Sorry for the delay in recapping the "game" but I was too busy trying to excuse the proverbial tan lines around our collective ankles, because that's what happens when you spend a day in the sun dutifully taking it up the rear.
I don't want to dwell on the game so much as I want to put a bullet in my brain, but I suppose it's worth getting out of the way: Your Washington Redskins played like shit. The Patriots simply destroyed us and won all kinds of neat statistical comparisons. Oh and also the scoreboard: 52-7. Total yards was 486 to 224, against. First downs, 34 to 13, against. 6/11 on third down, them, 2/12, us. 47 rushing yards vs. 152. 334 passing yards vs. 177. Tom Brady consumed us, as he does everything else, 306 yards and three touchdowns, and he wasn't even the best player on the field. Mike Vrabel finished with 11 tackles, 3 forced fumbles, and five ponies stabbed. He stabs ponies. I'm not joking.
Here's where I'm supposed to get super indignant about the fact that the Patriots were going for it on 4th down, twice, leading significantly (but I'd love for you to get all mashed up about it in the comments section). But really, that kind of thing doesn't bother me, so I can't. Why is it more "sportsmanlike" to kneel the ball or clearly run to eat clock when you completely and totally own an opponent? We all know what an opposing team is saying when they punt on 4th and inches late in the game with a lead: We're better than you, we know we could get this first down, but we feel sorry for you. I don't want that. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing proper, and that pertains to losing as well. They converted both times and scored. Doesn't that mean they were the right call, both times, after the fact? Sportsmanship, that vague sense of respect one is told to have for opponents, doesn't exist to credit your team or my team 14 points. Respect is something earned, and we simply didn't earn enough of it. In virtue of what, exactly, do we get the right to demand a better team play down to our level?
But since we're fresh out of real victories, moral victories, victory followed by a period, and nothing helps a loss like sour grape indignance, I'll just have to invent some anyways. Troy Aikman suggested that Asante Samuels was just so clever to read our receivers, almost like he knew what play was coming! They cheated! Redskins win, Redskins win!
Actually not, since I believe even if they did cheat, which they didn't, but if they did and were it revealed after the fact I think they simply forfeit their losses as opposed to us getting credited them. And even so I wouldn't call that kind of victory, victory.
The good news: We don't have to play that team again for the rest of the season, because they're going to the Super Bowl, and we are not. The bad news: Everything else.
The worst part for me, personally, was after the game. I have friends, Cowboys fans even, that texted me and it wasn't to gloat. They literally pitied me. "Ouch. Sorry man." From a Cowboys fan: "i know how you feel". Thanks. Now I feel a whole lot worse; we played so bad that our hated rivals pity us. Nobody needs that. [EDIT: Thinkinkg about it, an "I don't need your pity Walter, I need my johnson" quote from The Big Lebowski would go well here, since this was such an emasculating event.] Worst loss since 1961. Mother fucker.
I'm not really in a position to speak meaningfully, rationally, or honestly about the game right now, so I'll spare you a bunch of jibberish. Suffice to say, the New England Patriots are a better football team than Your Washington Redskins. Virtually nothing will change the fact that I simply love this team, though the way they play sure as hell can make me love the sport of Football a whole lot less, as I wouldn't will beatings of this magnitude on my worst enemy. Unless I were the one meting out said biblical wrath. What does one do after a loss like that besides get so despicably drunk that you run the risk of pissing yourself? Focus on beating the Jets next week and pretend it never happened, because the alternative is simply too depressing to handle.
Speaking of handles, it's time to drink one. Maybe if I were a better blogger, the team wouldn't have gotten stomped. I'll blog my guts out more next time.
HTTR and to the best fans on the planet. Surely this kind of thing builds character, or at least will make the survivors stronger.
Update [2007-10-28 23:16:11 by Skin Patrol]: It cannot be said enough. The dancing robot that Fox displays every single Sunday has to go. I believe in an ordered universe, am remarkably dumb and generally confused about most things to begin with, and then this stupid effing robot dances around like he's warming up for Robot Wars (Typhoon 2 would totally ruin him). And then on top of that, they add cliche you are oh-so-clever with your seasonal branding by putting a terrifying pumpkin on his head. As if the stupid dancing robot could make any less sense, you've now taken something that was already absurd to the point of making me question my own sanity, and now you've gone and made it scary, too. So now we're to believe that robot just likes dancing around, pretending to prepare for a game, and he also recognizes arbitrary cultural celebrations? Why, exactly? And, probably, through that process Fox has spread the disease of suck to Halloween as well, and I really liked Halloween. Get rid of the stupid dancing robot, please! Trying to explain its existence within my already muddled frame of reality is too much of a metaphysical nightmare for my idiot-brain to handle. Speaking of handles...
Mister Irrelevant, Hey, Belichick, F— You for Running It Up
With Leather, SAINT ANDREW'S NET: SEXY MONDAY!
KSK, Unsilent Majority not amused by this game