A guy, Detroit fan, on a football discussion board mentioned that the Lions Postgame show opened with the Hallelujah Chorus. That's awesome. Congratulations to the Lions fans, their players & coaches, and the organization. I'm very happy to see them get off that streak. I personally am impressed with the Lions coaching staff and their new GM. I think that team is on the road toward becoming good, and in a year or so we won't see any shame in a team losing to them.
But for that elusive 1st victory: what could make it more perfect?
To have it come against the Redskins!
But if Zorn lost this game, Greg Blache lost this game, too. His full-of-holes defense was scored upon on inexplicably long drives... Vinny Cerrato also lost this game. His second-year, second-round receiving draftees – Malcolm Kelly, Devin Thomas and Fred Thomas – caught one measly pass each in a game in which the Redskins sorely needed to go to someone else other than Moss seemingly every pass play, after his offensive line looked more in need of help than another running back activated this past week.Longtime Post columnist Tom Boswell had a piece titled "Focus Vanished Long Ago". He writes:
Most of all, Zorn's players lost this game
This was not the culmination of any short-term trend or mistakes in strategy. This loss was years in the making.Well put.
...
Will the Redskins adopt [the right attitude, in response to the loss]? To do so, they may have to fight through an incredible amount of self-delusion about the talent level on their team. This week, Clinton Portis said he thought the Redskins had the most talent in the NFL. Comments like that have been common in the Redskins' locker room for the past 10 years – regardless of all available evidence. Not only is the view tolerated at Redskins Park, it is encouraged and marketed. Where does this fallacy arise? In the owner's suite, where the price of players is equated with their performance? They refuse to define themselves by the final scoreboard but, instead, cling to their own private view of themselves and their far higher value – sometimes based on their performances in other years or even on other teams.
After a wonderful 10-catch, 178-yard game, wide receiver Santana Moss fell into the deepest and worst snare – and one that constantly catches the Redskins. Moss said many reasonable things after this defeat. But he also said the magic words that always make my skin crawl in a locker room. "We are the better team," he said.
Anyone who has ever seen "The Hustler," perhaps the best of all sports movies, remembers Paul Newman's character saying to Minnesota Fats, "Even if you beat me, I'm still the best." George C. Scott's character says to Fats: "Stay with this kid. He's a loser."
...they will never be elite winners, especially in a team sport, until they defeat the idea that their potential, their fame or their wealth matters at all. Only their performance – which is kept on the scoreboard for a reason – counts. That's why teams beat individuals.
Even Redskins.com itself hammers the team. Larry Weisman has a piece called "Break Down in Motor City" which begins:
No brains, no heart, no courage. The game tape to be reviewed on Monday comes straight from The Wizard of Oz.Heh.
Personally I don't really mind when a player says that the guys in his locker room have the most talent of any team in the NFL. That's nice: it's how a player should think of his team. "Benign brainwashing", is how Boswell once described a similar manifestation.
But Boz is right to draw attention to the "we're the better team" nonsense. The self-deception of this organization doesn't stop at the locker room. It goes all the way up to that clown Vinny Cerrato, and the Little Napoleon himself, Danny Snyder. It gives me an evil joy to see them get what they have earned. Not, "what they deserve" in the sense of bad people getting what's coming to them; I mean, get precisely what their efforts and decisions have merited: a flawed brittle unmotivated squad that has enough flashy talent to win a few games and get up near playoff contention, fooling you, before falling short as their multiple overwhelming weaknesses are revealed.
Snyder bought this team in May 1999, and we've seen 10 full seasons of his stewardship. Over those 10 seasons the Redskins record is 76-84 (.475) in the regular season. That is just about exactly what I'd expect of them.
(Their record is better in lawsuits against their own fans.) Read more...
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