Some people are fans of the Washington Football Team. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Washington Football Team. This 2020 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Definitely Harmless Washington Football Collection Of Athletes.
It’s fitting that, after two decades of stomping his feet and clinging to a racist team name like it was his blankie, Dan Snyder would finally be compelled to drop that name once he actually stood to lose a buck. It’s also fitting that Danny couldn’t sort out a replacement name in time that would both clear existing trademark hurdles and honor our loose cannon snipers in the military appropriately, thus leaving him to adopt the very same generic term that his sworn enemies have used in lieu of R******s for years now. It’s also fitting that their temp helmets are already MILES better than the originals.
I live in this area and the last remaining fans of Snyder’s team invested all of their self-esteem in the old uniforms and the old nickname, and both of them SUCKED. Even if you don’t account for the racism—and the NFL didn’t for 83 years—R******s is a stupid name. The uniforms played slow and the helmet logo was a failed commemorative penny. All of it was somehow more generic than what you see above. Just a collection of musty trash. I’ve chaperoned elementary school field trips more electrifying than this team’s supposed heritage. Speaking of which, let’s see how they did a year ago!
Your 2019 record: 3-13. SO MANY FANS WERE AT FEDEX TO WITNESS THE GLORY IN PERSON!
What else did they fuck up? Oh yes, they couldn’t spell London Fletcher’s name correctly when they inducted him into their Ring of Shame. They beat Miami, a team that was actively trying to go winless, only because Ryan Fitzpatrick blew a two-point conversion at the gun. They had no spoons. They pissed off Adrian Peterson by making him a healthy scratch and Peterson probably took out his anger on the team by cutting his son’s fingers off. They fired the head coach after one month, but only after leaking old footage of him being shitfaced onto the Internet and then forcing him to come to the office at the crack of ass for his termination. Their left tackle held out for the entire season because the training staff misdiagnosed a fucking growth in his head. Then the team refused to trade him, just to teach him a lesson. They had the worst passing offense in football. They didn’t win a single division game. The gunpowder they planted inside their right tackle’s knee finally caught fire.
The fun part of all this was that it ended with actual consequences. Not for Dan Snyder, mind you. Snyder is still a rich little pissant. But the best seasons in Washington are the ones where whatever latest direct mail campaign Snyder has going on for his team finally collapses and he has to draw up a new one. Hence, general manager Bruce Allen is gone. Head coach Jay Gruden is also gone, as is interim head coach Bill Callahan. Every few years, Washington cleans out the entire house except the master bedroom. It’s genuinely entertaining shit. I look forward to it every time it happens. It’s like the World Cup!
Your coach: Norv Turner But Defense. Ron Rivera has a lower career winning percentage than such luminaries as Jim Caldwell, Chuck Pagano, Jason Garrett, and Mike Sherman. But in all seriousness, people really do love Ron Rivera. He is a lovely man. It’s not fair that he has cancer, but it is also extremely fitting that THIS is his potential interim replacement…
Surprised this team didn’t adopt the Punisher logo as their new brand identity. Ron Rivera is still performing his routine head coach duties as I write this. Should he be coaching with cancer in the middle of a fucking pandemic? No. Will Snyder make any effort to ensure that Rivera—his 937th chief brand ambassador—is safe? No.
Your quarterback: (The Weeknd singing) I can’t feel my foot when I’m with you… but I love it.
That leg isn’t finished cooking yet. Still needs at least five more hours in the smoker. You guys took it out when it was in the stall! A cardinal sin for any pitmaster. AND YOU DIDN’T EVEN PUT A RUB ON IT.
That’s the leg of former starting quarterback Alex Smith, who has been cleared by doctors to play football again. Should Alex Smith play football again? NO. Should he play football again for this Hitler Youth camp? DEAR GOD NO. I know it’s inspiring on a pregame level that Smith is back from that injury, but this is like watching a dude who stepped in a bear trap be like FINALLY I CAN STEP IN BEAR TRAPS AGAIN.
