Wizards 2008-2009 Roster

So after 1 pre-season game down, $161 million worth of our roster is injured. There's no way we'll be able to hang with the Cavaliers this year, but I think we could give this Cavs team (pic above) a run for their money. Now, I know I said the Skins had ZERO chance of doing anything good this year, but I think the Wiz are different. The Skins at least had a healthy set of veterans and stars. The Wiz have nothing but optimistic potential. Blatche seems to be stepping up, but I still don't see any threats on our team but Caron. Time will tell. Ahern prediction for Wiz are 35-47 (and I'm being nice here).

Fire up the Bandwagon!

So another huge win on the road. Almost everyone on the team (Reed Doughty excluded) contributed to yesterday's win. Suisham (aka Shizaam) was spot-on, the solid D, and no turnovers on offense. It's getting to the point where we're getting really nitpicky to find things that went wrong. Certainly Randle El's 3 dropped passes and Devin Thomas' continual bad penalties standout...but even still those aren't much. The way the coaches make adjustments and how the players respond is what really is great to see. On that gutsy 4th and 1 call with 2 minutes left, Portis went up to Zorn and said "Give me the ball". Talk about great players. And here's your Dan Snyder victory moment from yesteday:

YEAH! Four and one!! In Philly!! In Dallas!! YEAH! YEAH Redskins!

Just Stay Medium Baby!

Kind of a weird week. You look at all the major sports sites, and you see that pretty much everyone has the Skins in the top 5 of their respective Power Rankings. The Eagles are ranked lower in all of them as well. Yet I have not heard any of the talking heads give us a chance in this game. NFL Network, ESPN, even our own Steve Czaban have all declared the Eagles the team that will win this week.
And that is awesome. I was really worried all the hype would come falling down on us all at once, all in one week, all before one game. Sure, people have to give us our due because we beat Dallas, have rallied from a woeful performance in week 1, and seem to really be showing signs of life after years of no pulse at all. (OK, having Gibbs back and making the playoffs 2 of the last 3 years was fun. It was even a pleasant departure from where we were prior to his return, but this feels a lot different right?)
The best we could have hoped for 2 weeks ago was a split on this 2 week road trip. We have locked that in. Now we are looking for some gravy. And all the pressure seems to be falling squarely on the Eagles. Last I checked, we were 5-6 point underdogs. The money has yet to hold any respect for the Redskins. For one more week, that is the most we could hope for.
Regardless of what happens this week, when the Rams come to town in 2 weeks, all the pressure will be on the Skins. Rams, Browns, Lions in a 3 week span should give our record a nice little kick. In fact, if we are worse than 2-1 in that span, we most likely will be back to the bottom of the middle of the pack again. Even 2-1 will be disappointing.
But back to this week:

*Once again, 1st downs are the key to this game. Keep McNabb off the field. He has made a career of making us look like retards on defense.

*Tight End screens...Cooley, Yoder and Davis all need to run this play well, especially between the 40's where the battle of field position will be decided.

*Contain...I would love to say "Bring Donovan down", but we have never shown a propensity to get that done. How about not letting him drop 100 yds rushing on us?

*Punch DeSean Jackson in the Face. Does anyone remember when Sean Taylor punched T.O. in the face during a game I believe during his rookie year? It was amazing. It cost us 15 yards, and it was deemed a stupid play, but after that, T.O. NEVER had a good day against us as an Eagle again (coincidentally, as a Cowboy, his highlight reel game last season came while Sean was injured, prior to his untimely death). If anyone deserves a punch in the jaw, helmet or not, it is DeSean Jackson. Listen, 15 yards is a lot to give a team like the Eagles, but this is something I believe in. I nominate Reed Doughty to be the puncher. It would be the best play he has made all season. And it would be the best hit he put on someone all season.

*Goes without saying....stay on the right side of the turnover margin. Protect the ball on offense, take advantage of your opportunities on defense.



Final Score: Redskins 34, Eagles 26


That's right, take the Skins and the over.

Big Win for Galludet

It is no big secret that I am not a fan of Dan Snyder. I buy all my Skins gear on Ebay and for the most part try to bring airplane bottles into the game as to give him as little of my $$ as possible. So when something comes up in the news regarding his money-sucking ways, I am quick to pounce. However, in this latest lawsuit against Snyder and the Skins, I am taking his side.

In short, three longtime Washington Redskins deaf fans filed a suit against WFI Inc. and Pro Football Inc., (the stadium’s owner and operators) that the facility is not "equally" built to cater for the deaf as it is for the rest of us. "Among other things, the plaintiffs want all announcements, advertising, song lyrics and video replays captioned within sight of the JumboTron displays at either end of FedEx Field."

This to me is a bit ridiculous. Why would you want to see more advertising than is already there? As I said to my friend, "Fedex is a vomitorium of advertisements." The former Jack Kent Cooke Stadium also has one of the worst and smallest scoreboards in the league. Having to add closed captioning for every thing is absurd.

I think the key thing to keep in mind is that this stadium was built before everyone was mindful about those with disabilities. It is definitely not too much to ask to add captioning on the banner screens for first downs and all stadium announcements, but advertisements and song lyrics?!? Are you kidding me? What? Are you going to sing along?! How about we get mimes on the field to act out the song too.

