Truth is, Hog Heaven needs recovery time after the Redskins pulled that stinker against the Panthers yesterday. So do you. So does head coach Mike Shanahan who, for the past three weeks, looked as if his every orifice were tightly clinched.
Mitt Romney welcomed Washington's 21-13 loss. According to urban legend and Wikipedia, Republicans, the borrow and spend crowd, will sweep their way into the White House. (Hey, tax cuts aren't free, people.) It's as if the 'Skins were trying to lose.
I know that's not true. Football games don't actually influence elections any more than voters influence football games. Go vote tomorrow. Voters, like the Redskins, must create their own destinies.
Skins have great chance to finish season strong with lots of NFC east games, bye week and Pierre coming back....Dont jump off the wagon yet
Another typical Redskins November when a player says now is the time we find out who is serious about winning and who is here just for the money. Cliche's aside, adversity teaches something about ourselves.
You never know how strong you are, until being strong is the only choice you have.
I am worried. The Redskins are universally favored to beat the Panthers today. When, in the Snyder-Cerrato era, have the Redskins beaten a beatable team?
Sportsbook Bovada.lv set Washington as 3½-point favorites over Carolina.
To say the Redskins will win today is to predict an election day win for Barack Obama, by the Redskins Rule.
"If the Redskins win their last home game before the election, the party that won the previous election wins the next election. If the Redskins lose, the challenging party's candidate wins." ~ Wikipedia (You can always trust Wikipedia.)
The Redskins Rule is a trend, not a prediction. The outcome of Washington's last home game before a presidential election has foreshadowed the outcome in 17 of the last 18 national elections. Correlation is not necessarily causative as my old statistics professor would say.
Voters have made up their minds by this point. To judge by the number of new cars I've seen on the streets since Spring, I believe the outcome has already been decided – until the president whiffed that field goal in the first debate, anyhow. The game itself has no more influence on the election than voters have on the game. The gods of football may be trying to tell us something today.
This would be a good time to quote the late Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory –
"Baseball is what we were. Football is what we have become."
ESPN's Accuscore Countdown projects the Redskins as 58 percent favorites based, oddly, on which quarterback has the best day running.
Predictionmachine.com had Washington winning 58 percent of the simulations it ran preseason when everyone was healthy.
What are the odds Redskins receivers hang on to the ball? Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and a legion of Redskins fans want to know.
Aldrick Robinson will start over Leonard Hankerson today for the #Redskins.
The Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles showed us hot not to do throwback uniforms – convincing evidence that Pennsylvanians are color blind. Those uniforms are invariably called ugly by everyone but homers.
Watching Redskins game. Have to think the were distracted, all day, thinking, "AHHHHH!!!! BEES!!!!!!! GIANT BEES!!!!"
The Washington Redskins uniforms are improvements on two counts. It does not recall a uniform that should never be seen again. It commemorates a period when the team actually won something.
The Steelers were a stinker 2-10-0 franchise in 1934, the year they unveiled those colors. The Redskins won it's first NFL championship in 1937. It's 80th-Anniversary unis are based on that period – sorta.
The new throwbacks are not replicas of the 1930's colors. They are a blend of the 1930s through 1960s colors should pop better on HDTV than the originals.
@skinshogheaven They're similar to the late 1950s, but they're supposed to be from the 1930s. More of a traditional hodgepodge look. No matter. The Steelers proved that nobody needs to see authentic throwbacks anyway.
I went to my first live Redskins game in 1962 (please ... don't do the math), before Sonny Jurgensen joined the team. Those old wine-colored jerseys were the flashiest in the NFL that has yet to be accurately captured in any of the throwbacks. Those colors were acceptable on black & white TV, in days when fortunate families had a TV set, and only one at that. They were drab after Disney and Bonanza drove demand for color television.
(Actual quote: "No, son. The TV isn't broken. That movie is supposed to be black & white.
"Well, who wants to see a movie that's not in color." Goes back to video game.)
Washington went to the Spearhead logo in 1965. Younger readers have an impression that the Redskins copied the design from the Florida State Seminoles rather than the accurate other way around.