Given that Smith is now an official Friend Of Danny, he’s almost certainly gonna get a chance to usurp playing time from second-year man Dwayne Haskins, who was once a talented quarterback for Ohio State before Washington drafted him so that Snyder’s son could have a friend. Every QB struggles their rookie year but usually offers glimpses of potential. That was NOT true of Haskins, who showed nothing in the seven games he started toward the ass-end of last season. WFT got the Josh Rosen Special. They are an organization designed to give you the Josh Rosen Special on a biennial schedule. Very few gaps in that process.
Your third quarterback is the immortal Kyle Allen, who will end up starting 10-plus games after Smith contracts cirrhosis of the rectum and Haskins retires to become a fly fisherman. Fans here will worship Allen for no logical reason.
What’s new that sucks: Widespread, documented sexual harassment! You already knew about Snyder’s affinity for drunk-dialing head coaching candidates and offering his cheerleaders to preferred luxury box holders, but—SURPRISE SURPRISE—turns out he also made his staffers cobble together softcore porn videos of those same cheerleaders for his c-suite to jerk off to.
This was the offseason that every whisper about Snyder finally got cranked up to audible volume. Pretty much every guy in his building treated women like they were living inside a Coors Light ad. That included play-by-play guy and willing lapdog Larry Michael, who resigned the day before the Washington Post formally confirmed all of Snyder’s internal disgraces for a general public that had long suspected them. Let’s see what Coach Rivera had to say about the scandal at the time.
Know who else has a daughter (two of them, in fact)? Dan Snyder. You know what Snyder did in response to that report? He filed a fucking lawsuit. In response to the Post’s second, even more damning report, he called it a hit job (the team itself refused to do likewise), then trotted out his wife as a meat shield to be like TANYA AND I TOTALLY HAD THE IDEA TO LAUNCH AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION INTO THESE FOULS DEEDS BEFORE ANYONE ELSE DID. He’ll never improve. He’ll never see himself. I’d rather let my own daughter date the fucking President than work for this piece of shit team.
As for the roster itself, this is still a non-team as far as competitiveness goes. Brandon Scherff is gonna play under the tag. He’s either bolting after doing his time (Scherff says he wants to stay but every player who says that about Washington is always lying) or signing a fat deal and dislocating his femur three days after the fact. Thomas Davis and Ronald Darby are here despite the fact that I thought both men have been out of football for three years. Josh Norman—the Albert Haynesworth of cornerback signings—has been replaced with Kendall Fuller, whom the WFT traded away just two years ago for the right to turn Alex Smith’s leg into a David Cronenberg movie. The team had to release Derrius Guice after he allegedly strangled his girlfriend until she passed out. After that release, Guice also ended up being the focus of a double rape probe, which means the team will likely sign him all over again.
Going into preseason, the running game was left to Adrian Peterson, who is a principled man in that he strangles CHILDREN and not women. Peterson has since been released, which means the new RB1 is probably some dipshit Junkies co-host. Walking concussion Jordan Reed has left. Deep-threat-that-never-was Paul Richardson was finally released and then released again by the Seahawks. No one wants this team's garbage. People here thought that guy was fucking Randy Moss when he signed. The good news is that Reuben Foster is back!
Yes, what better sign that you’ve changed your ways as an organization than by keeping Reuben Foster’s career alive? Elsewhere, Snyder replaced Larry Michael with Julia Donaldson and Bruce Allen with Jason Wright, who is the first Black team president in NFL history. He’s also a fucking former McKinsey guy. Both of these people will be fired for disloyalty eight weeks from now.
What has always sucked: Dan Snyder has gone to great lengths across international judicial systems to preserve his reputation. But neither that nor finally shedding the name R******s has stopped the free world from considering him one of its absolute worst residents. It’s not simply that Snyder is a rich con man. We’ve got loads of those. It’s that he’s so demonstrably weak and pathetic even when he’s trying to throw his weight around. To artificially boost his self-esteem, he roots around for people he finds admirable (Bruce Allen) and/or cool (Clinton Portis) and makes them official Friends Of Dan. When you’re a friend of Dan, you get to sit in his box. You get to go to Ray’s Hell Burger with him and listen to him tell his favorite black jokes. You get to see with him his kids and then tell other people, “This guy really does care about his family!” You get a no-show gig within his shambling organization. And, of course, you get an open invitation to all yacht and plane orgies.
