REPORT: Redskins' Season Not Over Yet

Despite some contrarial thoughts from the usual suspects (La Canfora, Jason; Jenkins, Sally), the Redskins season — despite losing one game on the road by nine points mainly from injuries and a freakish case of stone hands plaguing the secondary — is not over yet. Unfortunately for the O-haterz currently dancing in their Chad Hutchinson jerseys, eagerly anticipating the inevitable dalliance between Dan Snyder and Pete Carroll sometime after the Trojans romp on the Buckeyes, they have failed to notice that the Redskins have a grand total of fifteen more games to play before the Jim Zorn era can officially be called deader than the female gluteous maximus tissue that comprises Jerry Jones's eyelids.

That's right folks, even if the Redskins managed to be unsuccessful in the whole "game-winning" or "offensive" portion of Thursday night's pagentry-stuffed ode to the insufferably yappy Giants scourge, they still have close to 93.75% of the season remaining before Zorn is replaced with Tony D'Amato. But after the supposedly pathetic, disorganized, wimpy, hopeless, indicative-of-poor-management-decisions performance against the refs and mental cobwebs in the dead-grassed lands of Meadow, haven't the Redskins shown already that they don't belong in the cupcake crushing, reality show spawning NFC clever-word-that-rhymes-with-East? We here (and I say "we" despite this being the first post in like, an entire Nationals season, for a certain Transformers-monikered internetter) are more than confident that the events of last Thursday, which already seem further away than that time when people had questionable thoughts about Elijah Dukes, will not represent what will obviously be a successful 08-09 season. Take if from current DCO contributor/biter Tom Boswell, who in his latest call for collective 'tism, notes how maybe this thing could maybe somehow work, maybe.

Oh Boz, sure the column is rife with uneasiness over our often confused, playbook overloaded, heavily studying, somehow overcoming the memorization of eight-billion plays quarterback, but I couldn't help but return from my laziness-inflected hiatus after this poetic, business card-sloga worthy nod:

"So, Redskins fans should have patience. (Pause.) Okay, that didn't work. How
about optimism? Let's try that. "

Couldn't agree more Boz, although please, can we get a URL shoutout somewhere? I promise I will contribute a Wizards post or two if the DCO is mentioned somewhere between that Vice President chick's wardrobe choices in the Post. Why can't Boz direct his burgeoning readership to the blog with more dead links than Shawn Hill's elbow? Regardless of our fledgeling brushes with success and consistency, not since TruthAboutIt called us "sanguine," have I been so happy to have contributed to the internet back before Yahoo! began devouring bloggers like so many chicken fingers served without bitterness at Sideline (although I remain as unpaid as Todd Lowber when it comes to bliznogging). Shoutout to Boz for keeping the fanbase pointed in the positive direction.

It's refreshing to hear a take on the work-in-progress-ness that is the current skins. It's not like Boz was scraping the bottom of the metaphoric metaphor barrell as one Mike Wise did in his shopping at Taylor-mart coverage of the tragic selling-off of the late Sean Taylor's personal items, which so totally was a paralell between what everyone already is calling a dead season, and the subsequent selling off of Brandon Lloyd jerseys, or whatever. Nice literariness Wise-ass.

But back to the Redskins, and the fact that they aren't as done-zo as the usage of the word done-zo. First of all, the first-class running game, which couldn't be properly utilized as the skins somehow were both fighting off a double-digit deficit and the predilection for running those running plays directly into a defensive lineman, remains strong, and will remain the first-mentioned, first-run aspect of the team's success in subsequent weeks, first. Second, despite the overlaudiness of coverage regarding the Giants and their defensive line, the 'skins managed to give up, lets count 'em, one lone sack, on the first play of the game, after which, clever, picture painting with words columnists, we guess, changed the channel to Project Runway. So lets not count out that suddenly old decrepit offensive line yet. Many might even say that proper adjustments were made. And the defense, sure it was in bend-don't-break mode for about two whole quarters, and one might get the notion that running Brandon Jacobs over and over again would likely lead to the Giants not having to kick a bunch of field goals and whatnot, but the D also made proper adjustments, and even, gasp, got to the quarterback, and again gasp, made turnovers occur!

Solid run game, solid o-line play, solid D: the foundation of success that the Redskins have been riding on during a streak of decency that continues to be mistaken for mediocrity. The hallmarks of these past two playoff appearing teams are currently there. One rusty performance, where nine points were the difference between lauding successes and detailing mistakes, out of sixteen can be neglected. Anyone remember that Patriots team that opened the season to a 31-0 loss to the Bills only to, after a devastating loss to Steve Spurrier and the skins, go on to like never lose again? What was the difference with that team? How about optimism?