Vince Lombardi's effort (as I recall, don't quote me) to restore a winning mindset to the moribund franchise led to brightening the jersey from wine to red and the pants from gold to yellow. Lombardi called it Championship Gold. No photograph i've seen did justice to those legacy wine-colored jerseys.
Washington moved to its familiar uniform with the Buffalo Nickel helmet logo in the 1972 season.
Washington will wear its homecoming, 80th Anniversary throwbacks this Sunday, November 4, at home against the Carolina Panthers. Redskins tickets are still available.
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It certainly isn't the medical staff and trainers.
The most talented people on the Redskins are the player's agents that continue to extort ridiculous sums of money for worthless, arrogant players like DeAngelo Hall. You would think after Albert Haynesworth and Jammal Brown, the Redskins would have learned their lessons - nope - up to $45 million for Garcon for one quarter of one game of football! Will he ever be up to his full speed again? Maybe, maybe not.
But we have to hand it to his agent. That's one talented Redskins affiliated person. Maybe we could put him in the secondary. Give credit where credit is due.
Maybe it's time to start becoming a Ravens fan instead. But yuck, Baltimore? I would like them better if the name was "Maryland ...." And the team name Ravens? What is this, a collection of Edgar Allen Poe stories or a football team? Terrible name. I prefer a name like the "Neanderthals" or just "Beasts." Lastly, the purple uniforms have got to go. Purple uniforms belong to a team called the "Cookie Monsters" or "Fat Albert and the Gang." (I'm thinking Russell and Mush Mouth for those that remember). Lastly, the AFC seems so lame after years of being inside the NFC. Maybe they can change that too.
Alternatively, the Redskins can start collecting #1 draft picks one year in the distant future and start winning again. Hmmm, maybe the "Maryland Beasts" are more likely to happen....
p.s. A special kudos to the Redskins for realizing after half the season and after dozens of futile attempts that TE Niles Paul has a big size and separation disadvantage on passes under 12 yards and every speed advantage they wanted for passes over 20 yards. Let's make it simple for Kyle - Niles can't block and can't catch under 10 yards from the line of scrimmage, ever. After that distance, he can be a great weapon for both.
p.p.s. Does anyone else notice how the referees blatantly favor teams that help the Giants' standing?
Editor's note: Pierre Garcon is represented by Terra Firma Sports Management. Drew Rosenhaus, America's most recognizable NFL agent, is pictured with this story. Image: August 18, 2011, Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images North America via zimbio.com.
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Robert Griffin III is a pretty tough guy. Michael Wilbon says Griffin the Great is already the best athlete in the NFL. I'd place a bet with SportsBetting.ag that the young man wins some sort of post-season award, if not MVP, then Rookie of the Year and the Pro Bowl.
So I call bull droppings on words like these –
"It may not be a good idea to put the already-fragile future of your franchise in compromising situations against a defense known to be head hunters." Already fragile?
Ah yes, Robert Griffin III, the delicate flower of the Washington Redskins. I shake my head.
Griffin is anything but fragile. He carries the same weight as your typical running back, who takes a lot of hits.
Adrian Peterson, 217 Lbs.
Marshawn Lynch, 215 Lbs.
Alfred Morris, 215 Lbs.
Stevan Ridley, 220 Lbs
Arian Foster, 228 Lbs,
Frank Gore, 217 Lbs.
Chris Johnson, 191 Lbs. Robert Griffin III, 217 Lbs.
You could run the same weight comparison to wide receivers.
Griffin is a football player. Since he's an NFL player, he's played the game all his life. He knows how to take a hit. What the video replay shows is that he could use some tips for receivers coach Ike Hilliard for attacking the ball when he's covered that much. Griffin let the ball come to him and it was well defensed.
RGIII is the best player on the Redskins, but some people are taking this protection thing too far. It's football. Hits happen. Injuries occur. The Redskins are hurt as much by the loss of OLB Brian Orakpo as they would be by the loss of Griffin. Nobody spoke of protecting Orakpo by not letting him play pass coverage.
In more over-reaction, fans are amped up over Mike Shanahan's statement that he felt like a dumb shirt for using Griffin as wide receiver. But Coach Shanny didn't say he should not have run the play, or would not try it again. He felt "dumb" because he needed to coach up Josh Morgan to read the coverage better.
