The Pittsburgh Steelers were supposed to be a test for a Washington team that played a soft schedule last year and won a weak division. But they weren’t supposed to be a doctoral dissertation.
After what Josh Norman called the “butt-whuppin’ ” the Redskins took in their own stadium Monday night, this team needs to face a different kind of examination: a reality test.
If they pass, which is to say if they see themselves honestly and go back to work on the long project of going from genuinely awful to sustainably good, they’ll be just fine.
But if they don’t realize the Steelers are just the first challenge in what will be a far more difficult season — one in which 9-7 probably would be an aspiration, not a baseline assumption — then they run the risk of every kind of self-inflicted mischief. Honest self-evaluation is the first step to improvement. This team did plenty of it last year. Now it will have to do a lot more.
It’s time for some recalibration of this team’s expectations. Nothing wild. Just a square look in the eye at what happened at FedEx Field against a very good but not great Pittsburgh team, playing with several key injuries, that defines what is meant by an NFL measuring stick for “Where You Are...”
 }})
