A perfect football weekend...

I can't say enough about how ecstatic I am over how good the Redskins have looked so far this season. And not in that mid-nineties, Norv Turner-era way--where the team would explode out of the gates, flash in the pan style, before inevitably settling into a second half (game or season, take your pick) collapse like cheap, imported clockwork--no, this team is for real; against some of the best competition in the whole NFL, the 'Skins have been playing 4 quarters of solid football per game.

I don't want to say that football is the most mentally/emotionally demanding sport there is, but football is the most mentally/emotionally demanding sport there is. If you disagree, you are not a Buffalo Bills fan and/or you were too drunk at the time to remember the Giants game from week one.

My point is, football is more than just X's and O's-level strategy; in fact, it's equal parts head and heart, and it's pretty hard to win consistently with only one of the two. As a Redskins fan, I'm completely familiar with this construct: the team's last coach who embodied both ideals was Joe Gibbs version 1.0. Norv Turner, the offensive architect of the 1990's Cowboys Super Bowl dynasty, became a Redskins head coach who was undeniably a master of X's and O's--yet a terrible motivator and game manager. The next two permanent Redskins head coaches who followed Turner--Marty "3 yards and a cloud of dust" Schottenheimer and Steve "5 wideout formations at all times" Spurrier--however, were neither great strategists nor motivators; failures in both regards. Joe Gibbs version 2.0 was merely the latter--a great motivator--but only a partial failure as an in-game strategist; as his offensive philosophies were simply too painfully out-dated to consistently succeed in today's NFL, especially against the sharper teams in the league.

Rookie Redskins coach Jim Zorn appears, at this early juncture of the season, to possess the strengths of both Norv Turner--a modern and innovative X's and O's strategy--and Joe Gibbs version 2.0--exceptional motivational skills--which, combined, make the 2008 Redskins a very dangerous team to the rest of the NFL.

As I posted on a fellow die-hard Redskins fan's facebook page, following the Redskins' most recent triumph over Philadelphia:



The Redskins, this season, have the personnel and the coaching staff in place to go far into the NFL playoffs. My initial prediction for their final record this season--11 and 5--may prove yet to be not generous/homerific enough. With the hardest segment of their schedule now behind their 4-1 record, the 'Skins are potentially a 12-4 or 13-3 team.

Book it.

P.S. - Oh yea, my fantasy football team is 5-0 right now...NBD.

3-1

Disclaimer: this post is somewhat mathematical in nature.

• 26: the number of rushing yards Cowboys running back Marion Barber III had vs. the Redskins on Sunday; also, coincidentally, the jersey number of Redskins running back Clinton Portis, whom Barber somehow beat out in Pro Bowl votes last season, despite having inferior overall statistics.
  
  
• 121: the number of rushing yards Clinton Portis had vs. the Cowboys on Sunday. (121 is 95 more than 26.)
  
  
• 248: the number of college players chosen before Redskins safety Chris Horton (of UCLA) in last April's NFL draft; coincidentally, 248 is also the number of rushing yards Clinton Portis had this season, before Sunday's game in Dallas.
  
  
• 3: the number of players chosen after Redskins safety Chris Horton in last April's NFL draft--y'know...before it ended; also, coincidentally, the total number of interceptions Redskins 7th-round draft pick Chris Horton--an early contender for NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year after a huge 3 turnover game against New Orleans and a game-saving pick in Dallas--has accumulated at this early point in the season. Oh yea...and it's also how many wins the Redskins have through 4 games.
  
  
• 11: the number of years that my Dad and I have been saying the following--a tradition we continued tonight via text messages--to each other regarding--after Darrell Green of course--our favorite modern-era Redskins player James Thrash, who (at age 33 and still on the team) scored a key touchdown against Dallas today and is pictured at the top of this post in his old-school glory:
  
  
• 

HAIL TO THE REDSKINS!!!!!!!!

Press Release From the Team Formerly Known as "The Campbell Brothers"

(This was originally posted by me, in response to Kent's disdain for my cutting Jason Campbell, on our league's message-board; I was compelled to share the lulz here as well...)

First off, I'd like to start off the press-conferencin' on a hearty note of congratulations for Santana Moss--191 total yards and that glorious, season-defining touchdown--that was a gameball-worthy performance...and as soon as this press conference is finally over, this team is going straight to Pizza Hut! Coach's treat.

