Redskins Fall to the Rams in a Shootout

Boy, that escalated quickly ... I mean, that really got out of hand fast.

In front of hundreds of their fans the St. Louis Rams offense rolled through the injury depleted Washington defense for a Christmas Eve victory. Of course all the folks that decided to stay home yesterday were out of luck; because of the game's paltry attendance it was blacked out on local television.

The Redskins may not have given us fans a holiday win, but they sure didn't fail to entertain (for the time being I've chosen to focus the positive aspects of yesterday's game while saving the negatives for a less festive occasion). Even though the team lost the overtime heart breaker there were still plenty of moments of joy. Yesterday was probably the best performance we've seen all year for the special teams as well as the offense (version 2.0).

Did we really even need this win to make us happy? Come on, it's not like a one game shift in the standings was going to make a damn bit of difference (unless you're talking about April's draft order). Watching the Redskins block a Matt Turk punt was almost as great as watching them make Eli Manning cry for his mommy (wait, that's not 'til next week). Sure it might seem like a relatively trivial moment in a disappointing season, but I really (really) hate Matt Turk (I still blame the playoff loss to Tampa Bay on that piece of crap ... it seems nicer to blame it on Matt than his deceased brother).

I know everybody is already overreacting to the loss because once again our fragile defense was exposed for it's greatest deficiency, it's utter lack of depth. After Shawn Springs went down in the game's first series it became obvious that the Rams were going to attack Kenny Wright and Ade Jimoh. Anytime a competent offensive coach sees his talented receivers matched up against an inferior opponent they are bound to attack ... except of course for Al Saunders, who apparently hates wide receivers.

I'll be back throughout the week to examine the play of several key Redskins, including Sean Taylor, who was just plain bad.