At least he wouldn't turn it over as much as Rex.

Enjoy it, Redskins fans. Time to reap the rewards of every meaningless win the team chalked up this season. The Skins are currently scheduled to pick sixth in 2012′s NFL Draft, where they will be unable to secure the services of either Andrew Luck or Robert Griffin III, the two consensus elite quarterback prospects. Given Mike Shanahan will be forced to secure a QB to save his career, the Redskins will likely be doing one of the following: Forking up 2013′s first round selection to move up a paltry three or four slots to land RG III, pissing away 2012′s first round pick on a reach at quarterback or doing Lord knows what to sign Injun Joe if he somehow enters the market. All of these scenarios could have been averted with a few more losses. But hey, I guess I’m just a shitty fan for saying that.

I love Joe, but this photo looks like Make-a-Wish granted a retarded man's request to get a handjob from Marilyn Monroe.

Don’t let my bitching about the Redskins’ five wins fool you: I still don’t like the team being an embarrassment. And the fact that they’ve managed to perpetuate a turnover streak so old that it originated when the NFL’s black players were considered team property is pathetic. Hopefully, Rex Grossman will be gone next season, and, with him, so many of the turnovers that currently hang over the head of the Redskins like the cloud of a New Year’s sauerkraut fart.

I bet he's wearing the glove so he can scratch his junk and not spread the herpes elsewhere.

For some reason, everyone seems to forget that Mike Vick has herpes. And, well, the fact that he continues to play in spite of that is inspirational to me. I find it painful to play video games with a hangnail. If my dick were covered in blisters, I’d sit in a bathtub full of ice for a week while sobbing to myself. This guy deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor. As well as his bust in the “It Feels Better Without a Condom” Hall of Fame.

That trophy looks incomplete without a hand batting the ball back down to earth.

Sunday’s season finale featured a blocked field goal and an extra point that only evaded a defender’s hand because a butterfly farted at exactly the right moment. (Yes, it was that close.) There’s a lot of sloppiness on the part of the Redskins that I can forgive because I see similar levels of play from teams in equally dire straits, but no one’s kicking is as putrid as theirs, and that really bugs me. It’s one thing when you’re not getting laid but neither are any of your friends. It’s quite another when they’re whittling their bedposts into totem poles while you’re masturbating so much that it smells like a Bath & Body Works every time your underwear comes off.

Please sue me for posting this so that my name will wind up in the paper. Please. I have web traffic goals for 2012, goddammit.

Yes, Dan Snyder has, in theory, backed off. Yes, that means the brunt of this year’s failure rests with Coach Shanahan and GM Bruce Allen. And yet…I can’t help but feel that, as long as Dan Snyder owns the Washington Redskins, they are snakebitten.

Imagine there’s a really nice restaurant where, for some reason, horrible occurrences constantly take place. Patrons choke. The kitchen routinely bursts into flame. One night, the chef is caught pleasuring himself into the soup. Then it comes out that Voldemort owns the restaurant. And the restaurant’s manager, Gerry, who happens to be a really nice guy, issues a statement to the effect of, “Hey, I know He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named owns this establishment, but he’s really hands-off about things, and none of this is actually his fault. Let’s be grownups here.” Gerry, you ain’t foolin’ anyone, buddy. HTTR.

'My closest celebrity friend is Stewart Little.'

Imagine my surprise when Brandon Banks actually did something and ran for a 59-yard touchdown…which was promptly called back due to an exceptionally questionable holding penalty on Darrel Young. Then, as if to plop a hemorrhoidal cherry on my shit sundae, Rex Grossman threw an interception the very next play. It’s like arriving at the airport only to realize that you left your passport in your bedroom, then getting a speeding ticket as you race home to retrieve it, and, finally, once home, walking in on your wife in bed with your father. Or not. No one bats 1,000 on metaphors, gang.

'Unlike Brandon, I get to party with individuals of human stature.'

After losing Roy Helu to injury (because the average Redskin has all the durability of Samuel L. Jackson in Unbreakable), I assumed it was safe to flush the team’s rushing yardage down the shitter. As it turns out, Evan Royster is also a damn fine running back, and the Redskins’ running production was as sound as ever. If nothing else, Mike Shanahan seems able to both draft and successfully utilize running backs. And that’s kinda awesome. Except when weighed against his countless shortcomings.