I would like to comment here on what Coach Groh said about my handling of Jason Campbell's recent, unconditional release from the team this past week. Let me make myself perfectly clear here: you will never find a bigger Jason Campbell supporter than myself; not in this league, not in any league. In fact, I am proud that this is the third year in a row that I've had JC start out a fantasy season as my team's primary backup signal-caller.

Speaking from the position of familiarity I've developed with JC over the course of our three year fantasy relationship, I can say that, well...sometimes Jason just needs some good old-fashioned negative reinforcement--which is exactly what I was giving JC when I directed that "doody head" remark towards him--to play at his very best. Despite the fact he was no longer on my team, JC's stellar performance yesterday still validates our sacred fan/coach-player bond.

Jason Campbell is a player on the verge of greatness. However, all his impending greatness would just be wasted behind Donovan McNabb--who is, after all, undeniably better than JC right now, sad to say--on my bench, all season long. It is for that reason, out of fairness to Jason, that I owe him the chance to go out and try to land a starting job elsewhere, so that he may continue to grow as a player, and as a man.

I am ever honored to have been a part of Jason's journey, and wish him luck in his future endeavors...

P.S. -- Coach Groh, while JC's 321 yards and single touchdown yesterday were indeed impressive, the guy I signed to replace him on my bench, Philip Rivers, happened to throw for 377 yards and three touchdowns. THAT, my friend, is "blowing up."

P.P.S. -- Alright, squad! Whistle's blowin'! Pile into the mini-van...it's pizza-time!

99+55=30

The above picture is a screengrab of the actual chat-room from my fantasy football live-draft that we just finished a couple hours ago; Yale, who is the league commissioner, made at least 2 funnies...

Man, my fantasy roster is STACKED this year. Obviously, it's gonna change a whole lot between now and the end of fantasy playoff time,--and with an L.T./Randy Moss deal between myself and Jake potentially in the works right now, it may change rather soon... Basically, Jake's the biggest Randy Moss devotee I've ever known; he'd walk barefoot through hot coals for #84 #18 #81. Jake luckily [for me] drew the #1 overall pick, and since he was busy out in Portland, conveniently [for me], had LaDainian auto-picked to his team. I took a few gambles, I know: Cotchery was a bit of a reach, but he had 1100 yds. last season--and now has Brett Favre throwing him the ball. Chester Taylor and Ricky Williams are both backups in real life, but play behind a couple guys who have reputations for injuries, so both of them could, great players in their own rights, have great fantasy upside if they ever have to take over for their respective teams. Even though I accidentally drafted Kevin Curtis, whom I didn't know was currently injured, I feel pretty good about my squad's chances right now:

My starters:
QB Donovan McNabb (Eagles)
WR Randy Moss (Patriots)
WR T.J. Houshmandzadeh (Bengals)
RB Frank Gore (49ers)
RB Laurence Maroney (Patriots)
TE Chris Cooley (SKINS)
W/R Edgerrin James (Cardinals)
K Shaun Suisham (SKINS)
DEF Jacksonville

My bench:
QB Jason Campbell (SKINS)
WR Santana Moss (SKINS)
WR Jerricho Cotchery (Jets)
WR Kevin Curtis (Eagles)
RB Chester Taylor (Vikings)
RB Ricky Williams (Dolphins)

Now obviously, everyone else in the league feels pretty good about their chances too, right now...except for Body and Dubs. Their teams will suck on purpose because they actually made joke selections instead of good ones, which may have had to do with the fact that they were bojanglin' drunk and in Korea, where for them it was precisely 1:15 a.m. tomorrow at the time the draft started.

For example, Body (huge Longhorn fan) started out the comedy right with a massive sucker punch to conventional wisdom with his first (#3 overall) pick: Titans quarterback Vince Young, a former Texas player worth, at best, a 3rd rounder. Body then went on to take Redskins rookie tight end Fred Davis with his third round pick simply because that's when Davis went in the real draft last April, but despite the fact I was able to select the Pro Bowl TE who starts over him in real life, Captain Chaos himself, in the fifth round. Body's other gems, besides basing a pick on a guy's sharing a name with the Wendy's guy: using his 5th rounder on Steelers rookie WR Limas Sweed, his 7th rounder on Chiefs rookie RB Jamaal Charles, his 10th rounder on Broncos scrub RB Selvin Young, and his 15th rounder on Buccaneers backup QB Chris Simms. They all played college ball for Texas...