No Friend of Dan’s actually likes Dan, just as the rest of us don’t like him, either. Will that EVER stop Snyder from trying to convince the world he’s a Big Man? Of course not. He thinks everyone he befriends and everything he owns will add luster to his image, when he in fact ruins all of those things by mere association.
He ruined this team by purchasing it in 1999, and it’s no better off now, even with Rivera in place and changing the team name after FedEx's union-busting CEO found it too repellent even for him. This is still the same clumsy, fascist NFL regime it always has been. That’ll prove especially true if Muriel Bowser, ever the sucker, gifts Snyder the RFK land and the only people who show up to the games at his new stadium are Chad Dukes fanboys who’ll sing “Hail To The R******s” twice as loud and twice as often just to own the libs. I promise you that Dan will be singing right along with them. It’ll be the only thing to distract him from the fact that he is despised by all and respected by none.
As for the name: it’s gonna be batted about for a while longer as Snyder realizes there's no public money for any stadium anywhere that he wouldn't have to pay SOMETHING for. He went from being flush to fucked in 10 slow, delicious, agonizing years. His football team isn't even the center of attention anymore now that there are teams north, south and west of their original base that are all more entertaining and successful. Jerry Richardson's having a better year and he's a disgraced racist pervert. Dan Snyder is a vile sack of shit. Fuck him with a tomahawk.
What might not suck: I already regret saying this, but even this team can’t ruin Chase Young. They can ruin every OTHER Ohio State prospect, but Chase Young is a stallion and he’ll thrive as the team around him goes 3-13 year after year after year.
Terry McLaurin is pretty good.
Ratto says: “This season took a dramatically lousier turn when newly hired football supremo Ron Rivera learned he had cancer of the lymph nodes, making his role in the first year of the new era a lot less funny then it should have been. So no jokes about WFT meaning "We F'd This (Up)," or dwelling on the minority owners who still want Danny Snyder's severed head on a pike. Rivera's potential/likely absence likely means defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio—a Donny Trump fan—would be a very interim coach in the oddest place in the worst year to be the chief spokesman for the NFL's version of Acme Products. Del Rio will have to figure how much unfiltered him the nation actually wants, as opposed to how much his superiors want him to display.
“Also, perpetually cursed quarterback Alex Smith's foot doesn't work right yet, according to a team doctor who said he's making great progress. His pursuit of a game that has enriched his pocket but gnawed at his soul doesn't deserve his devotion or decency, but the first step toward wellness is saying, ‘What the hell am I doing here, and why isn't anyone stopping me?’”
HEAR IT FROM WASHINGTON FANS!
Sean:
Jesus Fucking Christ.
Erik:
Going to a game at FedEx Field is less fun than being at the Javits Center on November 8th, 2016.
Trust me. I would know.
Chris:
Their entire organization has been constantly and systematically sexually harassing women for two decades, and when that story broke, most fans were relieved because they had actually expected the story to be “worse”.
Chris:
We haven't won 11 games since I was in 9th grade. In 1991.
Alex:
They can't even change their fucking name without looking like buffoons.
Brandon:
Honestly everyone on the team has a better chance of surviving COVID-19 than avoiding injury on the FedEx Field turf.
Rob:
To say my team "sucks" is like saying the president "sucks" or global warming "sucks." The WFT doesn't suck. Tt transcends "sucks." It transcends time and space. This isn't a bad football team inasmuch as it isn't a football team at all. iIt is the collection of all the buildup of the toxic sludge of the American capitalist id.
Adam:
They couldn't think of a non-racist name to pair with the logo, so they just decided to punt on the name completely, like the team does on the field every other drive.
Leo:
It takes no effort imagining Snyder trying to close down a teen rec center or programming a hidden Directive 4 into one of his stooges.
Joey:
Their unpaid sex-slave social media intern retweeted no less than 273,564 stories patting themselves on the back for “HEY WE HIRED A BLACK GUY WE’RE NOT RACIST YOU ARE.” Their defensive coordinator is a walking QAnon brochure. It’s hell. It’s a living hell. Being a fan of this franchise is like a lifetime of COVID training: You’re scared to interact in public, have to cover your face and just watch at home. You don’t want to risk spreading your suffering to others. You constantly talk about how great things used to be, knowing in your soul it’s never coming back. For that, I am grateful. I was trained for this.
