Montana Redskin wrote:bla,bla,bla....Everyone keeps talking about "ohh, relax, be easy, we need to gel...1st year, need core redskins, give it time"....screw time....Atlanta sure took it's sweet time figuring out how to win with a first year coach.
Yea, just what Atlanta, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Carolina, Jets, etc...were saying last year?
I hate hearing that. As a fan, I'm more interested in TODAY, winning TODAY? How come first year Jim freeking Mora is 8-2? Or Jets keep winning without Pennington? Or the Steelers with a rookie QB? Or Carolina last year with some weird named QB? Or SD?
All these teams sucked last year and are rocking (besides Carolina, I admit), and my problem is I'd wish, just wish for once, the Redskins could do something like that. When will this team step up to the plate and win?
I believe in Gibbs, but last January, I figured we'd be an Atlanta type team or at least some resemblence of a 6-4ish type record..It's always something...this year its a record of futility offense? Next year,...ohh, I'll bet the O steps up and the D falls on its face somehow. Or we'll lose Portis or something...it will be something...and the Atlanta f__ing Falcons will be winning again, or Carolina. Or Miami or SF and we'll be sitting at 4-6 or something like that.
Look at all those teams you just mentioned except for Atlanta and they all have returning head coaches. Atlanta has the best offensive weapon in the game who just happens to be healthy this year (BTW, also isn't the Atlanta O-line coach called Gibbs, just a thought).
I live in North Carolina and two years ago I went to four Carolina games. The tickets were dirt cheap -- $65 for the lower level at about the 30yd line and you couldn't even watch the home games on TV because they didn't sell out (at least the opening game didn't). Well, I think they were 1-15 the year before. That year they won the first two and then proceeded to lose the next five after leading or being tied in all of them with five minutes to go in the 4th quarter. I was at one of those games against Tampa (who btw won the Super Bowl that year) where Steve Smith (who then was mainly a kick returner and only played WR on occasion) fumbled a punt with under two minutes to go and Gramatica hit a 55 yarder to end it. They were all agonising losses. The team then lost a few games badly and came back to win four of their last five. The next year they were 11-5.
The entire year the fans, media, etc. said how bad Carolina was but I thought they were all crazy. They had a great D and clearly could have won many more games than they did. They just needed something to put them over the top and that was Jake Delhomme and a nice gift they recieved from the Redskins Steven Davis. And Steve Smith started making TD catches in the playoffs instead of fumbling punts.
Basically, there is no easy way to turn a team around and this certainly was not the case with Carolina. However, I see a lot of similarities between the two teams. This year the 'Skins have been within one TD of winning every game until this week (the GB score is misleading of course -- I think the result of the presidential election just proves that the we won that game before the refs took it away). Both teams had great defenses and couldn't get the ball in the endzone and that cost them big time. The 'Skins certainly have their fair share of players making mistakes at crucial moments as well.
Look at every game we have played this year. In all of them you could say it came down to one or two plays; a mistake here, a penalty there, and what about some of the refs. It doesn't really take that much to overcome that. Maybe it's a guy begining to understand the system a little better, somebody gaining in confidence, the coaches adapting a little, a new player coming in, maybe even a little bit of luck (or in the case of the Cowboys last year a lot of luck), whatever... This team is heading in the right direction, last year we lost badly, at least this year we're close. A little something extra in evey game and this team is 7-3 instead of 3-7. This is not a disaster by any means especially when you consider the injuries we have sustained on defense and the abysmal play of Mark Brunell. Maybe we'll be in the Super Bowl next year, who knows? IMO, this team is definately better this year than Carolina was in 2002 and look how far they went.
BTW, Carolina is 2-8 this year after losing Smith and Davis to injury. So see what the loss of Steven Davis has done to that team. Well we lost him too and we clearly haven't recovered yet!