Brian Orakpo should be logging more time on the practice field and less time at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, where, if this commercial is any indicator, he’s obviously spent countless hours as of late.

This is the fourth time this season the Redskins have been lit up for 30 or more points. Which is depressing because Shanahan’s mantra this season has been “Hey, I know our offense blows, but that’s because I’ve spent our drafts thus far addressing the defense. In all honesty, I’m not worried about the defense quite yet because, well, would you be enthusiastic about fighting to get Rex Grossman back on the field? I thought not.

Fuck you, Matt Barkley, you Dennis the Menace-looking motherfucker.

On December 22, Matt Barkley, one of the top three pro quarterback prospects for next year’s draft, announced he was going to stay at USC one more year because he had some “unfinished business.” (“Unfinished business” better be a euphemism for “several TAs I’ve yet to fuck” or I will be even angrier.) With that news, the pool of amazing QBs the Redskins could have landed next year has dwindled down to two, with only one (RG III) being a realistic option. And our odds of snagging him without trading up are iffy at this point. That’s been the joy of the Redskins this season: You can’t even wholeheartedly root for them come game time because you know each win will just hurt more come draft day. HTTR!

I won't be sad to see Rex and his Ricky-Gervais-circa-Extras-season-2-lookin'-ass depart DC in the near future.

Is it racist of me to say that Oj Atogwe has the face of a homeless man that you'd expect to urinate on you if you didn't cough up some change? Because I don't mean it that way.

Ryan Kerrigan looks like he made a deal with the Devil where he was given a mighty physique but in exchange was cursed with the head of a 12-year-old boy.

Eli with his wife. Or cousin. I'm not sure. They look disturbingly related.

A nice 'Stop filming me, asshole' glare from Roy Helu, one of the engines of the Redskins' renaissance.

At some point, you have to quit bitching when your mediocre team wins and screws up its draft picks and enjoy the fact that, just maybe, they’re heading in the right direction. Rex, picks and all, actually played well on Sunday. Roy Helu was great and the defense harassed the Giants like a new secretary around the halls of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

Would I have preferred that the Redskins swept the Cowboys this year instead of the Giants? Absolutely. Defeating Dallas ranks above wiping the flies from an African baby’s eyes in the pantheon of good deeds. But the Giants have kicked the Redskins’ dicks in the dirt for ages now, and, if the Skins had to screw things up by winning, I’m fine with said W coming against the G-Men. HTTR.

If you’ve read any of my “Five Thoughts” columns by now, you know that, since game seven, I’ve been pulling for the Redskins to lose ‘em all so that they can (hopefully) draft a franchise quarterback next year. That said, it doesn’t take much for me to forget all that, get caught up in the moment and root for a Redskins victory. It happened two weeks ago against Dallas and it certainly kicked in against the Jets this weekend. Because, as much as I enjoy Rex’s antics, there’s something about playing the guy that makes you want to sock him in his fat gut and send him to the mat like King Hippo. Ultimately, the Redskins lost and I got an entertaining game, so I suppose I owe Rex a thank you. May you enjoy all the little piggies you can cram into your mouth this evening, sir.

If you look really hard, you can see a smile on Roy's face. Go ahead and look. It isn't some trick to get you to lean in and then realize a guy in the stands pulled out his hog à la Teen Wolf.

Even if Mike Shanahan ultimately proves to be a failure in his stint with the Redskins, I’m going to be thankful that I experienced the thrill of the team drafting skilled, productive rookies. Helu is quickly becoming my favorite of the bunch which will no doubt anger my former rookie crush Ryan Kerrigan, but he should relax, because, while I’ve gone black, I’m sure I’ll go back. In the meantime, though, I’m enjoying the best running the Redskins have had in years. Is this how other teams that didn’t piss away their draft picks have felt all along? It’s like the difference between actual sex and whatever you want to refer to coitus using a condom as.

For those who didn’t get the Teen Wolf reference, click here

Ever wonder what Benny Blanco from the Bronx would look like if he were ridiculously gay? Now you don't have to.

