Garcia Media Life

This is why this year…they’re an 8-8 team. You blow a 17 point lead, give up 500 yards passing and can’t rush for 30 yards, you have issues. But there’s great progress too. Donovan McNabb is the best QB to wear a Redskin uniform in years.

To the defense’s credit—they had five sacks and held the NFL’s latest, great running back, Arian Foster, to 69 yards. They just got sliced and diced through the air by a scary-good Houston Texan’s offense.

And what’s with the friggin’ special teams? How many times are they going to blow short, game-icing, 4th quarter field goals? Against the Cowboys they had a bad snap and hold. Yesterday, they got a field goal blocked.

But Donovan McNabb was sublime; one of the top three passing days of his career. Everybody thought it was the defense that was going to be bailing out a woeful offense. Who knew it would be the defense sabotaging a great offensive effort. Through the air, that is.

Larry Johnson- what was that? Clinton Portis needed a breather, I guess, so the former all-pro running back comes into the game in the 4th quarter and promptly manages to lose ten yards on a rushing play at the time the Redskins needed to kill clock. Instead of seeing he has no daylight and falling down at the 20, he backs up, tries to go sideways or something and ends up knocked on his ass back to his 10 yard line. Mr. Clutch. Johnson ended up with -7 yards rushing for the day. The coaches pulled him after that bonehead play and he never saw the field again and really…let’s hope he never gets to see it again. Hate to be him in the film room when they go over that puppy.

But the strangest bone-head play was that very odd kick-off return by Houston’s Steve Slaton. Granted the kick was perfect and sort of heading to the sideline, but the poor guy catches the ball, can’t get out of the way of his own feet and ends up out of bounds on his own 1 yard-line. Never seen that before. It should be noted, regretably, that Houston immediately completed a 20 yard pass for a first down to get out of the hole.

And I still haven’t seen an explanation for why Mike Shanahan didn’t try to ice the Houston kicker like they did to our guy when he made, then missed, a 52 yarder that would have won the game. Seems like a punk move to me. How stupid that the NFL allows coaches to do silly, childish things like call a time-out a millisecond before the kicker goes for it. But it worked, didn’t it? So now we all seem like sour-grapes-types.

Speaking of punks….how fun was it watching Dallas get their butts handed to them…at home…by the Chicago Bears? Hey, the Skins are getting much better. They have a real Quarterback and a real Coach. In fact, a whole bunch of really good coaches. They’ll get it together. I’m not upset. This sort of thing builds character.

But at least we got to watch Dallas go 0-2! And guess who the Cowgirls get to play next week? The real team from Texas. Houston- the same club that beat us Sunday and the Colts the week before that. Cannot wait for the championship of the Republic of Texas.

You know, it’s great to love a team like so many of us love the Skins. But how cool is it to really despise a team? It’s priceless, I tell you. One of life’s great pastimes. Go Houston!