Zach:
Good: The name is going in the dumpster!
Bad: The announcement coincided with reports of rampant sexual harassment in the front office, and that’s probably not a coincidence!
Good: Alex Smith is alive!
Bad: Alex Smith’s leg appears to have the curvature of an aged walking stick!
Good: Chase Young!
Bad: Coached by Way Too Online MAGA-ite Jack Del Rio!
Those helmets they’re using this year look pretty cool though.
Mike:
The name change will only embolden the most assholish defenders of the old name. Once fans are allowed in stadiums again, you better believe people will be wearing the old gear and fashion gaudy headdresses while screaming HTTR at every opportunity. They will probably start the chop in the stadium too. Nothing brings soulless government contractors from South Riding and rednecks from Manassas together like pretending the name was all about honoring heritage.
Brad:
Our longest-tenured wide receiver is younger than I am (I'm 25) and our only offensive Pro-Bowl-worthy player is gone. Our defense at least gained a world class defensive end, so maybe we can lose games 0-21 rather than 0-42.
Andrew:
I moved from Arizona to my childhood home in PG county when I was six years old. Sitting on the floor of an empty house with everything in boxes my mom plugged in the TV and we ate pizza on the floor. We watched whatever was on TV which happened to be the 1992 Super Bowl. I watched the new, local team murk the Bills. This was my new team, the best team in the world. New home, new team, new life; things were gonna be awesome.
I was wrong. Maryland sucks and everything was shit. But at least it didn't take me 82 years to figure out how to do the bare minimum not to be racist.
Steve:
I take my son to a game each year (I won't this year - pandemic) and it's been impossible to try to find a game that Washington will win. Last year, I picked the Jets. The year before, the Colts. The year before, the Vikings (with Case Keenum!). In other years, Lions and Panthers. All losses.
This team doesn't deserve a name.
Christopher:
Washington released its top running back in August following a series of domestic assault charges, including one stating that he strangled his girlfriend into unconsciousness. However, this Washington offense is so well constructed that you can lose a promising young girlfriend-strangler and right behind him on the depth chart is a seasoned veteran child abuser to step up and handle those carries.
Spencer:
I applaud the name-change; it is SUPER overdue. I think it's also fitting that the first reasonable decision made by this front office in more than a decade is what allows me to look for a new NFL team to support. What an absolute garbage chute of an organization.
Chris:
Our fanbase that remains sucks. Somehow, when George Preston Marshall marketed them as the team of the South, those fans and their descendants stayed. And they're big mad that the racist name is gone. They point to polls of "self-identified" indigenous folks and call anyone who disagrees sensitive. For all the folks that are trying to shoehorn some variation of "red" into the new name so we can keep using HTTR and Hail to the RedHawks or whatever lame name is chosen, we know these drunken, racist idiots will undoubtedly scream RedSKINS at the top of their lungs because of defiant stupidity and racism. Until Snyder is found on Jeffrey Esptein's flight logs and forced to sell the team, we're screwed.
Jeff:
The only sports radio station with a decent signal is staffed by hosts who perfectly reflect the team's delusional fans. The afternoon guy is an Adam Carolla cosplayer. Half of the morning show is tolerable. The other half brag about how good they are at starting fires and chopping wood, while unironically say things like, "Tucker Carlson is the rare guy who plays it down the middle and tells it like it is." All of the fans have #HTTR in their Twitter bio and even though they are a consistently a bottom five team everyone predicts a 12-4 season.
I haven't lived everywhere, but I cannot imagine a worse combination of fans, facility, owner, and players.
Ben:
In 1988 I was a senior in high school living in Rockville MD north of DC. On January 31, the Redskins behind Doug Williams unbelievable 2nd quarter performance obliterated the John Elway led Denver Broncos 42-10. The team got back to DC the evening of February 1st and it was announced that a victory parade would be held the next day. When I got to school on the 2nd the parade was literally the ONLY thing anybody, including most of the teachers were talking about. Some kids just got up and walked out of class and left, and it became obvious that the majority of the student population was gonna leave and either got to the parade or get watch it on tv. Finally the School board Superintendent announced that if students left they would not be considered truant and there was a mass exodus.
