I know I wasn’t the only one that found Sunday’s loss to the Falcons heart-breaking – most of Redskins Nation were pretty devastated. I tried to provide even a minor amount of silver-lining through my Twitter account, but some to many just weren’t having it.
Which I understand to a degree, but maybe not to the degree that sometimes seems to be the case.
Ok, I get it. We could have won the game. I even understand that some will feel that we SHOULD have won the game. At the end of the day, we just didn’t.
What befuddles me is how the wheels just fall off for some fans. It’s instantly as though we were the top team in the NFL and we just tanked a yawner to the team bringing up the rear. Which is ironic when you consider that that’s kind of the opposite of the actual scenario, right?
We lost to the 4-0, now 5-0 Atlanta Falcons. They may not have looked that impressive to you on Sunday, but they haven’t loss to anybody yet. And it was in their den. They were seven point favorites according to most bookies.
So now you’re going to try and ram it down my throat that this team sucks, has no direction, and couldn’t beat a Vienna School Choir Boy team? Come on. Doesn’t the answer lie somewhere in the middle? And shouldn’t that be what you were expecting this season?
How do people look at me incredulously when i even insinuate that football is football and shit is gonna happen. We AREN’T a top tier team. Why is this a news flash to some on Sundays and how am I a “lesser” fan for realizing this? I’ve been watching this team for over 30 years. Religiously. I’m not an idiot. Nor am I a Redskins apologist. And I’m not a negative Nellie either. If you want to be any of those things, that’s entirely your prerogative. i didn’t pop on to your timeline and try to tell you what you should or shouldn’t feel.
It doesn’t make me a moron for thinking that Kirk Cousins put on a pretty good showing for himself. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t notice errant passes, or a lack of “perfection”. It’s that I don’t use that as a barometer for success. Sure he threw the interception that led to the loss, but would it have happened if Ryan Grant hadn’t fallen down? Sure he threw the pass behing and late to Pierre Garcon on the first interception, but Cousins didn’t tip it into the air for it to be intercepted – he actually threw it in a spot where only the receiver had a chance on it. That may not be textbook quarterback play on either of the mentioned incidents, but I don’t think they were the garden variety, panicked picks that we have come to know from Cousins. There was an element of bad luck to both of them.
On top of that, he miraculously drove his team the length of the field in 19 seconds to even have a shot at the win in overtime – a drive that was exceptional leadership and quarterback play.
So when I add it all up – I think Cousins played a really decent game – good enough to have a shot at beating an undefeated team in their own house. If you take off the rose-colored glasses on where you think the team SHOULD be at – that was a pretty good accounting of himself.
And the same goes for the team.
No loss is good. Anyone with a single competitive bone in their body knows that there is very little consolation to any loss. They all sting like a million simultaneous mosquito bites on your eyelids.
But you aren’t PLAYING the game. You’re watching it. And as a fan, it’s not only acceptable to take a longer term view of your team and not see the sky as always falling no matter what…
… it’s actually commendable to some.
I think we made a good showing for ourselves against Atlanta. We may not have ultimately won, but we learned that even an undefeated team isn’t going to be able to walk all over us. Even when we’re banged up.
You don’t have to find a silver lining in that, but if I do, please don’t take it upon yourself to tell me I’m an idiot; because many would argue that the idiot is the one that thinks this team is anything more than a re-building .500 team.
Hail.