Bright Side

At least you guys held Matt Schaub to under 500 yards passing.

Let me be the first to finally say

Secondary you're the best!

You heard it here…

from somewhere else.

McNabb's 239 pass yrds in 1st half = 2nd most in Redskins history for a 1st half (Rypien vs Falcons in '91, 259yrds) | source: stats pass

20 pts is the most the Redskins have scored in the first half since Dec 07 when they scored 22 against Minnesota

I Take It Back

What I said before...

Oh, how we missed the big play last year.

Redzone Woes

It continues.

Two plays away from 14, come away with 6.

Someone, anyone, is it simply the Redskins personnel that can't get the job done in the redzone?

ON THE OTHER HAND: Houston - One trip, one touchdown. Great

End of an Endzoneless Era

In Week 1 vs the Cowboys the Redskins went to a place they hadn't been in sometime. The endzone, on defense.

They'd been close. Last year, D. Hall ran a Carolina pick back to the two and we scored on the next play.

In 2008 Steven Jackson of the Rams fumbled on the two. We recovered and CP ran in in the next play.

But not since Sean Taylor ran a Tampa fumble back in 2007 (or, going back regular season only, week 7 of 2007 when London Fletcher ran a INT back 26 yards to paydirt) has member of the Redskins D put 6 on the board.

Only the Oakland Raiders have a longer streak. The teams with zero defensive TDs in 2008/09 averaged 6.3 wins while the top four defensive scoring teams averaged 9.8 wins.

Why?

A lot of it's luck. Take the streak busting D. Hall TD:


Right place. Right time. Dumb luck. And since a stat head confirmed it, it must be true, the Redskins were one of the most unlucky teams in the league in 2009 and 2008.

What is luck in football? Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Stats describes succinctly:

But special teams plays are the most random events in the sport, save for the coin flip. Luck is a punt that lands on the 5 and skids into the end zone for touchback instead of bouncing into the air and being downed at the 1. A kick or punt return for a touchdown certainly requires skill, but when the kick return (or missed field goal or anything else) occurs means everything.

A missed FG when a team is already ahead by 20 points doesn't mean much, but when a team is behind by 1 in the 4th quarter, it means the game. Teams and players can't control when those events occur, or else they'd save up their successes for when they matter most and their failures for when they don't. So in a very substantial way, they are luck, at least when it comes to deciding game outcomes.

So luck plays a huge part. But, to an extent, defensive TDs are also a product of turnovers generated which are in part a product of pressuring the QB. Things the the Skins have been bad (for the most part, we go to the QB OK last year) at. Sprinkle an extra 6 points over almost any game in 2009 and the Redskins win.

The switch to Hasslet's 3-4 will hopefully result in more plays that lead to TOs which lead to defensive TDs. It will be something I follow eagerly all season. If Laron Landry going berserk for the first 4 quarters of 2010 is any indication, we're off to a good start.

Fair-weather father?

My son's born. The Redskins lose and lose and lose some more and I never post.

A year later, on his first birthday, we beat our rival Cowboys, look like we may win some games this year, and I dust off the keyboard and start blogging again.

Fair-weather fan or fair-weather father?

Hazardous

Between anxiously waiting for her to go into labor and this Sunday's game I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a heart attack.

Heartbreak

Glancing at the NFL coverage map for week 1, it appears that—unlike most of the country—I won't be able to watch the Redskins from home confines (of Medford, Oregon). Damn.

If Only

From the yet unpublished Joe Bugel's Guide To Coping With Labor Pain:
"Tape an aspirin on it. Tape an Alka-Seltzer on it. Let it dissolve. "

You, Sir, Are Wrong

While Jason La Canfora helmed the good ship Redskins Insider he had a reputation for being a hater. To be more precise, he let his (alleged) dislike of the organization pepper many of his posts, even posts with subjects unrelated to decisions made by the organization.

La Canfora's Insder posts were frequently duplicitous; in one paragraph he'd land a jab, in the next he'd ice the bruise. While throwing jabs is what any objective journalist should do (leaving aside what objectivity a reporter should bring to a blogging role), regular readers of Insider noticed the jabs were of the nasty sort, and the ice was never very cold.