As a Redskins fan, I have a PhD in middling quarterbacks. And Mark Sanchez is as glorious a specimen of the species as it gets. I’m sure this will sound a bit like sour grapes because the Jets beat us, but can you imagine what piss-poor shape the Redskins would be in if Dan Snyder had managed to flush their every draft pick down the shitter to acquire this guy back in 2009? If Donnovan McNabb was the price they had to pay to avoid going full retard with Sanchez, so be it.

Sean Astin on the set of Rudy, wondering to himself just how many people who have no business being near a football field he will inspire to someday be on one.

Another week, another piss-poor return where Brandon would have been better off taking a knee. I don’t resent the guy having heart (okay, I’m a titanic pussy, so I do), but he needs to be smarter in picking his battles. The man is the size of Willow. I’m convinced he’s going to disintegrate upon impact one of these days. And that would lead to a fumble, which is my real concern.

I'm an extremely big man when hiding behind a keyboard, which is why I feel safe in saying what I'm about to say.

For those of you who don’t know, it was announced immediately after Sunday’s game that Trent Williams and Fred Davis, two of the Redskins’ brightest stars, were to be suspended four games (which translates to the remainder of the season) for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy. What’s worse was that the substance in question for both wasn’t a performance-enhancing drug but weed.

Look, like most people, I think weed’s criminalization is ridiculous. My teenage years were spent sucking on a bong harder than Richard Gere’s lover trying to inhale that gerbil back into the Habitrail tube from whence he came. But to cost your team your presence because you wanted to get high (or even curb your anxieties like noted NFL pothead Ricky Williams once claimed) is a dick move. I suppose it’s easy to rush to judgment when I haven’t heard either Trent or Fred’s side of things (which is why I like doing it), but there isn’t much they can say in their defense short of a chance encounter with Tommy Chong. Because who could say no to that opportunity?

Any excuse to post these two. Oh, and feel free to click the photo for a surprise. (Hint: The surprise is an Amazon affiliate link to Dumb & Dumber on Blu-ray because I'm an online panhandler.)

And I don’t mean that in a “the Redskins won ugly” sense. I mean that the level of production talent utilized by FOX to handle a Redskins-Seahawks game was every bit as scintillating as you’d think it was. Look, I get it, neither the Redskins nor the Seahawks are going to command a top shelf team like Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, but Jim Mora and Ron Pitts? The make Sonny, Sam and Larry sound like poet laureates. Even the camera work was dark and out of focus, like when they’d smear a pride parade’s worth of Vaseline on the lens to film that old crone Cybill Shepherd for Moonlighting. Very unsatisfying.

I didn't know they gave trophies to celebrate bumbling mediocrity. Unless this was a mock award, like some sort of pig party scenario.

Before this season, I really didn’t believe that kicks were blocked in the NFL; I simply thought it was something fun they put into Madden. My innocence has been robbed from me by Graham Gano, who, at last count, has had 146 kicks blocked this season, including a field goal and extra point in Sunday’s game. (I didn’t take the time to look up the actual number, but 146 feels right, so let’s go with it.) A lot of people are blaming the weak offensive line for Gano’s failures, but I like to be loud and shout things at the TV screen during the game and “Fuck Gano” rolls off the tongue a lot more easily than “Fuck our patchwork offensive line and its sporadic productivity, though I hope its needs will hopefully be addressed in the 2012 draft at some point.” Plus I came up with “Hey hey/ho ho/Graham Gano has got to go” while writing this and think that no man whose last name partially rhymes with “go” deserves the benefit of the doubt.

'This is muh 'I gots ta poop' face.'
(I know that Pete Carroll doesn't actually talk like Jed Clampett, but it read better that way.)

I jumped like that once, but it was because I heard a scary noise, and I also produced a quart of urine in the process.

I know that Martin Luther King, Jr. loved believing that white folks and black folks are all the same deep down, so I guess it’s good he died a while ago, because this clip of Roy Helu hurdling over Roy Lewis and into the end zone refutes that notion pretty thoroughly. With Leonard Hankerson lost in the Miami game a few weeks ago, it’s awesome to see another rookie show the potential to do some spectacular things in a few years when the Redskins are hopefully less ass-tastic.

