NFL
By: Ryan Cooley
The Washington Redskins sit at 1-9 after yet another disappointing performance in week 11. This whole season has been a disaster, but being embarrassed at home to a 2-7 team may be the breaking point. They had two weeks to prepare for a bad football team and still managed to be down 34-3 at one point in the game
Most fans are only continuing to watch to see the development of Dwayne Haskins. The only thing the Skins are fighting for at this point is the first overall pick in the draft. This organization has been plagued by the endless tunnel of lackluster play over the past two decades. This, of course, is at the hands of Dan Snyder.
Snyder, at the age of 33, purchased the team in 1999 for $750 million. Since then, the Redskins have only had five winning seasons. After RGIII’s rookie year, many fans regained hope that this team would be able to run the division for years to come. Sadly due to a combination of injury and mishandling the situation, his career ended before it really even began.
The Redskins have gone through countless QBs in the Snyder era. They drafted Haskins with the 15th overall pick in hopes he would be the answer this organization has longed for. However, he has had anything but the ideal start to his career. Last year, Josh Rosen was drafted by a bad team with people in the front office that weren’t 100% sold on him. We are seeing a similar situation with Haskins. We can only hope that things turn out fine for him, but then again, hope hasn’t done much for this organization.
On gameday, FedEx field is almost empty. The few Redskins fans that do show up are greeted with fans of the opposing team. It is not much of a home-field advantage when half of the stadium is rooting against you, and the other half is solely focused on chanting “sell the team” and “fire Bruce Allen.”
I am not sure what it will take for Dan Snyder to wake up and finally make real changes. When an organization has been this dysfunctional for this long, the blame needs to be placed on the people in charge. They can fire and hire all the coaches they want, but at the end of the day, Snyder can only blame himself. He has let Bruce Allen run this team into the ground without any repercussions. This is the man who had the audacity to tell fans that the culture in Washington is “damn good.”
We saw the Capitals win the Stanly Cup in 2018, and both the Nationals and Mystics win it all one month ago. People used to blame the D.C. curse for why this city struggled so greatly in sports. Now that the apparent curse is long gone, there is no reason to blame anyone or anything else for the Redskins struggles other than the front office.
The game Sunday against the Lions could possibly break the lowest attendance of a game at FedEx. The condition of this team is so bad that the price of a ticket is about the same amount as buying a water bottle at most ballparks. With fans revolting against this team, hopefully, significant changes will be made this offseason. However, if I have learned anything from the Redskins, we will still be stuck in this endless loop of disappointment and misery.