The blind--or in this case, drunk--must have been leading the blind because Dubs, a UVA grad and die-hard fan, followed Body's example and made a few insane, college-team-preference-based draft decisions of his own: Texans QB Matt Schaub in the 2nd, Jets RB Thomas Jones in the 3rd, Steelers TE Heath Miller in the 4th--when Cooley, inarguably a better option at TE, was still available--and Raiders WR Ronald Curry in the 13th round. All were UVA players except Curry, who almost signed a letter of intent there, as a star high school QB 11 years ago, before stiffing them to go to UNC instead. Wahoos hold grudges, apparently.

I continued the trend of blind homer-ism, although I, unlike Dubs and Body, got good value out of mine, as I now have Santana Moss at WR (poised to have a better year than last, still dangerous though he's often over-looked, better offense for his style than Gibbs used) Chris Cooley at TE (what can I say? he's a super-hero), Shuan Suisham as my kicker (starting kicker's stats are usually around the same 100-130 or so in fantasy points terms, so why not go local?) and Jason Campbell at QB (Coach Zorn will prove his mettle as a molder of young QBs and turn this guy into a pro-bowler, mark my words.) I have more Redskins than any other team in the league, but I take my Redskins love seriously; my only real joke of a pick was Ricky Williams...

Speaking of jokes, I think I'm gonna re-name my team "The Campbell Brothers" because of my two quarterbacks: Jason Campbell and Donovan "Soup Ad" McNabb, both of whom happen to also be black.

Anyway, I'm out. It's gorgeous outside right now, in that magically golden time of year when anything, like Andre Carter and Jason Taylor combining for 30 sacks, the Redskins having more pro-bowlers than a hand's worth of fingers, or me not losing in the first round of the fantasy playoffs after dominating my league with an 11-2 record, is possible.

Cheers, gents.

New And Improved!

Howdy folks, just wanted to chime in real quick with a list of things new and improved 'round this way:

• One, obviously, is my beard. Now, even though I might be tooting my own horn, I still don't want to count any unhatched chickens yet, but--I shit you not--I got a short email reply last week from Chris Cooley's blog regarding his beard contest, and I quote:

  This is fantastic growth. We are still giving away some tickets. I will let you know but you are definitely int the running. Thanks

• The right sidebar (it's a little farther this way------> )
  has a few new improvements as well:
  
  
• In the "I didn't even know you could do that until just now" department of A Lonely Ghost, I have finally added post-labels to all my old posts. Now stuff I write here is searchable by category or topic, a few of which I'll translate here:
  
  
• Youtube = net video from sites that aren't necessarily youtube.com, but often are. Saturday mix series = any music mix I post, which sometimes happens on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays too. FSE = any song I deem to be a "favorite song ever" of mine, usually accompanied by its lyrics, but not always. PPP = Points, Lines & Polygons and the rest is self-explanatory.
  
  
• Wanted to give a few shout outs to some of the newest members of the ALG blogroll, the first of which is Appetite For Equal Rights, a blog for the modern feminist. As a human being who doesn't believe people deserve to be treated better or worse than others based on factors outside of their control, like whether or not they have an X chromosome or a Y chromosome, I found a lot to like on this website. Further, as someone who enjoys bashing Rush Limbaugh's assholery whenever possible, which is often, their post on his reaction to the Edwards scandal a couple days ago was particularly enraging. Right on...
  
  
• Keep It On The B-Side is, yes, you guessed it, a music blog. It's run by a fellow South Lakes High grad and current resident of the city of angels, Ethan Z. He's writes insightful stuff and you can tell he's got a real, deep love for music. Especially liked his take on Okkervil River's last album, and not simply because I adore the band myself.
  
  
• The Stone's Colossal Dream is a blog I found randomly while searching for Robley Wilson's "I Wish In The City Of Your Heart" so I could re-post it about a month back. So obviously, the lady--her name's Tania Rochelle--likes poetry, so I kept going back. Tania's interested in a wide variety of topics, turns out, so that's a bonus too. Couple weeks ago she had a running couple of fascinating posts about the nature and origins of the yellow ribbon symbol and what else, besides war of course, it means or has meant in our American lexicon of symbols.

Check out the links, lemme know what ya thinks.

I saw this happen in person!

At the game on Saturday, Marshawn Lynch of the Buffalo Bills got tackled by pretty much every member of the Redskins' defense:



This is pretty much what "pwned" means in football talk.

I'll admit it: I'm probably gonna cry today.

