Things Happen
December 30, 2021
by Paul Francis
“I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist,” Allen said about why (the altercation with Daron Payne) started. “If you look at how that game went, emotions are high, things are high, things happen.”
Things Happen. When the NFL franchise nominally associated with Washington DC actually gets its rebranding to “happen”, I think that this needs to be the new team motto. Gone are the days of “Hail to the Redskins”. That’s obviously getting retired along with the mascot, marching band, fight song, Chief Zee nostalgia and anything else related to the team formerly known-as-the-Redskins. So I think our defensive team captain just hit the nail on the head, even as he was hitting Daron Payne on the head with a straight right. Things Happen.
And in Washington, things just don’t happen. They HAPPEN.
Washington didn’t just give up your run-of-the-mill 56 points Sunday night on their way to a worst-ever loss to Dallas. No, sir. The TDs that happened; they HAPPENED – a defensive lineman tipping, then catching, then weaving past tacklers for a pick-6, a blocked punt recovered in the end zone, a TD pass to the wide open eligible backup Olineman. I think the Cowboys actually considered running the GEICO play with the baby carriage, but decided to ease off in the spirit of Christmas charity.
Now I know that Washington is coming off of a genuinely rough week, where Things Happened. The roster was depleted by injuries and COVID. The team had a short week and had to travel. Deshazor Everett was involved in a tragic accident where a young woman lost her life. Other players were involved, and I can’t imagine how difficult it might be to shake something like that off and go play a game.
And yet, I’m looking across the league and seeing a lot of other teams going through things. The Browns, equally devastated by injuries and COVID, went into Lambeau Field and played the Packers down to the wire. The Raiders have also lost key players to injuries, their head coach/de-facto GM through scandal (Washington-related, of course, because this is the place where Things Happen), and lost a key player after a tragic accident where someone lost their life. Yet somehow that group is in control of their own playoff fate having won critical back-to-back games. Leave it to Washington to play the patsy on the Christmas weekend prime-time game and fuel the nauseating “Cowboys are back” narrative. Ugh.
But despite the mockery that a 56-14 loss brings to the team where Things Happen, there’s an odd sensation that just won’t be buried under the onslaught of team criticism as I look to the dawning of a new year: hope. My dad and younger brother pummeled my I-Phone with texts calling for the firings of Rivera and Del Rio on Sunday night, but I did not join them in the bloodlust.
“This is a bad game,” opined Ron Rivera with conviction. “This ain’t a direction — I’ll tell you that right now.”
I believe him. Granted, Washington has some big roster gaps, and has suffered through some pretty significant player-scheme-performance breakdowns that can only be attributed to poor coaching. But Washington is not as bad as this scoreline would indicate. After a loss like the one on Sunday, fans begin to ask an existential question – who are we? Answering this question takes me on a retrospective journey through the history of my fan experience for reference points.
The last time Washington got shellacked like this was a 45-10 loss in 2013 against Kansas City. You may recall the circumstances surrounding that game. The head coach and executive VP of football operations purportedly sold out the organization in an ESPN hit-piece, forcing the owner to fire him outright so he could leave town without forfeiting his contract money. At the time, I remember feeling like “this is who we are”. The team was as bad as that loss said, and the organization was as dysfunctional as its leaders behaved. I also don’t remember any players that seemed to care all that much.
Who are we? In 2013 the answer was “a dysfunctional dumpster fire”. But the answer in 2021 is different. I don’t think 56-14 is really a reflection of who this team is, and I certainly don’t think we have an organization ready to splinter over it. I think this franchise has coaches and a united front office that care, and I think the players reflect that. Many will remember the Allen-Payne altercation as the emblem of an epically embarrassing game. I see it a bit differently. I’m glad the players were angry. Frustrated, angry people get that way because they care. What would you rather see on the sideline during a 56-14 beatdown – players lounging on the bench cracking jokes (haven’t we seen that over the years through various losing seasons?), or players going at each other cracking heads?
Who is this team? They are inconsistent. Infuriatingly, maddeningly inconsistent – good enough to beat the defending World Champs one day, but fragile enough to suffer a historic loss to hated rivals on another. Last season, they won 7 games, and this season they’ll probably do the same. 7-win teams are neither particularly good, nor particularly bad, they are stuck in the frustrating limbo in-between. In Year 1 of the rebuild they overachieved and made the playoffs, but they are NOT a playoff team. We got ahead of ourselves. In Year 2, the team has come back to earth. Yet we’re likely to have the same number of wins playing a tougher schedule. Hmmmm. What will the future hold?
I see a quarterback market playing out favorably for Washington this offseason. I see that we will have a lot of cap space to retool the roster. I see the talented members of our defense, who may have started the year believing a little too much of their own press, taking a necessary pause this offseason and coming back together with a better sense of how they can play well next season. I can see this organization processing some valuable lessons from this season, and I can see the team returning a core ready to improve on 7 wins. And if that good momentum can get rolling, who knows what could take place for a team with a fresh bold 2022 New Year’s resolution to make Things Happen.