Caution to the Wind

This phrase is repeated often amongst the old-timers. The ones who knew Redskins meant champions. And the first step to doing so is admitting those days are past. Our recollections old. It's time to move on.

I've long been one to harp on the past believing this would deliver me the future. Much of my self-perspective today was built from those Sunday afternoons of my childhood when I knew no matter how far down, we were never out. But I'm done.

Tradition didn't deliver Super XVII, XXII, or XXVI. Excellence did. Ownership demanded of management, management of coaches, coaches of players, and players of themselves. Tradition and excellence - right now, we got a whole lot of one and not the other.

As fans, we must stop offering respect for feats unearned. You deserve nothing for being a Redskin. Tradition is out. Deliver us a new one, and you'll have our respect.

How could we tolerate for so long comments from the locker room of having the most talent in the league? A promise of a brighter future, and we ate it up. This only makes the team stink that much more. A lack of urgency should be despised far more than potential adored.

We should blame ourselves for letting our coach off the hook this week for the sake of the less demanding task of blaming a kicker. He botched the plays and play calls that led up to the kick, missing a chance to hit the 2 minute warning after 2nd down with a better play call, and showing no creativity on 3rd once the 2 minute warning was a given. It's the Saints. Nothing was guaranteed with a 10 point lead. We should have gone for 14 when we had the chance.

No doubt Shuisham should have been cut but this should have occurred 2 years ago. Not once during that off-season did I hear a Redskin fan notice that it was his missed kick that likely cost us that game. And no one seemed to remember his pension for choking after the Dallas misses either.

We have a quarteback for all his promise and excuses that cannot lead us to a score in the final minutes of a game, the one aspect that is clearly about gumption and less about coordinators. We are okay with this? Have we really found other promise and potential to focus on in order to dismiss this critical fact?

By accident perhaps, we are stumbling upon a new slew, not defined by years past and willing to do anything possible to get noticed and define themselves. Let's give them some help and recognize successes of the past wont translate into success of the future. Give them some help and let them earn our respect as they are burning to do. Don't hand it to them like we hand fed Lavar and Clinton. And change the logos on our helmets. It's time to move on.