Right now, I'm streaming video of two of my childhood heroes, Redskins greats Darrell Green and Art Monk, as they are inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. If Darrell, without a doubt my all time favorite athlete, cries during his speech as he's known to do, I will be crying uncontrollable joytears right along with him.

My "Before"

So I took this picture of myself on Thursday, but only just now got around to pulling it off the ol' iPhone and posting it here (& e-mailing it to Chris Cooley.) As I understand it, the criteria for the contest states that the "greatest transformation" in hairyness from before to after will win the prize. So I completely Mach 5'ed my entire head/face. Made sense at the time.



From the email I sent to Cooley:

Hey I know it's been a few days since the contest began, but I only just now got around to getting this picture off my iPhone's camera to send in. I honestly did take the picture on Thursday afternoon though, right after I first read about the contest and went to Mach 5 my entire face AND head.

Anyway I'll be talking to you folks soon, on August 6th. I'm obviously gonna win. I am a prodigious grower of hair.

Joe Gibbs Has Retired

I was jarred awake early this morning by my phone's text message notification sound. From Korea, Kent wrote these words on my wall:

Joe Gibbs has retired from the Washington Redskins.
He went out with a winning season and a trip to the playoffs;
any other way just wouldn't be right.
HAIL JOE GIBBS!

I, in kind, responded by writing on his wall:

It's redundant to say and all, but the way the team charged
into the playoffs under Gibbs' steady hand,
after all they'd been through...
absolute coaching brilliance.
By all rights, after the Buffalo game, the 'Skins
should have finished 5-11. But they went 9-7 instead.
And we have Joe Gibbs to thank for it.
I don't know if ANY other coach would have acheived
the same result given the circumstances.
Tonight, we raise our glasses high to Coach Gibbs.

And I, and we, will always love you, Coach Gibbs. Goodbye and good luck, sir.

I.O.U.

Saturday Mix #7 is already (and has been for 2 days) made; I just haven't had the chance to upload yet, and since I'll be at work another 12 hours today, it might just slip into "Monday Mix" territory. Rest assured it's on the way, though...just cut me some slack: the Redskins...

*single tear...*

I didn't plan on posting anything today, but...

I just came across (for those who don't know of him: former Redskins great) Darrell Green's blog...he had some nice things to say in remembrance of Sean Taylor. He does get a little overly overtly religious in his post for my taste, but basically Green makes, far more eloquently than I did, the point I wanted to get across in my facebook meta-grief post:

"In closing, I would like to encourage all who would care to listen, to examine how you measure the value of all people. Regardless of whether it is a person seen regularly on your television screen, a family member, or just a total stranger, we should make it a practice to allow our hearts, minds and souls to feel the pain of our fellow man and allow our response to be nothing less than a heartfelt response to pray for and support those around us in times like this.

Through it all, it is my hope that we will find a way to see these young athletes in the way that we see our own family and friends. We should remember they are still human, needing love, friendship, fellowship and respect..." (for a direct link to Darrell Green's post, click here)

And with that, I'll leave the last thought on the matter to Darrell Green. No more Sean Taylor posts from me.

Peace.

I read the news today, oh boy...

Sean Michael Taylor: April 1, 1983 - November 27, 2007

Mon just woke me up with the news that Sean Taylor passed away early this morning. He was 24, and in the middle of his best professional season by far, and due to earn a huge new contract extention in the next year or so... Now he leaves behind a fiancée and a baby girl who will never know her father.

This is devastatingly tragic.

This video is an example of the kind of joy Taylor brought to his fans: ...from last year's Pro Bowl, Taylor's first and only appearance. Even though it's a punter he demolishes here, it's still one of the finest hits ever. (keep watching from 0:52 - 1:20 for the reaction of a few Japanese sportscasters...makes me smile, even now, today...)



All I hope is that the authorities find the assholes responsible for this and that justice is served. Rest in peace, #21.

It feels like a family member

From Mike Wise's write-up in the Post: "Yet on the day Sean Taylor was shot, there was nothing wrong with believing in a kid's will to live. A few minutes past 7 p.m., that's all that mattered."

From some guy who posts on the single most most visited webpage of my last 7 years, extremeskins.com, the above picture (enlarge to read...) quoted for truth:

What.The.Fuck.

Sean Taylor, probably my favorite Redskin, one of the baddest-ass players in the NFL, has just been shot.

What.The.Fuck.