Manuel Hot Pepper Lopez
cac this, cac that, c00n this c00n that
This thread, and whole forum got me weak. I'm glad I don't know hwat it feels like to be a fan of a consistently embarrassing teamhttp://es.redskins.com/topic/382842-hey-jay-gruden-welcome-to-hell/
That's all I could think about last night. A new guy comes in with a fresh face, fresh approach, fresh ideas, and energizes the fans and team a bit in the summer. Not a great roster, but enough talent to think that if pieces fall in place blah blah blah.
I like Gruden. I liked the hire and I'm certainly not giving up on him. But it took all of four games for him to adopt "the look."
It was the look Petitbone had at the end of the 1993 season. The look Norv adopted somewhere in the mid 90's... It was the same look he had in his last game against the Giants in 2000 when he sent Eddie Murray out to kick a field everyone (Norv included) knew he was incapable of making.
Spurrier added the famous gum flap to his look. Gibbs looking like he was on suicide watch at the end of the Bills game; Zorn's look after the swinging gate... Shanny's look during the Monday Night Massacre and most of the 2013 season.
The look of "uh oh, this is really bad. Didn't sign up for this."
Gruden had it last night.
Welcome to the Redskins Jay, you are now officially one of us.
In just four games Gruden now has one totally humiliating prime time division loss on his resume. A baffling defeat where from top to bottom the team looks like an absolute mess.
Yep, he's a Redskin now.
It's is both totally unfair and yet totally logical for fans to lump this latest debacle in with debacles of the past. In a fair world, Gruden would be given a totally clean slate where no past failures would color his present with the team. Life ain't fair though. Gruden will feel the pain and frustration of 20+ years....already. We all felt the same thing last night... Here we go again, same ole skins, etc.
The "culture" we so often discuss really is a phenomenon. Seemingly impossible to shake despite numerous efforts from all kinds of people with all kinds of approaches.
My fuse burned out early this year. I normally don't give up total hope until around Halloween or on a good year, Thanksgiving. But the really exciting part of the season ended for me last night. The 2014 season lasted about 19 days for me. Awesome.
What I mean by that:
These first four weeks, I was jazzed about the games. Giddy as they'd get close and nervous gameday morning. Excited that even though I thought we'd be 7-9, I had hope for better and was excited to see what the team might become. Interested in rooting against the other East teams thinking that maybe we'd be in the mix later this year.
After last night, that's all out the window. The truly competitive part of the season is over. We aren't winning jack or competing for the playoffs this year. That's clear.
Deep down I'm an optimist. It might be pretty darn deep after all these years, but it's still there. So I try to look for silver linings or reasons to still care about the games.
I haven't lost faith in Gruden or the QBs yet. I still have hope there. So I'd like to see us have some positives come out of this season still. Maybe if we can just survive until the BYE-- get there at 3-6 or something, we can rally in the second half and still reach that 7 or 8 win mark-- and at least say with a straight face that we improved and Gruden found a way to keep the season from nosediving. Maybe it will become clear where we are strong and where we need to get better.
Maybe just maybe at the end of the year we can say "that wasn't so bad" and legitimately look forward to the draft and 2015. But we could just as easily be looking at 3-13 again. And it will be hard to feel good about that.
I kind of feel bad for Gruden. Probably impossible to see from the outside how strong the force of losing is on the inside. Sucks you in like the vacuum in Spaceballs. Except this isn't as funny.