The plaintiff first brought this up in 2003, so the stadium has been pretty much ignoring their requests….sounds about right. In related news, parking will be increased $10 per game next year to pay for the lyrics of "Who let the dogs out" to be captioned on the scoreboard.

Full article is here: http://www.mddailyrecord.com/article.cfm?id=8720&type=UTTM

Get to know your neighbor...

The Minnesota newspaper posted a fantastically awful article this morning regarding Smoot and his living conditions during his 2-year stay in one of Minnesota's wealthiest (aka 'whitest') neighborhoods. The quick synopsis is play with neighborhood kids: NEVER...party with naked women: ALWAYS.

Former Viking Fred Smoot continues to terrorize neighborhood: The skipper of the Love Boat isn't keeping up his Eden Prairie home
http://www.citypages.com/2008-10-01/news/former-viking-fred-smoot-continues-to-terrorize-neighborhood/

38:09

How do you keep an opponent's prolific offense from scoring on you all day long? Keep them off the field. At just about a two-to-one advantage over the Cowgirls, the Redskins' time of possession was truly the decisive stat of the game. The first down stats are misleading. In the 2 end of half drives, Dallas got almost half of their 21 first downs. Washington spread their 22 first downs a bit more expeditiously. Despite being outscored in the second half 14-9, the Redskins rode Clinton Portis to some huge first downs that kept the clock ticking in their favor and kept the Cowgirls' offense on the sidelines.
It was a win to feel good about for all the reasons you would expect to feel good after beating the Cowboys:
-in their house
-they were undefeated
-they thought they were unbeatable
-Jerry Jones was on the sidelines EARLY (and got a firsthand account of that ass-whooping)
-all those egos, all those personalities, all those prima donnas....SUCK IT!

But this win was missing something many recent wins in recent years have had...that sick feeling in your stomach after the last whistle blew. You know the feeling--an opponent's kicker misses a game-tying or even game-winning field goal; a penalty adds time onto the end of the game and we kick a game-winning field goal; an overtime win against a team that would go on to win ONE game all season over the Ravens, etc. etc. The last few seasons have given us some great wins, but Joe Gibbs liked to play them close. It allowed for a lot of things to happen in the last 30 seconds of any given game, and it allowed for it to go either way. I have walked out of FedEx so many times over the last few years with that feeling that I just got away with something...like when the Wizards traded Kwame Brown to the Lakers for Caron Butler. Or when Adam Duritz got both Courtney Cox AND Jennifer Aniston.

This win had none of that. From the outset, it was clear the Redskins belonged in that game (a fact disputed by gamblers the world over, as evidenced by the ridiculous line), and it was clear the Redskins beat their opponent. It got tight at the end, which is merely proof that we weren't playing a bunch of pushovers, but the score was not indicative of what occurred from beginning to end. If you didn't watch the whole game, you wouldn't know that, so don't say it could have gone either way because you watched a few plays or you saw the Cowgirls' first drive of the second half.

It was all the things we did right that kept the Cowgirls' offense grounded. And it was because of our success at grounding their offense, that they abandoned the ground game. And that will set us up nicely for this week in Philly. We know they like to throw the ball, and Brian Westbrook is still banged up (unfortunately for us, McNabb has made a career of dropping 75, 85, 100 yds rushing on us himself).

Until next Sunday, Redskins fans deserve to think their team is pretty damn good. Three straight wins, three straight weeks of improvement, three straight weeks of solid coaching and solid quarterbacking.

It is amazing what can happen in thirty-eight minutes.

Hail to the Redskins!

What a win! I went into this weekend thinking if we lose these two weeks to Dallas and Philly, we still have a good chance of making a wild card run. Throw that out the window. Browsing the Dallas News headlines, Jason Garrett is getting absolutely blasted by the Dallas writers, mostly about abandoning the run, a very fair criticism. Garrett claims because Dallas was trailing and the Skins stacked the box, it made them change their plan to throw:

- "There's no excuse for Barber carrying the ball three times in the second half of a close game."

- "After T.O.'s early second-half touchdown, the Cowboys didn't trail by more than six points until the final few minutes of the game. If that constitutes being too far behind to use Jones, then why even have the first-round pick on the roster?"

And here's what happened with Dallas' 12 men on the field penalty:

"I can't understand how two players playing the same position could be standing out there," Wade Phillips said, clearly flustered. "I can't fathom that. They were standing right next to each other."

Hey, Patrick Watkins: Did it seem odd to you?

"I was talking with one of my teammates, and I thought the play was set, but apparently it was changed," he gamely confessed. "It was on me."

HAHA....suckers. We all know Dallas's D was suspect, well, it's out now and Dallas reporters are firing away:

"A great defense doesn't let Clinton Portis run through it for 121 yards on 5.8 yards per carry. A great defense doesn't let Santana Moss catch eight passes for 145 yards, an 18.1-yard average."

"A great defense doesn't let Moss get behind it when it's in a three-deep zone."

"A great defense isn't tied with the likes of Detroit for last place in interceptions."

"A great defense forces more than two turnovers in four games."

"Never mind that one of the NFL's most celebrated secondaries has gone four games without an interception, and for once we can't even blame it on Roy Williams. "

The only negative thing Ahern can say about yesterday is Reed Doughtry needs to be outed. He personally screwed up that one passing touchdown running in late to cover the WR, and well, this pic says it all about his tackling abilities.