Sometimes, losing the battle means winning the war. Plus, if 300's any indicator, losing can look really, really cool. (Photo links to a 300 Blu-ray. My Spartan ancestors are rolling in their graves with disgust right now.)

Here’s today’s vocabulary lesson. The word? Pyrrhic victory. (I guess that’s two words, but are you here to read or are you here to be a prick?) A Pyrrhic victory is one that comes at too high a cost, with the implication being that one more such victory will be ultimately ruinous. Sound familiar? Wins in football are great when you are, you know, winning. When you’re a losing team that’s playing for next season, they range from ho-hum to actively harmful for your long-term goals. Sunday’s victory against Seattle was merely ho-hum. One more win like that and the Redskins’ odds of finding a franchise quarterback in next year’s draft really take a hit. Let’s just hope this doesn’t happen again.

That guy with the Asian eyes from 500 Days of Summer is right: It feels nice to love something.

The Redskins have not played a team competitively since the Eagles five weeks ago. And, in that time, I’ve undergone the yearly metamorphosis that eventually occurs during every Redskins season. You know, the one where a fan whose heart can’t take it anymore goes from thinking “Please, God, I will do anything short of something I didn’t want to do to begin with if you let them win this week” to “Fuck it, the season’s over, let’s notch another loss and land some better draft picks.”

That being said, and even though Skins’ playoff hopes have died as quickly and quietly as a SIDS baby, I still refuse to accept losing meekly to the Dallas Cowboys. As logical as I tried to be about things, as much as I attempted to rationalize that a L was ultimately what the Redskins needed, I watched that game with every fiber of my being wanting to take Dallas’ season down in flames. While the game’s outcome was indeed a heartbreaking loss, I was grateful to have felt anything watching the Redskins again.

Holding your hands in that position is sign language for 'fumble waiting to happen.'

As a Redskins fan, one of the few bright spots this season has been the emergence of Fred Davis at tight end in the absence of Chris Cooley. At least it’s been a bright spot for most Redskins fans. I remain unconvinced about the guy. Yeah, he makes some great plays, but he also drops easy catches and has been responsible for some groan-inducing turnovers. His hands remind me of seal flippers: Massive, but slippery and possessing shitty grip strength. Maybe he should try balancing the ball on his nose.

The only Dallas football player I've ever liked.

And by that, I mean they look good enough to get to the playoffs but weak enough to lose in an embarrassing manner that sends the torch-wielding mobs out for Tony Romo’s head once again. I have nothing against Dallas fans as human beings. Hell, some of my best friends are Dallas fans. (I’m sounding like a racist trying to convince people I’m not racist.) But the Dallas Cowboys are my mortal sports enemy, and, without a team of my own that’s done a goddamn thing in 20 years, I’m left to delight in their failures. Hey, as far as life’s consolation prizes go, I’ve had worse. (Insert photo of every woman I’ve ever slept with here.)

Ever seen Scanners? Exactly.

Besides an ill-advised attempt at icing the kicker which robbed Tony Romo of a shot at costing his team the game as usual, Mike Shanahan’s inability to admit that this year is a rebuilding effort by the Redskins and insist on (even if sporadically) playing aging veterans who won’t be on the roster next year has left me wondering where the guy’s mind is. (That and those crazy eyes of his which say “I’ve bitten off at more than one nose in a bar fight.”) I believe Shanahan deserves two more full seasons at the helm, but that’s less due to anything he’s shown me on the field and more because I’m sick of the Redskins treating coaches like diapers to be defecated upon then discarded on a biannual basis.

As with all of my more esoteric photos, it'll make sense in a minute.

The consequence of caring about a football game is that it hurts when your team ultimately fails to win it. In the end, though, the Redskins needed to lose to the Cowboys for the long-term success of the organization. Victory might have been enough push them out of range of a truly great quarterback in next year’s draft and, though they’re lacking in several positions, quarterback is obviously the most glaring need of all.

