBs knocked out, because Campbell not only got sacked seven times, he got sacked hard. Campbell said after the game that he thought the Steelers were a little rough, but that is how the game is supposed to be played, I don't think they did anything dirty. Portis is a little guy, and I was suprised to not see more of Alexander pounding it in there with his big frame and rested body. The defense looked good until they clearly gave up, but the special teams is still bad, and the offense got hit so hard they looked baffled the entire second half.

I understand that the Skins are beat up and had played more games than any other team before a bye week if you include the preseason. That isn't really a plausible exscuse; how many starters did you see playing in the Hall of Fame game, or playing much at all in any preseason game for that matter? Its November, everyone hurts. So far this season has been a pleasant suprise, and at 6-3, you can be realistic about trying to contend, (once again I said CONTEND) as in try, for a Super Bowl run. Say we actually do it, with the Giants likely to the win the East. Thats three playoff games as a wildcard team after playing our final seven games, while inheriting the compounded injuries from the first half of the season. I don't expect the team to be feeling much better then. Being beat up is not a valid excuse for getting beat up more in a football game. Getting beat up is a part of football, it happens to everyone.

What is an excuse for the Redskins is that their owner is a stupid idiot. Two out of four home games the headsets have malfunctioned. For a guy that is supposed to be as detail-oriented as Snyder, you think would think he could send in a tech before the game to make sure that kind of thing didn't happen. The fact that the other team has to turn off their headsets when the Skins' malfunctions means nothing. If Campbell has to take a timeout because he doesn't know what the play is, that timeout is gone, with or without headsets. This happened on Monday night. If Rodgers hadn't gotten burned, and the punt block unit punt blocked, it could have been a close game where we needed timeouts. Furthermore, the coaches could not communicate between each other. For a coach that designates responsibilities to his assistants as much as Zorn does, (as he should) it might be nice to talk to his assistants. Those headsets may have come in handy.

Granted, the coaches could have ran all over the sideline trying to find each other to talk things over instead of using the headsets, but it is kind of hard to hear each other when there are 20,000 Steelers fans screaming behind you. Next time the Steelers come to town can we at least hand out some burgandy towels so it looks like burgandy and gold waving through the stands, not just gold. Maybe Skins fans could save some face on national TV. Wait no, I forgot that Snyder is not just an imbecile, he is a greedy imbecile and that will never happen. Pack in 90,000 plus seats, including the nightmare seats, obstructed view, and seats so high the players look like ants and no wonder a fan base like the Steeler's can make a home game like a neutral site. This game might as well have been played in London, only Snyder wouldn't make as much money.

Some people are blaming Redskins fans for being to fickle, I blame Snyder. Why would they come? Hours upon hours of traffic both ways, paying for the parking passes on top of the tickets, paying for the five dollar hot dogs, and dealing with the worst stadium staff in the city, if not the nation. Smoot opined that the reason for so many Steeler fans was the economy, but the steel mills are still empty in Pitt while the recession-proof government is still up and running. Perhaps it is the drunks who roam around the stadium, knocking over women and cursing at children. And that is just on Sunday, the night games are worse. I literally had to step over a puddle of blood to get out of the stadium. Maybe it is time to slow down the flow of alchohol. Except you can buy Buds in bulk for fifty cents a piece while selling them for $8. More gas money for Danny's private jet.

Having to use a silent snap count in your own stadium is ridiculous, and was a reason we lost that game. The only defense of Snyder is that he really cares about the Redskins. I am of the opinion he cares a little bit more about his wallet. There are 3,000 seats left on Stubhub for the Dallas game. Do you think you might see some blue in the crowd two Sundays from now?