Pyromania! What's wrong with the Redskins?

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http://dcprosportsreport.com/?p=1815

DC Pro Sports Report staff writer Pyrogenic clocks in with his latest installment of Pyromania! This time, he takes on our beloved Redskins, what’s wrong, and what needs to be done. Enjoy…

Ever have one of those experiences where you feel like you’re on the top of the world? You know, the one where you think you’ve accomplished something of some sort of significance and dare the universe to try to bring you down? Yeah, I’m sure you have. Now imagine some guy climbing up to your metaphoric summit of success and then drop kicking you off of it into the abyss he crawled out from, making the feat that much more impressive.

That’s how I feel about the Redskins right now, maybe even worse after getting overtaken by people wielding “terrible towels” at FedEx Field. Don’t get me wrong, my fandom isn’t what’s wavering, I became a real fan while a man named Tony Banks was the Redskins quarterback; a visage which still haunts me on the bad nights. No, what’s wavering is the swagger, the attitude, the confidence, the ability to tell an opposing fan that my team will make his team look like some sort of degrading feminine noun. Now I tip-toe cautiously around football conversations, or do what any desperate fan does and over-compensate by mentioning the number of Lombardies on display at the team facilities, except for Eagles fans, you know, since they don’t have any. It’s definitely not fun being on the defensive side of sports, because being in that position alludes to inferiority, and that’s no fun. Now I share the role of the perennially battered Browns fans that got a taste of a decent football team, but are now scrambling around on all fours, frantically searching for a trace of any redeeming qualities to the season. I realize that whatever glory we had has faded long ago, and the resurgence was close, but not enough to make the burgundy and gold vibrant again. Gibbs barely brought back the swagger that I was too young to remember, and now the short-lived burgundy success is slipping away between Zorn’s fingers. I want more!

Issues that worried me at the beginning of the season are rearing their collective ugly heads from within the sputtering offense and lackadaisical defense and are tearing at my innards, figuratively speaking; I’m really okay. Jon Jansen is playing similarly to how he played at the beginning of the season, a time period which made me cringe and genuinely feel embarrassed for him. That’s got to be pretty bad, a complete stranger physically portraying discomfort and pity while watching you do your job is generally not a good thing. Besides that, new woes are accompanying the old ones. At the beginning of the season, the Redskins’ running game was bolstered by the threat of a deep attack down the field to either one of the short speedsters at receiver, or the threat of having one of the slowest, yet surprisingly effective jukers in the league penetrate the soft zones of the opposition. Now all that seems to work are tight end screens to Chris Cooley, which after running 2 times a game, is becoming the new “WR Screen” play that only works because it’s a law of probability. The injuries have obviously taken their toll on the player’s performance level, and the lack of young depth on both sides of the line are exposing an already potent problem: our lines are O-L-D, but this is no longer a valid excuse.

The coaching staff made the decision to draft skill positions early in the draft and the staff needs to show that they’re worth the millions of dollars they’re being paid and make the players on the team work harder, or keep the veterans from becoming complacent. Get Heyer out back to where he was at the beginning of the season. Jansen had done well up until recently, and it’s obvious that age is becoming a factor in his performance level, so it makes sense to put Heyer back onto the field. Unlike earlier in the season, Jansen is no longer just a liability in pass protection, he can’t run block, either. The right side of the line has stopped getting the push required for Portis to be effective, and now the Redskins’ game plan is even more predictable (run to the left, screen to Cooley, slant, or deep to Moss). This is bad and needs to be rectified for the rest of the offense to work.

Owning Santana (I know I missed the bandwagon, but making fun of Billick is too much fun to pass up) Moss in one of my fantasy leagues may have amplified my awareness concerning his performance, but it’s almost like he’s afraid to become too good. He’ll run perfect routes, make players around the league envy his speed, and make spectacular catches, which would be a good things, except that it never happens twice in a row. One game Moss will look like a #1 receiving threat in the league, the next he’ll look like some over paid bum that accidentally sat on his hands for a day, making them numb; it’s the scenario that can explain some of the drops he has. It’s also no secret that paying so much for Randle El was a mistake. He’s a nice guy, but he’s not worth $30 million. At best, he’s what James Thrash was 5 years ago, and Thrash didn’t make $30 million. I do like that Devin Thomas is finally getting a crack at some plays, but is it me, or does that coaching staff have him in precarious positions? Where are Thomas’ screens? What happened to the deep routes? He’s big and fast and they need to utilize him that way. Problems in the passing game ultimately stem from issues on the offensive line, though. Jansen isn’t alone in his failures, Rabach and Thomas are playing poorly and the only person on the line playing with any consistency is Kendall. As for the defense, the secondary is great, but every one else is either old, injured, or just plain old lazy. London Fletcher is the exception, but the rest of that front 7 is downright shameful some of the time.

On a side note: I now realize that the amount of Dallas fans in the greater metropolitan area is far too high. People in the area may not have noticed this in the past couple of years since the Cowboys have been more or less subdued, but the recent Redskins loss to the Cowboys was enough to draw these blathering hellions out of whichever shadowy crevices they had concealed themselves in, even though they haven’t won a playoff game for as long as most 7th graders have lived. Cowboys fandom is a dormant pandemic, the bandwagon potency and ESPN coddling sustain that status. Losing to ‘Merica’s team brings the world closer and closer to a reality where the Cowboy bandwagon can reach critical conditions, and that’s just irresponsible, not to mention potentially unbearable. The Redskins key chain I keep around my neck acts as a beacon for Cowboys fans who seem to think that I actually care about what they have to say, or say that I can’t talk trash anymore even though I’ve never seen them before. We need to stop this. Let’s go Redskins!