that slender reed

well...here we are again. following the horse down to the waters' edge. I think I'll take a drink...I always do this time of year. but its different. very different.

I noticed this afternoon. I tuned into Redskin Nation, watched Kelly Johnson's ongoing wierdness with Randy Thomas......skimmed ES...passed through BGO. but I'm not hearing. not seeing anymore. the present environment has me worn down. I don't trust the powers that be - they're lying to me and I know it...I know the watchdogs are asleep. all the Redskin news is ephemeral. it doesn't mean anything. idle chatter. filler that keeps people employed......product marketing.

but I'm hanging in there. the focus is very centered. I only care about what happens on the field. the plan. the execution. athletic excellence and synchronization of the parts into an orchestrated whole. a world that takes me away from the unbelievable nonsense that now surrounds us. it'll be brief - in the grand scheme of things.......but it will have some inscrutable meaning. it will be shared and intensely individual.

beyond family and friends...there isn't that much joy to draw from society and community these days. don't disappoint me Skins...you are an escape and a bridge.

I wonder how much of that cryptic prose speaks to football, and how much to all the rest of it One thing I've gained as I've gotten older is an understanding - not something I can live by every day - but at least the knowledge that I can choose my own meaning. I can fly headlong off the cliff of passionate wishful thinking for my Redskins, and suffer the inevitable crash to the rocks. Or I can choose to stride carefully up to the cliff's edge, find a comfortable ledge to sit down on and drink a beer while I watch the unknown unfold.

As I get older, I try to apply this to more and more things...family crises, politics, my job. A lot of it means nothing in the grand scheme of things - I mean, really, how much of anything we experience really matters? Like the coffee cups and t-shirts say 'Will it matter in 10 years'? But I also choose not to veer to the other lane of life's highway, where the cynics drive. I prefer to stay somewhere in the middle. Sure, once in awhile, some asshole's going to clip you, maybe even put you in the hospital. But at least you're on a road somewhere, and the experience, occasionally is even exhilirating.

You might even say I'm trying to keep it medium.

I'm going to pretend I know exactly what your post meant Al. Do me a favor, and do the same for me, will ya?

I would take a trip to the Philippines.

I luv you no......

brandies said:

I would take a trip to the Philippines.

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been there. many times. but I think I know what you are implying....

get lost!

Boone said:

I'm going to pretend I know exactly what your post meant Al. Do me a favor, and do the same for me, will ya?

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in a less florid way...it struck me yesterday that all the puffery around the Redskins I used to sop up - the daily press reports; injury news; coaching blather; dickering with other fans - I just can't watch it anymore. it's become white noise for me. I wait for the shows to arrive and then I'm channel surfing within minutes - just as I have eben doing with nightly news for the last 3 years. So, it was natural to wonder "what keeps me coming back at all? and...why the change in disposition? aside from birthright obligations...why do I track this team every year, every weekend, every Sunday?" because I can focus on a little piece of reality that - in its purest execution - isn't corrupted by all the political posturing and self-interested, power mongering BS that is our national lives these days. I can tune out all the extraneous crappola and watch a synthesis of teamwork AND individual excellence. I can get lost in it and not have to think"what are they really after? why are they not laying their cards on the table when everyone knows they hold a losing hand". escapism? yup. emotion that is purer? yup. thinking that isn't polluted by constant values propositions? yup.

I'm the same way. TV and any live media has become almost extinct to me. I used to watch sports of all kinds, but interest in the pampered elites no longer interests me either. The Redskins are on the verge of getting phased out of my life as well. Don't get me wrong, I love a GOOD football game. I love watching teams that can execute and athletes that act like it matters whether they win or lose. Unfortunately, the Skins have provided damn little of that for 15 or so years now. And it's not like it can't be done, despite the "parity" drive in the NFL over the past almost two decades. Look at the Patriots, Steelers and other teams. Almost as good as the dynasties of the NFC East of yesteryear. It can be done, it's just that the Skins don't know how.

So I ask myself, why watch something where you might have a good play or two, and then a complete bonehead manuver on the next series? Why spend three hours week after week watching sub par play? Frankly, I have better things to do on the weekend. And why do I keep buying my season tickets? Why do I want to travel for 2.5 hours, face the traffic, pay out the ass for drinks and snacks and watch a bunch of people that talk big smack about wanting to win and digging deep down and rallying around a player, then play like ass on Sunday?

