Sunday, January 6, 2013

Where there's a Will Montgomery, there's a way to lose...

On "Buffy The Vampire Slayer," the title character's nemesis is the Hellmouth, a portal that allows demons to enter our world and inflict evil upon the land. Right around 7:30 p.m. EST today, those superheroes the Seattle Seahawks slammed the door shut on the Hailmouth, a gateway to darkness that had allowed seven straight wins to come up to the surface and give Redskins fans dreams of their first Super Bowl win in 21 years.

Even better, this was a painful defeat for the 'Skins, who led 14-0 after two possessions and looked primed to do to the Seahawks what the Seahawks had been doing to their opponents the past few weeks. By the fourth quarter, the 'Skins had remembered they were the 'Skins, literally falling over each other to be the goat of the game. Goats are in the bovidae family, but these four truly qualified for bovi-duh status:

1) Will Montgomery. In playoff lore, there's The Catch, The Drive, The Fumble, and now for 'Skins fans, the Snap. With Washington trailing by a touchdown in the fourth quarter and backed up to their own 12-yard-line, center Montgomery snapped it a yard or so to the left of quarterback Robert Griffin III. Griffin, caught up in the momentum of his dropback, never got a finger on the ball, and it lay there for a few seconds until Clinton McDonald fell on it for the Seahawks. RGIII's knee buckled during the onslaught, ending his night, and Steven Hauschka ended the 'Skins night with his 22-yard field goal.

2) DeAngelo Hall. What does $23 million in guaranteed money and a maximum of $55 million get you? If you're the Redskins, it gets you a cornerback that Marshawn Lynch can leave flatfooted for the last 23 yards he needs for the go-ahead-for-good rushing touchdown.

3) Leonard Hankerson. This second-year wideout heils from St. Thomas Aquinas High School (Fla.), which derives its name from Aquinas, the 13th-century Catholic patron saint of education. When Aquinas failed a theological disputation at university, chair of theology Albertus Magnus said, "We call him the dumb ox, but in his teaching he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world."

Hankerson's "dumb ox" moment came early in the fourth quarter, a dropped ball on third-and-7 that would've given the 'Skins a new set of downs around midfield. Instead, Hankerson had to settle for an immediate bellowing from 'Skins fans heard throughout Landover, Md.

4) RGIII. For all the accolades, RGIII could not transcend his rookie status in the end, taking a 12-yard sack on his final drive instead of throwing away the ball. The blunder backed the 'Skins up to the point where that bad snap was downright fatal, rather than merely catastrophic.

The result of all this was pure Redskins Hater porn: shot after shot of despondent Redskins fans from the FOX broadcast team as RGIII was helped off the field. Cheer up Fur Coat Lady, at least you still have the fur coat to keep you warm throughout the suddenly four-weeks-longer offseason!

All in all, a good day. Just about nailed it on the pick: had the point-spread (a 10-point Seattle win), but was a little off on the score (24-14, not 27-17). More on the game (and I do mean "moron") to come later, including a look at the whole RGIII post-injury mess and what was probably the last national TV mention of RGIII predecessor RG-Zilch: Rex Grossman.



















Saturday, January 5, 2013

From stew-y to Griffin and zero other bad "Family Guy" puns


Hello, and welcome to Sieg Heil to the Redskins, the official home of The Redskins Hater, your one-stop shopping source for the best Redskins hatred on the intercyberwebnets. Like any superhero, The Redskins Hater has his own origin story. Superman fled Krypton to get away from idiotic Redskins fans, anti-communist businessman Iron Man built his suit to protect his country from the Reds(kins), and I happened to live in the Washington, D.C. area circa 1983. Remember those days, when we all had dyed, poofed-up hair, were listening to Flock of Seagulls, and rooting the Redskins on to their second Super Bowl victory in our nation's capital metropolitan area? Well, the latter bit of obnoxiousness pissed me off as a 7-year-old living in the suburb of Waldorf, Md. and drove me straight into the arms of Dallas Cowboys fandom, where Hollywood Henderson baptized me in cocaine and let me loose on the world.
Which meant absolutely nothing until 2008 when I, a fledgling sportswriter, took a job with the Culpeper Times, Culpeper, Virginia's second-leading local news source (out of two). There, a kindly former USA Today soccer writer named Peter Chespar Brewington III allowed me to pen a weekly anti-Redskins column, as sort of a counterweight to the deadweight pro-Redskins column that a douchebag named Andy Gillam was doing, presumably to get free media credentials. Well, that was my motivation too. But as much as I hated writing columns, I actually kind of enjoyed doing this one, proof of the transformative powers of Redskin-hatred.
After 23 installments, the column was canned by management because a Redskins fan had cancelled their subscription. Maybe it was two Redskins fans. At any rate, that's like 10 percent of a small-town newspaper's subscriber base, so I totally understood the freakout. It's easier to replace 500 words of copy per week than find a literate Redskins fan, after all.
So that was the middle of the beginning of the end with that newspaper company (long story), and eventually I found myself moving to western Kentucky to take a job with a daily newspaper in Madisonville. There was no point in resurrecting The Redskins Hater in their pages: our "local" team is the Tennessee Titans, 90 miles away. Nor was The Titans Hater an attractive option. How can anyone watch Jake Locker try to throw a pass and not find it the cutest thing in the world, rather than something to be hated?
But the Redskins hate was still there. And the Redskins were still losing in ways that made me mournful for The Redskins Hater columns that never were. What fun it would have been to put the "weakly" back into "weekly column" and write about that 2011 quarterbacking confection known as John Beck and Rex Grossman, the two bad tastes that go great together for turnover-hungry opposing defenses? Or the move from Jason Campbell to Campbell's Chunky Soup spokesman Donovan McNabb, whose noodle evidently wasn't developed enough to be trusted with something as basic as the two-minute drill.
Then the Redskins did a 180 (well, a 495, given that they're right off the Beltway) this past April and made a shockingly competent personnel decision: trading up to draft QB Robert Griffin III. Two victories over the Cowboys later, the latter putting Washington in the playoffs instead of Dallas, it's become clear that the world needs a Redskins Hater more than ever.
And that's where this site comes into play: a clearinghouse for all things anti-Redskins, an anti-Hog heaven, if you will. I'll be resurrecting the column here, and supplementing it with various tidbits of idiocy coming out of that sad and pathetic place known as Redskins World. First things first, Washington takes on Seattle today, so a prediction: Seattle beats Washington 27-17, that burgundy gateway of darkness known as the Hailmouth closes, and the world returns to its natural order. Wrapup to come after the game.