BOLD playcalling from Redskins w RG3 as a WR... Man! Protect that QB Shanahan! #crazyfootballmomma
“I’ve run that play probably 10, 15 times with [John] Elway, probably 20 times or more with Steve Young, and with Robert, what you usually do is against the right defense – which is man coverage – no one usually accounts for the quarterback and he’s by himself out there.
“With Josh Morgan, he takes off and he’s got such confidence in his arm, and he lets it go and probably could’ve thrown it another 10 yards,” Shanahan said. “Robert’s so competitive that he goes for that ball, and that one safety that comes over just killed him. Yeah, I felt like to do it over again, we’d tell Josh don’t throw it unless he’s wide open, I mean wide open. Of course from his perspective, he was. But that’s part of the growing process for me and having the guys throw a pass from the backfield.”
Shanahan went for it in the Giants game on fourth-and-ten while deep in Redskins' territory. I mean, WHO DOES THAT? Anyone with RGIII at quarterback, that's who. Griffin completed a 19-yard pass to TE Logan Paulson to keep the drive alive. Washington scored on the same drive to take (briefly) the lead late.
What's the good to have a talent like RGIII if you don't use him in all possible ways out of fear? That just ain't football.
Image: October 27, 2012, Joe Sargent/Getty Images North America via zimbio.com.
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Before the Chuck Knoll era, Pittsburgh was one of the few teams Washington could count on beating. The Redskins still hold a 42-32-3 overall lead on the Steelers, but Pittsburgh has dominated in the Super Bowl era. A generation of Redskins blog readers have never seen a live win over the Steelers.
Washington patterns its defense after Dick LeBeau's D. Pittsburgh knows that defense well, so it's no real surprise that they made Washington's unit look ... stupid. Few defensive coordinators measure up to LeBeau, especially if they do not have the personnel to match LeBeau's unit.
That cuts no ice with the Redskins Twitterati who are calling for Jim Haslett's head.
Rick Snider called the Steelers a mediocre team. Um, no. The Steelers might win its division. They just aren't as dominating as their last Super Bowl team. But the Redskins were in a blue funk all game. Perhaps the "blue" was fallout from the Giants' loss the team was unable to shake.
Mike Shanahan backed both Hasslett and Danny Smith by extending their contracts for a year for an undisclosed amount of money. It likely was not keeping money – so prohibitively high that the team cannot afford to fire them. Those deals were for public consumption.
There is no gain in dismissing coaches mid-season. It's not working in Philadelphia. It did not work with Norv Turner. The secondary's performance does not inspire confidence in Raheem Morris as a replacement, nor did his inability to turn the Buccaneers around during their slump last year.
Firing coaches is what you do at the end of the season. What you do right now is get them focused on making changes for improvement. I never expected to miss Brandon Meriweather before the man even played a game.
DeAngelo Hall unsportsmanlike conduct penalty was twice as bad as his penalty in last year's Cowboys game one. This time he was penalized twice in the same incident. Face palm and shake my head.
Every other #redskins player is jealous of #DeangeloHall because at least he doesn't have to play this out.
The Redskins matched the Steelers' ugly uniform with an ugly performance of their own. I'd love to hear the explanation for those drops. I blame the equipment manager for leaving the hands at Redskins Park..
Meanwhile, Hog Heaven sits here in a snit contemplating two cosmic questions of the universe.
Why are the Redskins 3-5 when the Vikings are 5-3 and the Dolphins and Colts are 4-3? Oh yeah, those teams have defense.
Has the NFL caught on to the RG3Skins? We are at the season midpoint – just about the time when defensive coordinators figure out offenses they have not seen before.
I figured the Redskins for seven or eight wins this year. Washington has to go .500 in its remaining games for that to come true. It's doable, but only if the rest of the team executes to the standard set by Griffin the Great.
Only Alfred Morris has done that on offense. Ryan Kerrigan is holding up on defense, but now draws attention that would have gone to Brian Orakpo. That means Rob Jackson must beat his man to become a more disruptive force. DeAngelo Hall should have learned by now that giving in to emotion is not an actual leadership trait.
Have a thought about the Washington Redskins? Contribute them to Hog Heaven. Write me at
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