Such are the questions of life

Next year, after Zorn gets the hook and the danny hires whatever coach he has mancrush on that week, if he doesn't bring in a real GM to go with the coach, at least I won't have to worry about the season ticket question anymore. They'll be history

Sarge said:

I'm the same way. TV and any live media has become almost extinct to me. I used to watch sports of all kinds, but interest in the pampered elites no longer interests me either. The Redskins are on the verge of getting phased out of my life as well. Don't get me wrong, I love a GOOD football game. I love watching teams that can execute and athletes that act like it matters whether they win or lose. Unfortunately, the Skins have provided damn little of that for 15 or so years now. And it's not like it can't be done, despite the "parity" drive in the NFL over the past almost two decades. Look at the Patriots, Steelers and other teams. Almost as good as the dynasties of the NFC East of yesteryear. It can be done, it's just that the Skins don't know how.

So I ask myself, why watch something where you might have a good play or two, and then a complete bonehead manuver on the next series? Why spend three hours week after week watching sub par play? Frankly, I have better things to do on the weekend. And why do I keep buying my season tickets? Why do I want to travel for 2.5 hours, face the traffic, pay out the ass for drinks and snacks and watch a bunch of people that talk big smack about wanting to win and digging deep down and rallying around a player, then play like ass on Sunday?

Such are the questions of life

Next year, after Zorn gets the hook and the danny hires whatever coach he has mancrush on that week, if he doesn't bring in a real GM to go with the coach, at least I won't have to worry about the season ticket question anymore. They'll be history

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welllll....we're now a crowd of two brotha!!!

fansince62 said:

welllll....we're now a crowd of two brotha!!!

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I think more and more folks are joining the "crowd", and it's a damn shame. I have a co-worker that got on the season ticket holder list two years ago and got offered tickets this year. A far cry from the days of a two decade wait list. A lot of folks must be turning in their tickets

I think it is a result of years of mediocrity or worse. We, as older fans, have had the privilege of watching those championship teams win 3 Super Bowls. I don't care why the team has not succeeded in the past 17 years (Even though I do consider Joe Gibbs II a success...considering), but I for one was spoiled as a child and during adolescence. I am just tired of getting all amped up over my beloved Washington Redskins only to have my heart broken year after year.

I wonder if it was similar in the 50's and 60's when the Skins were on their downturn after the Sammy Baugh years?

It is hard to fathom there is a whole generation of young people who do not know what it is like to go to the Mall to watch a Super Bowl Parade. 18years!!!

MikeSr619 said:

I am the guy who says "we're going 16-0" in the preseason and will ride and die with my Skins. I cant stand sitting next to the Debbie Downer's that just want to criticize and find the negative things to complain about. Campbell throws a 11 yard pass for a 1st and it's "well we know he cant go deep" instead of being happy we got a 1st down.

I personally will tell someone a few times to be quiet and then ask them to leave my table if they dont stop being "that guy". This is what I love to do on Sundays...watch my Skins, live for my Skins, die for my Skins. I get to the bar 1.5 hours early every week to get MY table and to have MY beer and pregame ritual going and I dont need someone ruining it.

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I think my Dad was reincarnated....and you are him. Glad to know you. I bought two redskins tshirts yesterday....and I'm wearing one on Sat. night. Then I'll read all the stuff posted on Sunday and try to figure it all out in reverse. Glass half full is the best way to be.

Al, I wonder though, if we were offered reporting of the Redskins that were truly incisive, whether it wouldn't reflect the "political posturing and self-interested, power mongering BS" that you mention running rampant elsewhere in our society.

Better not to know, I guess, lest this escape too be adulterated.

I agree that as I grow older so much of the peripheral stuff is just becoming white noise. I used to search high and low for news on the Redskins, but now find that I am much more discerning and my hunger is satisfied much more quickly. Time has become more of a premium now, what with a wife, two kids, a dog, an all encompassing job and a wealth of adult responsibility. I've noticed in the last couple years that just as my eyesight has started to fade a bit, so has my thirst for Redskins news. I fear sometimes that perhaps it's because I'm getting older and it means a little less to me now....that, somehow, I may be losing some of my youthful exuberence for the sport....and, more importantly, for MY team. Could this be the onset of actual maturity and adulthood....finally homing in on me at the ripe old age of 45? Or, could this simply be apathy brought on by 15 years of losing seasons....probably the longest such stretch in my life as a Redskin fan?