Think of Sunday’s game using this analogy: You’re in prison, doing three years for a crime you didn’t commit and wondering how things can get worse when the answer comes in the form of “violent anal rape.” As the prison doctor is stitching your rectum back together into some semblance of its former perky self, he notices you have a polyp, which turns out to be cancerous. Because it was detected early, however, it was completely treatable and, eventually, you go on to live a long, happy, healthy life. Do you wonder why Fate decided to use your rectum snapping like the timing belt on an ’87 Taurus as the implement of your salvation? Every day. But are you ultimately thankful to be alive? Yeah. Probably. I think? Honestly, I’ve had better analogies.

Just the sort of open-mindedness and willingness to experiment I'm looking for from my quarterback.

I wish the Redskins had the foresight to abduct Dan Marino and/or Snowflake, the Dolphins' mascot.

Best handy ever.

That could have been a picture of Leonard Hankerson about to catch a ball and me commenting on how strong and sure his hands look, but tits make everything infinitely better, so, hey, you’re welcome. After a few games in which Mike Shanahan has opted to finally throw the ball Hankerson’s direction, he’s shown a remarkable ability to make some plays that the Redskins haven’t been able to threaten defenses with since the days of Art Monk. While watching a high draft pick blossom on the field is old hat to the fans of good teams, for Washington Redskins aficionados still coughing up the salty loads that were Malcom Kelly and Devin Thomas, it’s an incredible thrill seeing a receiver do anything at all, much less do it well.

Update: Two hours after I wrote this, Mike Shanahan revealed that Leonard Hankerson sustained an injury in Sunday’s game that will end his season. I’m not saying it’s my fault because I wrote this, but I’m not saying it’s not my fault, either. FML.

I'm bringing up that everyone should own a Ryan Kerrigan jersey in addition to their Chris Cooley jersey at the next white people meeting.

For those who live out of market and aren’t forced to endure the weekly three-and-a-half hour prostate exam that is a Redskins game, you’ve been missing out on some pure gold: The Brian Orakpo Geico caveman commercials. The first half of the season featured this triumph, in which Orakpo, whose acting ability is every bit as good as you’d expect a linebacker’s to be, makes the guy playing the caveman seem like a young Brando by comparison. This week, however, fans were treated to a second commercial (embedded above) which features Brian playing scrabble with the caveman, whose feelings are hurt when Orakpo spells “neanderthal” on the board. I have to say, it felt a little weird seeing a black guy use a hurtful racial slur starts with the letter “n” then laugh about it. You know what would have made me laugh? The caveman returning the favor. Now you’ve talking viral video (at least in the South). How about it, Geico?

11>0. Good job, men. And now on to the bad news.

If vaginas could form expressions, this is how they would look after I had entered them.

I haven't been this intimidated by a black man since Simon Adebisi.

I work for a sports radio station in the DC area. And, I swear to all things holy, when the subject of the Redskins comes up, every other caller says something akin to the following: “We need to run the ball more. We need to smash opponents in the mouth and get back to what we did when we were great.”

Well, not to shit in anyone’s sundae, but most elite NFL squads don’t do that anymore. They rely upon speedy, turnover-generating defenses and pass-happy offenses to generate yardage. And yet, the 49ers are kicking ass in exactly the manner that the Redskins did under Generalissimo Gibbs, running the ball 1,400 times per game with that human battering ram Frank Gore and utilizing a defense so old school that it refers to its black players as “colored”. I suppose I should find it heartening that someone has managed to succeed with the Redskins’ old formula, but I’m far more depressed that they aren’t the ones to do it.

My new favorite Ryan Kerrigan photo. He looks a 12-year-old with a glandular disorder. Though I'd never, ever say that to his face.

I have to commend the heart that the Redskins’ defense has shown even as their offense continues to sputter like a Model T. There has been no sign that they are throwing in the towel even though they are fighting tooth and nail to put that mediocrity, John Beck, back on the field. Ryan Kerrigan hit Alex Smith so hard yesterday that the 49ers had to call a time out so their quarterback could scour the field to find his dislodged rectum. Okay, that didn’t actually happen because Alex Smith isn’t a leper, but it was still an awesome hit.

