Sure, they took care of the Niners, Packers, and Pats, but not the juggernaut known as the Redskins.
…which, in typical Krissy fashion, knowing me better than I know myself, encapsulated my mood perfectly. Yesterday’s Super Bowl officially marked the end of the 21st NFL season that I have been a fan of the Washington Redskins. The 1st of those years, 1991, the Redskins went 14-2 and cruised through the playoffs to the tune of their 3rd Super Bowl title. That team was one of the most dominant in NFL history. What normal 6 year old wouldn’t think this would be a regular occurrence for years to come? At the time, a 9-7 record in 1992 seemed unacceptable, but it’s tough for a 2nd grader to understand the intricacies of an aging roster and free agency. In the 20 seasons since that Super Bowl season, the Redskins have had a record of 0.500 or better 9 times, made the playoffs 4 times, and won the NFC East only once. They have finished last in the NFC East 5 times in the last 6 seasons, and in my time as a fan only in the Heath Shuler era has the team gone through a worse 3 year stretch than they are in the midst of right now. And yet, this sorry franchise, which boasted a 5-11 record in 2011, fielded a team that beat the Super Bowl champion Giants twice this year. And in those 2 games, they didn’t just beat them…they smacked them around with an aggregate score of 51-24. I wrote about this last month, but this doesn’t mean that the Redskins are actually the best team in the league or anything like that. That would be nonsensical. The Giants were beat-up, injured, and not the same team that reeled off 6 wins in a row on the way to being Super Bowl champs during those losses to the Skins. Besides, we should have enough evidence over the last few NFL postseasons to see that it isn’t necessarily the best team that walks away with the hardware but the team that gets the hottest at the right time of year. One thing that it does mean though (in my completely biased opinion) is that the Redskins are the most frustrating team to be a fan of in the entire NFL. So, because I seem to like doing lists and rankings lately, here’s my list of the 5 most frustrating Redskins seasons of the past 20 years.
5. 2011 (5-11)…Let’s start this list off with the most recent season, shall we? No one likes when their team stinks, but Redskins fans had gotten so tired over the years of the mindless spending on aging veterans that they welcomed a few years of stinkiness in order to do the whole “get really bad to get good” process. Well, be careful what you wish for sometimes because year 2 of the Shanahan era is what the “get really bad” part of that equation looks like. And yet they still beat the Giants twice. How…?
4. 2003 (5-11)…Hindsight will tell us that the Steve Spurrier experiment was a bad one, but it sure did seem like a good idea at the time. 2002 was Spurrier’s 1st year, and they finished 7-9 despite using good ol’ Gator boys Danny Wuerffel and Shane Mathews at quarterback. 2003 seemed much more promising with Spurrier’s system in place for a 2nd season and young stud Patrick Ramsey under center. They started off 3-1, even beating the Patriots at home in week 4. That game would prove to be an aberration though. The Patriots wouldn’t lose again the entire season, going 14-2 en route to their 2nd Super Bowl title in 3 years. He may have never amounted to a great quarterback anyway, but the combination of Spurrier’s “fun and gun” system and the Skins lack of offensive talent around him crushed Ramsey’s confidence and his body. Tim Hasselbeck finished the year at quarterback in what I remember being some truly unwatchable games, and Washington went 2-10 following the hot start.
Apparently, there's no "blocking" in "fun and gun."
3. 1996 (9-7)…Following their worst 3 year stretch in my years as a fan, the Skins finished the 1st half of the ’96 season 7-1 when they beat the Colts for their 7th straight win. A playoff berth, a division title, and even a 1st round bye all seemed within the realm of possibilities. Then, the Redskins gagged their way through the 2nd half of their schedule, losing 6 of 7 before winning a meaningless game at home against the Cowboys in week 17. (It almost goes without saying that, no, they did not make the playoffs.)
2. 1997 (8-7-1)…’96 and ’97 were not good years to be a Redskins fan. The Redskins finished with nearly an identical record to the year before, but instead of streaking to a great start and then collapsing at the end of the season the Skins went through the year basically alternating wins and losses in a mediocre fashion. The year can be summed up in 1 game though where the Redskins couldn’t get out of their own way: a Sunday night game at home against the Giants in week 13. The game included Gus Frerotte injuring himself by headbutting a wall following a 1st half touchdown run and Michael Westbrook getting called for a 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for removing his helmet to argue an incomplete pass call late in overtime. Frerotte will never be remembered as Joe Montana, but the now infamous celebration caused the Redskins best offensive player to be removed from the game for little used backup Jeff Hostetler, and Westbrook’s temper tantrum added 15 yards to a potential game-winning field goal attempt. The Giants ended up winning the division and making the playoffs anyway, but the Skins finished a half game out of the wild card. (They would have made it based on tiebreakers if they had beaten the Giants that night.)
Hey, Gus! Watch out for that huge concrete wall! No biggie...your team's season just
1. 2000 (8-8)…2000 was a year full of promise for Redskins fans. 1999 was the 1st year the Skins won double digit games or the NFC East since their ’91 Super Bowl run, and it was the 1st year that they made the postseason (and won a playoff game) since ’92. Their season eventually ended in the divisional round of the playoffs with a 1 point loss to the Bucs, but the outlook for 2000 was bright. Perhaps with a few smart draft picks and free agent signings they could have bolstered their defense and added to an already potent offense that included Brad Johnson, Stephen Davis, and the aforementioned Westbrook (who seemed to finally be maturing). Instead, 2000 marked the season that owner Dan Snyder decided to begin using the Redskins as his own personal real-life fantasy football team. Washington went out and got aging, big name, expensive free agents Bruce Smith, Mark Carrier, Deion Sanders, and Jeff George among others (sound familiar, 2011 Eagles fans?). With the modicum of success from the previous year combined with these additions, the phrase “Super Bowl or bust” was thrown around before the season even started. Unfortunately, the talent on the field didn’t match up with the price tag and name recognition of the players. The play of Johnson, who had been very steady in ’99, suffered thanks to losing his best big play threat, Westbrook, to a knee injury in week 2 of the season and constantly looking over his shoulder at Snyder’s newest toy with the big arm, George. (Johnson was eventually benched in favor of George amidst speculated pressure from Snyder.) The results of the season were underwhelming, yet following a week 14 home loss to the Giants the Redskins were still 7-6 with 3 games to go, good enough to at least still be in the playoff hunt. Inexplicably, Snyder fired coach Norv Turner that week, and the Skins responded by getting sha-lacked in Dallas and Pittsburgh the following 2 weeks. In another meaningless week 17 game, the Redskins inserted Johnson back into the starting lineup and beat Arizona easily…it would be the last game Johnson would play in a Skins uni, and it ushered in the era of “psycho Dan” as we know it in D.C., thus concluding the single most frustrating Redskins season of the past 20 years.
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