Truth is, each game is still, for me, an adventure. When I can get past all the "white noise" out there and I finally sit to just watch a game being played, I can still lose myself in it....enjoying each play as if it could be the one that turns the game. I waited over two decades for season tickets and even now, having had them for nearly a decade while living four thousand miles away, I still get excited when the Fedex pack arrives at my house each summer. I only get to a game or so each year or two, but when I open the package up I don't just smell the cardboard odor of the tickets.....I smell the wet leaves and cold muddy ground of my youth where I played tackle with the neighborhood kids. I can feel the plastic pads I wore and the texture of the number 42 jersey I had tightly pulled over them. I can feel the irritation from the horribly uncomfortable chin strap from my sporting goods store helmet. I get SO excited to see tickets that remind me of the stubs I clutched sitting in a raucus RFK in the 70's. My blood flows during the games as my mind and body recall these memories on their own volition and I feel again like the 8 year old boy I was.

As I read the posts of some of you this morning I could sense the disenchantment many of you are feeling and I could relate. But, it's interesting to note.....we're all here on this site, we're all talking about the Redskins. We all still care....we all still remember. Winning cures a lot of issues........hang in, have faith.

And please, don't dump the tickets. There's a LOT more to them then it may seem......

HTTR

Pravda said:

Al, I wonder though, if we were offered reporting of the Redskins that were truly incisive, whether it wouldn't reflect the "political posturing and self-interested, power mongering BS" that you mention running rampant elsewhere in our society.

Better not to know, I guess, lest this escape too be adulterated.

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absolutely! you got it.

LoyalSkinsFan said:

I agree that as I grow older so much of the peripheral stuff is just becoming white noise. I used to search high and low for news on the Redskins, but now find that I am much more discerning and my hunger is satisfied much more quickly. Time has become more of a premium now, what with a wife, two kids, a dog, an all encompassing job and a wealth of adult responsibility. I've noticed in the last couple years that just as my eyesight has started to fade a bit, so has my thirst for Redskins news. I fear sometimes that perhaps it's because I'm getting older and it means a little less to me now....that, somehow, I may be losing some of my youthful exuberence for the sport....and, more importantly, for MY team. Could this be the onset of actual maturity and adulthood....finally homing in on me at the ripe old age of 45? Or, could this simply be apathy brought on by 15 years of losing seasons....probably the longest such stretch in my life as a Redskin fan?

Truth is, each game is still, for me, an adventure. When I can get past all the "white noise" out there and I finally sit to just watch a game being played, I can still lose myself in it....enjoying each play as if it could be the one that turns the game. I waited over two decades for season tickets and even now, having had them for nearly a decade while living four thousand miles away, I still get excited when the Fedex pack arrives at my house each summer. I only get to a game or so each year or two, but when I open the package up I don't just smell the cardboard odor of the tickets.....I smell the wet leaves and cold muddy ground of my youth where I played tackle with the neighborhood kids. I can feel the plastic pads I wore and the texture of the number 42 jersey I had tightly pulled over them. I can feel the irritation from the horribly uncomfortable chin strap from my sporting goods store helmet. I get SO excited to see tickets that remind me of the stubs I clutched sitting in a raucus RFK in the 70's. My blood flows during the games as my mind and body recall these memories on their own volition and I feel again like the 8 year old boy I was.

As I read the posts of some of you this morning I could sense the disenchantment many of you are feeling and I could relate. But, it's interesting to note.....we're all here on this site, we're all talking about the Redskins. We all still care....we all still remember. Winning cures a lot of issues........hang in, have faith.

And please, don't dump the tickets. There's a LOT more to them then it may seem......

HTTR

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nice post. yes there are competing demands on our time. my point was that - except for a select few - these also are less than enthralling in our current culture/society. football. Redskin football of the sort we all remember from days past. the pure joy of watching Gary Clark streak past the Gints secondary on a play Gibbs labored the entire first quarter to set up........that was sublime. everything melted into the moment. and yes.....winning didn't....uhhhhhhhh....suck!