If you don't get the reference, I'm sorry that you're not as well-versed in the arts as me.

Hey, I’m trying to look on the bright side, here. Graham Gano had a Redskins record-setting 59-yard field goal, which was cool. (You know what would have been cooler than a record-setting field goal? Any Redskins touchdown ever.) And Sav Rocca continues to amaze, not just because he’s a tremendous punter, but the variety of ethnic jokes an Italian Australian can be fodder for is staggering.

There's no way in Hell I was only using this photo once.

This is abhorrent for me to say, because my life has always been a non-stop cavalcade of accolades and triumphs (end sarcasm), but some losses are better than others. Last week’s loss was of the “bad” variety. The young players who you hope will one day become the foundation for a winner didn’t get enough time on field. It all seemed like a bunch of guys still not recognizing that they’re in the middle of a rebuilding year. Thankfully, against the 49ers, a lot of young guns, from Roy Helu to Leonard Hankerson, really got a chance to show what they can do for the Redskins in a year or two, when the team (hopefully) has a quarterback and depth. Unless Daniel Snyder panics after this season and flushes it all down the goddamn toilet. Hail to the Redskins.

(If you enjoyed the article, click here to listen to this week’s episode of my radio show. I’d say it’s funny, but that’d be rather self-serving of me, wouldn’t it?)

I spent the first quarter of the Redskins game listening to it on the radio as I drove home from Richmond, aka my happy place, a magical land of really good restaurants and tattooed art students rife with daddy issues.

My five thoughts this week are more scattered than they typically are, mostly due to the fact that I spent some of the game listening to it on the radio and then ignored the final quarter to instead watch real football in the form of the Patriots-Steelers game. (Which, by the way, was awesome.) On with the show.

From left to right, Sam Huff, Sonny Jurgensen and that duplicitous Iago Larry Michael.

The shine of the fantastic Halloween weekend I had in Richmond wore off with a quickness as I spent the first hour of the game not only stuck in I-95′s soul-sucking, looks-like-a-scene-from-The-Walking-Dead traffic, but forced to listen to Dan Snyder’s triumvirate of mediocrity covering it on the radio. For those who live outside of the DC area, I’m not sure if there’s a worse radio team in existence than Sonny, Sam and Larry. Sonny sounds worn out and in need of a nap, Sam comes off as senile to the point I expect him to either soil his pants on-air or forget what decade we’re in and casually refer to one of the players using the n-bomb and Larry spends the entire broadcast trying to figure out whose ass he should bury his sycophantic tongue inside to best advance his career. While that all reads like it’d make for a delightfully listenable train wreck, somehow, it doesn’t.

While Googling 'John Beck', I came across this guy, apparently, also named John Beck. I guess he was an actor from yesteryear. Maybe his career went nowhere because he looks like he blew the Marshmallow Man in his promo still.

This is the one fact you need to know from yesterday’s abortion against the Buffalo Bills: Seven of the Redskins’ 11 offensive drives gained less than 10 yards. It’s hard to quantify how bad that is. If a mailman failed to deliver seven of 11 packages, he’d be fired. If a surgeon lost seven of 11 patients, he’d be sued for malpractice. Yet, if an offense in DC fails to do produce on seven of its 11 drives, it’s paid millions. See, conservatives? The private sector in this city can waste money, too.

Maybe the team should end each practice doing this.

While I’ve already tossed in the towel on this season and, thus, thought I had girded myself against the pain of the loss-bukkake I was expecting to face for its remaining ten games, a shutout penetrates even the deepest of emotional armor. It’s one thing to lose: It’s another to not even score a field goal. Without hyperbole, I can guarantee you there are college programs in this country that could have scored on the Buffalo Bills yesterday, yet the Redskins were unable to do that. Goddamn.

Has anyone ever figured out what's going on with the Bills' logo? Because that red thing looks like a spear getting buried in the side of its head, which doesn't exactly convey a sense of invincibility and triumph.

There’s a great quote about losing from the timeless film Patton: “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in Hell for a man who lost and laughed.” And, while everything the Scotch-soaked George C. Scott said in front of that glorious flag is true, I will interject this: Losing hurts a lot more when it’s to a weak team or an NFC East rival. At least the Bills are neither of those things.