Posts critical of top-Skins brass (Snyder and Cerrato) often relied anonymous execs, scouts, or sources from around the league. Some of his commenters mused that many of these league execs were Jason himself.

Plus, he's a Ravens fan.

Anyway, he leapt from a readership of mindless Redskins homers to league wide reporting and blogging for NFL junkies on the Network. He recently issued his picks for the 2009 season and, based on his background of blog bias against the burgundy and gold, I was interested to read his take on the NFC East.

NFC East
Winner: Eagles. This has been a real struggle for me, with the Eagles and Giants both suffering significant losses this preseason...I'll stick with the Eagles for now, but not by much, and this smells like a three-team race to me.

Loser: Redskins. The Redskins look like a team with a top-5 defense and a bottom-5-10 offense, which is roughly what they have been for five years now. Winning 7-8 games seems about right -- they'd beat[sic] start quickly before the schedule and weather turn severe -- which probably puts them bottom of the pack, unless a division foe gets ravaged by injuries.

Now maybe Jason is right in claim but he's absolutely wrong in substance. Way wrong.

Putting aside the Redskins 2 playoff appearances in the last 4 seasons. Forgetting that just last year they swept the Eagles, who went on to the NFC championship game. Chuck out our 13-17 record against the NFL east the past 5 years; a record that includes 2 coaching changes and 3 offensive coordinators (a better metric would be our 3-3 record just last year, Jim Zorn's first). Let's not posit that, given big-name departures and preseason injuries in the East, the Redskins actually appear to be the most stable team in the division.

Nope. None of that.

Let's just look at the claim—the entire basis of Jason's prediction—that the Redskins have been a bottom 10-5 offense over the past 5 seasons.

2008 #19 (ahead of the Superbowl winning Steelers (#22))
2007 #15 (ahead of the Superbowl winning Giants (#16))
2006 #13 (ahead of the NFC champion Bears (#15))
2005 #11 (ahead of the AFC champion Superbowl winning Steelers #15))
2004 #30 (...OK he has our number here)

So, in the last five years they've been a bottom 5-10 offense once. And, to add an asterisk, the one year was Joe Gibbs' first, playing with a Spurrier squad. Not exactly the cellar dwellers he claims they are.

…but, wait-wait-wait, he probably meant the Redskins were bad at scoring points (though the top-5 D is derived using the same system, yds/g, so it hardly seems fair to mix and match methodologies). 2 of the last 5 years featured the Redskins among the NFL's 10 worst point scorers. One of those, again, Joe Gibbs' first year righting a very wronged ship; the other, Jim Zorn's first. Two new coaches, two point scoring deficient seasons.

La Canfora probably tried to slide this by the editors:

8-8 feels about right, given their division and what I percieve to be their talent level. I don't even think an improved D and a year of marriage between Zorn and Campbell will help. Given that I berated the organization for not drafting o-linemen, and chided the picks of David, Kelly and Thomas, I'm going to double-down and root for failure. Hey, I've invested too much time inveighing against those draft picks to even consider the possibility that even one of them could produce this year. Nope. Not going to do it. Hell, 8-8 is liberal of me really.

His pick could be accurate if it read:

The Redskins have shown productivity on the offensive side of the ball where yardage is concerned, but have struggled to convert those yards in to points. Part of the problem is the absence of big play (insert paltry big play stats here), the other is a top-5 D that in 2008 didn't force many turnovers or score any points (1 of 4 teams without a defensive TD in 2008). Though the additions of Albert Haynsworth and rookie DE Brian Orakpo may remedy the problem of too-few forced turnovers, they came at the expense of an aging O-Line that stuggled to stay healthy in 2008. I again see them starting strong in 2009, but, as last year with a 6-2 start turned 2-6, just one major o-line injury could leave this team again mourning past draft picks traded for aging vets, when o-line depth could have been addressed.

See Jason, I even managed to jab Cerrato.

Whatever. It's hard, I'm sure, to know the ins-and-outs of 32 squads but if you make a statistical claim, dammit check that it's an accurate one. Otherwise, Jason, you're what your haters always said you were: A hater.