Unfortunately I hadn't driven to school but saw three guys two of whom I knew from drama club and they said I could get a ride with them. We parked at the Metro and rode it down to the Metro station near the Old Post Office, now the Trump Hotel and walked over to what turned out to be the same plaza that I had watched Reagan's inaugural parade in 1981 with the Boy Scouts. The plaza was overflowing, no bleachers set up just several hundred people crowded together.
The four of us finagled our way to the front row and we stood there, occasionally taking a look down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol to see if anything was coming our way. It was a LONG wait or it seemed that way. Then someone in the crowd shouted that they saw some Metro buses a long way down the street and that sent the crowd in a "WOOOOOOOOO!!! FUCK YEAH!!!! REDSKINS RULE!!!!" kind of tizzy, but everyone was being nice, no fights, just getting more excited.
Eventually I could see the Metro buses but there was a problem, it looked like the crowd was getting through the blue police sawhorse barriers and banging on the Metro buses that the team members were on. The police were trying to push them back to keep someone from being crushed or run over by a bus, but what they ended up doing was shoving the crowd further and further down Pennsylvania Avenue in our direction.
This became a BIG problem because as the crowd got pushed and shoved closer and closer to us more and more people were crowded into the plaza, and there were a couple dozen police at the far end preventing anyone from moving further up Pennsylvania Avenue towards the White House.
Then things got scary and chaotic. Even though we were in the front row we were still part of the crowd and it quickly got to the point where the crowd would surge to one side or forwards or backwards and even if you kept your feet on the ground you got moved. Once I was being moved and picked both my feet up and didn't fall, but got carried along which was scary. Instinctively I linked arms at the elbow with the guys on either side and yelled for them to do that with other people. The three other guys I was with did so along with a few other people. It was kind of but not really being in a mosh pit, this feeling of not having any control of where your body was going to go.
Eventually the Metro Buses carrying the team rolled on by and I got glimpses of Joe Gibbs and Dexter Manley holding the Vince Lombardi trophy and a big cigar.
Unfortunately after the buses pass the cops were still shoving people up the street towards us. I wanted to get out of there, so the four of us linked arms and fought our way, NOT punching and kicking, to get to the Old Post Office. What would normally be maybe a three-minute walk took us nearly an hour. We finally got inside and collapsed into chairs at a table in the food court. We got some food, Sbarro's pizza for me and then were gonna get back on the Metro and go home. We walked outside and on one of the streets that led to Pennsylvania Avenue there was a white boxy delivery truck with a bunch of people around it shouting. There was a guy standing on the roof of the truck surrounded by boxes that he was throwing at/to the crowd below. Turned out it was boxes of Wheaties with Doug Williams picture on it. There were a lot of broken blue police sawhorses all over the place, one of the guys picked up a piece that said "POLICE BARRIER" and took it with him on the Metro, but it got taken away when we got off at the station in Rockville.
Then the four of us went and saw 'Good Morning Vietnam' in the movie theaters that used to be in Congressional Plaza.
That chaotic fucked up feeling of being dragged and moved along with the crowd has kind of been what it's been like since Snyder became the owner.
Elias:
I can’t care anymore. I’ve been bled dry. Nothing will fix us as long as Dan “Grabbing My Female Employees’ Asses Is OK As Long As It’s Not In My Office” Snyder is there. We all know it. Why the fuck do I even care about this team? I was born in Richmond. My dad’s defining memories of D.C. were finding heroin needles on his porch when he walked outside, getting called all types of N-words (by kids! and parents! and a teacher!) when he inaugurated his elementary school, and his friends getting killed over jackets. I still think he wishes it all would’ve burned down in ’68. I think he saw the smoke, said “Good job guys, finally,” and crossed his fingers they’d get to the buildings with the Roman columns.
I grew up a Penn State fan too. They put our gear in storage after the Sandusky thing happened, and I still haven’t worn so much as a Nittany Lions hat since. I would still feel more shame wearing my RGIII jersey anywhere.
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