You know, somewhere in the last few years I hit the same wall of apathy that Fansince did. I tried denying it for a while but eventually, things got to the point where I couldn't even do that anymore. That was the genesis of why I adopted someone's sig as my own on ES. It just so perfectly encapsulated my feelings on the team that I was simply compelled to do so.

Mind you, I'm not a fair weather fan. I've been around for a good number of bad years, both pre and post Gibbs 1.0 and 2.0. However, what really frustrates me is that we've been so damned consistently inept for so long.

Nor am I the unreasonable guy that expects to win a SB every year and decides that it's just not worth it if the team isn't winning this year. I fully recognize that there's a cycle to NFL success. So, outside of the post parity dynasty teams, the other teams with competent front offices have their bad years, but they generally rise and fall with the cycle of talent. Think Titans, Giants, Ravens and to a lesser degree perhaps the Bears and Colts. They build, they make a run at a SB or two, the window closes, and then they tear it down and re-build for the next cycle. Great. That's what passes for success in the salary cap era.

In contrast, we have had nothing but mostly bad teams puncuated by the occasional bout of above average mediocrity. Eventually, that just took its toll on me.

Yeah, I'm still a fan. But now I'm much more able to keep it in perspective. They're my team and I'll love 'em till the end but I'm not going to stroke out over them the way I used to.

I guess this thread wouldn't even be around if we were winning. I mean, you don't tune into your favorite teams, buy Sunday Ticket, go to games etc to watch your team lose. And everyone knows that you can't win all the time no matter how good you are. But on the other hand, no one likes to be losers forever, and when you step back, remove the Burgandy and Gold colered glasses and look at how this team has performed over the last 17 years, it isn't pretty. SEVENTEEN YEARS. Now granted, we stumbled and got caught with a bunch of older vets when the NFL instituted the current free agency system in what 92? 93? And when Mr Cooke died the team was tied up and hamstrung by legal wrangling. John Cooke didn't know how much money he could spend or how much he wanted to spend. But for ten years now, there has been one common denominator and that has been the danny. He is a self admitted "hands-on" owner, and through all the coaches, players, scouts etc the one consistent has been the danny. I used to bleed B&G out of my eyeballs, probably moreso than others because of the fact that I had close contact with the team. Now? Now I can tell in the first 5-10 minutes of the game if they are going to try to win or if they are going to stink it up and mail it in. And I find my threshold for getting up and mowing the grass or doing something else more useful is reached very easily. This could very well be the last year that I hold onto my season tickets. Tickets I waited 13 years to get. Maybe it's time more folks started thinking that way. It may be the only way the danny gets the wakeup call and starts trying to field a winning football as hard as he tries to make a buck

I don't have quite the angst I sense from many of you. When the Redskins were winning Super Bowls and among the NFL elite for 13 years under Gibbs, I remember thinking even then it was probably once-in-a-lifetime. It spoiled me, no doubt ... but not to the point I lost sight of the fact that what we have had since then is pretty much the norm for fans of professional sports teams.

Before Gibbs I, the Redskins went 40 years without a championship. And even when they did win SB XVII, there was still a whole lot of skepticism and cynicism about them ... "yeah but it was a strike year" ... "just a fluke" ... "Theismann? Please."

By the time Gibbs left after the '92 season, there was a whole generation of Redskins fans who had never known anything other than wild success. Kind of like the one that's growing up in New England now, and I suspect is mirrored in places like San Francisco and Dallas.

Pro football, like any other sport, is cyclical ... and the 17 year cycle the Redskins have been on really isn't that long. Everyone here can name franchises that have been further down, for a lot longer, than we have.

Thing is ... we've got a franchise that's missing one piece. The same piece it's been looking for since Theismann's leg snapped in '85. Gibbs' genius covered for the lack of a franchise QB and brought us two additional SB's on pure organizational, schematic and personal strength, but chances are we'll never see his like again. What he did was unprecedented.

And unlike many places, in DC our franchise is actively trying to DO something about finding that one piece. It's taken a few seasons to get to this point, and there have been some well-documented fits and starts, but Snyder, for all his faults, has put all the pieces in place save one--the quarterback. And he's been trying his ass off to find one.