Old School

"If a guy's going to miss the season because he's hurt -- I think nagging injuries, at one point you have to say, 'I'm playing.' Tape an aspirin on it. Tape an Alka-Seltzer on it. Let it dissolve. Play"
   –Joe Bugel

Slinging Sammy

Man stats: Passing, punting, rushing, recieving, defense, 11 punt returns, and an extra point. That was gridiron football.

So Cruel

"It is cruel to note how long it has been since the Redskins truly were "very good." In the last 17 seasons years, they have won 10 games just twice."

That is cruel, so thanks for noting it, Bos.

Oh, sarcasm; I get it.

"We didn't make any plays, they beat us on third down and we made poor decisions. Other than that, it was delightful."
     –Greg Blache, on the Redskins 1^st team D's performance against the Steelers

Problogue

If one pulled their stare from the captivating promise of the green preview screen to view the theater's two newest entrants, they surely would notice the bump on her midsection. This bump and my open protective hand, bracketing her gentle sway—a gesture full of earnest care but an empty safety measure—would lead this preview-missing movie-goer to conclude that our expecting circumstance was the reason we came to the movie.

They’d be correct.

Away We Go is the story of an expectant couple searching for a place to start their lives as parents. Starting your life as parents is difficult, maybe not for everyone; for us, though, it is very.

The difficulty stems from the new importance of your every decision. The ability of plastic clips to perform their designed task requires MIT-like research. Transposing human needs onto a newborn means new, previously unheard of, products. They poop how frequently, into what, and at what cost? They wear what, how, when, and at what cost? They sleep in this, rest in that, lay in the other thing, and at what cost? Price tags play a major role in this act. Air and milk are abundant and free, but I guess the fresh-faced require a good deal more than that these days.

That human birth has occurred successfully for a hundred-thousand years, that every current one of the human billions had to slide a uterine and cervical path, most delivered using only the rusted tool of instinctual know-how (though know-how alone won’t clean up that mess) does little to assuage your fears. The dread certainty of future uncertainty is implacable.

Nothing you read will answer the most important and persistent question: Are we be able going to give him all he needs at every turn? The question can’t be answered; we know not what turns will come and, thusly, can’t know his needs, or ours, at those places.

Away We Go doesn’t mention any of these difficulties, which is a strong mark in its pro column. Instead it focuses on the couple’s relationship and the baby’s effect on it. We with pea in pod recognize all the subtle promissory glances, the assurance of soft touch. We know her uncomfortable rustling; his uncomfortable affirmations of her beauty. When he promises that he’ll love her, even if her vagina goes AWOL in a pile of postpartum pudge, we laugh, part at the promise, part that we’ve made and not meant that same promise too.

The movie, also to its benefit, doesn’t explore the psyche of the characters. They aren’t searching for themselves; they’re searching for a place to be themselves. The movie goer is just watching the search.

How many of us are searching for what we are or who we are? We, cut of self-assured and reassured cloth, don’t search for who were are: we know. What we know about ourselves is often only infinitesimally affected by what we find from day-to-day. Though over time the dots that connect the day-to-day of our past and present do create a picture of our persona, they mostly just serve as place markers. We were there, now we are here. When the dots serve as behavioral direction, when they alter your course so hugely that the broader picture of who you are is irreparably changed, they do so not because you were searching for them but because they dropped onto your noggin.

In this blog, like the movie, I don’t plan on chronicling what fatherhood does to me but where fatherhood ends me up: About those places and how I feel at each. I will also chronicle my passion and interaction with the performance of the Washington Redskins. If my son is a dot, a place mark, set to alter my course: It is one I embrace. The rise and fall of the Redskins on crisp Sundays, however, that is the dot that lands square on my head.

Why include football? To be relevant, to connect me to most. The truth is, watching, or reading, another’s life unfold in an average way is only mildly entertaining. During Away We Go you never lose yourself. While watching what was meant to be an affecting scene I thought, longingly: In the theatre next to us a house is turning into a robot and blowing shit up. Football serves to blow this blog up from time to time.

At present, however—given the flutter of foot seen on the skin below her navel—the time for blowing shit up has passed. It is indeed time to put away such childish things; but where will it all go and how much does the place it goes cost?