D-Day in DC

Dallas Week is dead, but the game itself will be as charged as it always is. "Honk if you hate Dallas" is not something Skins fans do because ownership thinks it would be a fun way to sell more t-shirts that say "Beat Dallas" for $30. (Especially when ownership is doing pizza ads with that Grateful Dead album cover prop Jerry Jones the same week.) Skins fans honk their horn and give the finger to the guy with a Cowboys bumpersticker on his car in March without prompting. The game itself is for the fans, and it should be a good one Sunday.

It will be close, but they always are. Even with Zorn, the offensive genius who blew Snyder away in the interview process, the Cowboys were losing to the Redskins until the last few minutes in Dallas last year. Zorn's highest winning percentage against any team he had time to coach against at least twice before he was fired was against the Cowboys. I don't think they have improved too much in the past year. Dez Bryant is another headcase who doesn't do enough blow to be as effective as Michael Irvin was. With all the talk of the Redskins age, the media is too busy fawning over Romo beating the Eagles in the playoffs to notice the Cowboys have the oldest O-line in the league. And they are already falling apart at a rate faster than the Skins line was last year.


McNabb is obviously a great pickup, but Shanahan is the biggest. A healthy McNabb should give us two more wins than last year; Shanahan alone should account for three. He is one of three coaches to ever win two Super Bowls in his first four years. Only Shula and Bellichick have done so as well. He only needs to win one in his first four years here to solidify his bust in Canton, and make him a legend in DC. Time will tell, but the Skins are closer now than they ever have been since Snyder took over. But being in the company of Bellichick (who cheated) and Shula is not his biggest accomplishment. His biggest accomplishment is that in over 15 years of being a head coach, he has only finished in last place in his division once. Once.

Give or take a two game swing based on intangibles, the Skins go 9-7 this year. Given the difficulty of the schedule they could lose two more than they should. Or they could get hot, believe in themselves, and win two more than they should. But they won't finish last. The team that will finish last in the NFC East will be similar to the team that finished last in the NFC East last year. They will have a good defense, with a decrepit offensive line, underachieving WRs, a QB that is only as good as the team in front of him, and an overrated backfield. Only this year the Cowboys will be the cellar dwellers. And that makes this a must-win for the Skins. A close game that would have gone the other way last year, but with a competent winning coach, should start the Skins on their way to a decent season.