Personally I hope that's because he "gets it" that the one thing standing between him and Super Bowl contention for a decade plus IS a legitimate Pro Bowl level QB. And I hope he never stops looking for that guy. We'll all know it if/when he does.

Meanwhile, I hope Redskins fans don't lose sight of the reality that a 17 year run without a championship, or even without a sustained run of success like the Eagles have enjoyed the past decade, is what reality dishes up for most pro sports fans. The degree to which we indulge our fan passion during times like this is purely a personal choice. And to be honest, I think there's a farily strong undercurrent of institutionalized entitlement among a great many of my fellow burgundy and gold obsessives; something that's lingered since the end of Gibbs I ...

Present company excepted, of course.

Om said:

And unlike many places, in DC our franchise is actively trying to DO something about finding that one piece. It's taken a few seasons to get to this point, and there have been some well-documented fits and starts, but Snyder, for all his faults, has put all the pieces in place save one--the quarterback. And he's been trying his ass off to find one.

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Mark you nailed this on the head and I don't even know if you intended to. See the name "Snyder" and "trying his ass off to find one"? These two things should never go together. I don't want danny looking for a dog catcher, much less a QB. I want a GM (a real one) to look for a QB. I want a coach to look for a QB. I don't want an owner who's sole bona fide in football is "team owner" and "biggest fan" and who is well known to develope man crushes on players looking for a QB.

I think you took some liberties with that, Sarge.

I didn't suggest Snyder was directly, himself, scouting for the next franchise QB, which is what you are either overtly or indirectly implying. I suggested that ownership of the Washington Redskins is allowing, encouraging and facilitating the active, aggressive pursuit of a franchise QB. I think the distinction is a huge one.

And I also don't believe, as many still seem to (and you sound like you may be one of them), that Dan Snyder is the one driving the bus on personnel moves. To me that's been a dead, disproven issue for several years. For better or worse, Vinny Cerrato is the head personnel guy. And it's been written over and over again how personnel decisions at Redksins Park are vetted exhaustively through every level of scouts, VC's office, coaches, and yes, even Dan Snyder, who weighs in on the financial side.

Me, I want an owner who is passionate and involved. That doesn't mean I want him grading Jay Cutler's footwork on the 3-step drop against Jason Campbell's. And from every credible source who has ever spoken on the issue, from Joe Gibbs on down, word has come down that that is not what Snyder does.

You know I love ya, but I think you're connecting dots here that just shouldn't be.

Om said:

I think you took some liberties with that, Sarge.

I didn't suggest Snyder was directly, himself, scouting for the next franchise QB, which is what you are either overtly or indirectly implying. I suggested that ownership of the Washington Redskins is allowing, encouraging and facilitating the active, aggressive pursuit of a franchise QB. I think the distinction is a huge one.

And I also don't believe, as many still seem to (and you sound like you may be one of them), that Dan Snyder is the one driving the bus on personnel moves. To me that's been a dead, disproven issue for several years. For better or worse, Vinny Cerrato is the head personnel guy. And it's been written over and over again how personnel decisions at Redksins Park are vetted exhaustively through every level of scouts, VC's office, coaches, and yes, even Dan Snyder, who weighs in on the financial side.

Me, I want an owner who is passionate and involved. That doesn't mean I want him grading Jay Cutler's footwork on the 3-step drop against Jason Campbell's. And from every credible source who has ever spoken on the issue, from Joe Gibbs on down, word has come down that that is not what Snyder does.

You know I love ya, but I think you're connecting dots here that just shouldn't be.

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See, I just can't shake the feeling that he still is. Maybe not as much as when he was playing fantasy football in the Bruce Smith days, but I'd bet a paycheck he's still in the game.

Mind you, I have no problem with an owner that throws his money out there. I just want that same owner to let someone that knows what they are doing to spend it.

And the media can report all day long about how the danny isn't in on personnel moves, but that's not what my one, lone remaining source said. Unfortunately, that source is no longer in the know, so I can't speak to the Cutler issue, but he/she said they wouldn't be surprised if the danny were pushing it.

And you can't tell me that between Gibbs and Buges, two men who's sucess came from the understanding of whta dominant offensive lines could do, did so little to upgrade our lines the past few years, preferring receivers and such to linemen.