Sometimes, you can't bear watching something you love sink so low. (I suppose that applies to both The Simpsons and the Redskins, coincidentally enough.)

Look, I’m as loyal a Redskins fan as any. But good football is a precious, finite thing, much like those scant years with your wife before motherhood robs her of her figure and she’s dropping deuces with the door open because she doesn’t give a damn anymore. So, in those situations where I can tell the Redskins are playing the role of quinceañera piñata, I’m now letting myself flip to any game that looks more entertaining/less painful. Yesterday, that game was the Steelers versus the Patriots, which was all the more watchable because I hate both of those teams. It was like seeing two ex-girlfriends beating the living shit out of each other with baseball bats: No matter what the outcome, I felt like I was the winner.

For what is a peacock without its plumage?

While I’m still of the belief that John Beck is nothing but a placeholder for the next real Redskins quarterback (the same way a child of divorce holds out hope his stepdad will be replaced by either his biological father or Wolverine), I’ll admit he wasn’t as disappointing as Rex Grossman. He scored some points, only had one flukey turnover and looked more the victim of a conservative game plan than being totally devoid of talent. And, though I watched Cam Newton the entire game with the same envy that you’d gaze from a shanty in the slums at a mansion on the hill, I was thankful to have a roof over my head. (Until that roof has a four turnover game of its own, in which case, burn it to the ground.)

Soft, chocolate lips.

For four quarters, all I could think to myself is, “How much better would the Redskins be with that sort of firepower at quarterback and wide receiver?” The league is dominated by high-powered offenses, which makes sense given that THEY’RE THE GUYS THAT CAN SCORE POINTS. Is there a single player on the current Redskins roster that even somewhat measures up to Newton and Smith? The answer is no. Our offense is woefully devoid of even an ounce of what the scouts refer to as “awesomesauce.” For all of you looking for an immediate turnaround, I believe the Skins are at least two good drafts away from having a roster stocked enough to truly compete for a Super Bowl. Yes, that’s depressing as all Hell, but at least there’s finally a chance the team is going in the right direction and can arrive at the promised land someday.

I want their black guys, not our black guys.

If watching Cam Newton and Steve Smith in action convinced you that all black athletes possess superhuman abilities, you needed to look no further than the Redskins and their 4,000 dropped balls to realize what bs most stereotypes truly are. Anyone who tells me they said “Even I could have caught that” fewer than eight times Sunday is a liar. Or a vet who lost both of his arms overseas. In which case, I thank you for your courageous sacrifice.

Helping people say goodbye since 1991 (coincidentally, the Redskins' last good year).

Is it a little early to declare that the dream is already dead? Sure. If you’re the type that turns on a slasher film and thinks, “Hey, maybe every last teen is going to make it through this suffering no more than a good scare,” then, by all means, keep your rose-tinted glasses on. The team’s two offensive engines, Santana Moss and Tim Hightower, suffered severe injuries. Plus one look at the remainder of the Redskins’ schedule should be enough to convince any rational being that it’s over, Johnny. The first six games of the season? The part they 3-3′d? That was the easy part. Coming up are the Bills, the 49ers, the Jets, the Patriots and a rematch with every NFC East team. Only the Dolphins, Seahawks and Vikings look winnable at this point.

'That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.'

Anyone who saw the Redskins rack up a few early wins this season and thought they were going to go all the way has both the patience and the intellect of a child. The team simply isn’t deep enough or talented enough to do much in the long run. With that depressing nugget licked clean off of our realistic plate, I will say this: In spite of the ADD, petulant fan base, in spite of the damage done through years of dysfunctional drafting and the growing pains that arise from a new coaching staff arriving every few years, the Redskins need only a few effective drafts to compete at the top of the league. Hell, an awesome quarterback-wide receiver tandem alone would allow them to lock up the NFC East. (Which is akin to saying “I’d be getting laid a lot more if I were packing a million in the bank and 12″ in my pants,” but both statements, while obvious, are also true.) If you don’t believe me, look no further than Detroit. No matter how dead a franchise may seem, it’s never more than a few good years from being a contender once more.