Some people are fans of the Washington Redskins. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Washington Redskins. This 2016 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. And buy Drew’s new book here.




Your team: Washington Redskins.


Your 2015 record: 9-7. Christ. A winning record. I’m gonna puke. Keep in mind that those nine wins all came against losing teams. If they had played winning teams? 0-16. That’s right. You’re fucking winless, as far as I’m concerned. Eat shit and die. I refuse to acknowledge any of this team’s mild successes given that, in the past year alone:



•The head coach let RG3 play behind a 12-string line during the preseason and summarily got him concussed…

•But not before the team tried to hide that concussion and then had a quack doctor misdiagnose it. That quack doctor has since resigned from the league’s neurological program.

•They kept RG3 on the roster all season long with no intention of ever playing him, all to make the owner happy.


•DeSean ran backward.

•They handed a radio show to a reporter who frequently criticized them, and then deliberately canceled that show.


•That show was called “The Man Cave.”

•A knife fight broke out at their port-a-potty of a stadium.

•They got clowned by the Panthers’ social media team.

•Their new, idiot quarterback took a knee:

•They got outdrawn at their own stadium by Dolphins fans, who don’t even exist.

•They shut down will call for non-season ticket holders.

•The GM’s wife accused an ESPN reporter of trading blowjobs for news.

•They sued a former player for $40,000 in severance pay.

•All of their medical records were stolen.


•They got caught running a supposedly independent Twitter account supporting the team name when everyone already knew it was a clumsy piece of team-mandated propaganda anyway.

•They got mooned by their own fans.

•“The PTO has registered hundreds if not thousands of marks that the Team believes are racist, or misogynistic, vulgar, or otherwise offensive. By way of example only, the following marks are registered today: TAKE YO PANTIES OFF clothing; DANGEROUS NEGRO shirts; SLUTSSEEKER dating services; DAGO SWAGG clothing; DUMB BLONDE beer; TWATTY GIRL cartoons; BAKED BY A NEGRO bakery goods; BIG TITTY BLEND coffee; RETARDIPEDIA website; MIDGET-MAN condoms and inflatable sex dolls; and JIZZ underwear.”


•They designed a stadium with a moat and surfers in that moat:


(Thank you, Zach)



•Other teams began copycatting their hideous parking tactics. I went to a concert at FedEx Field this summer. Parking started at $55.


So you’ll excuse me if I’m not impressed by this team winning the worst division in the NFL and then getting quickly dispatched by the Packers in the Wild Card round. Around here, you would have thought this band of assholes won its fourth Super Bowl last season. They’re still the same pathetic, arrogant, awful team they’ve always been.

Your coach: This guy:


Jay Gruden is the relative you were forced to ask be one of your groomsmen even though you barely know him.



By the way, the Gruden brothers grew up in Ohio but both sound like Oklahoma cattle rustlers, proving my theory that there is a distinct coaching accent that is enforced by law. I don’t care if you come from Holland. The second you start running offensive line drills, you WILL affect the voice inflection of John Wayne drinking straight tobacco juice. Coaching fucks your brain.


Your quarterback: You like that? YOU LIKE THAT!!!


Yes, it’s Kirk Cousins, unwitting hero to the thousands of Skins fans that enjoy writing “WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE ABOUT RACE?!” in the comment section of every Yahoo article.

Despite the fact that Cousins threw 29 TD passes last season and caused every @RedskinsFacts follower to cream his Underoos, the team still decided to franchise him and spend the entire offseason low-balling him. They have about as much faith in Kirk as Bomani Jones does. It’s possible, although not likely, that Cousins could play out the 2016 campaign and then skip town because his asking price or his franchise tag cost would be too high. And if he leaves, and RG3 has a miraculous comeback in Cleveland, I will kiss both men directly on the mouth. This franchise deserves to have Cousins come cratering back to Earth, or to have him switch teams just as he’s showing real promise. And then they deserve to fall into a lava pit.


What’s new that sucks: Well, Chief Zee died. FUN FACT: Chief Zee “scalped” me at a game once. He saw me in the stands, wearing a Vikings hat, and then he scalped me with a foam tomahawk. HILARIOUS! Small children clapped in mirth.

Also, the team is already dropping hints via unofficial mouthpiece Chris Cooley that they’re going to build that bouncy castle of a stadium somewhere in Virginia. Keep in mind that the Skins team HQ is in Virginia, and they built a training camp facility in Richmond that three fourths of residents there already despise. Of course they want to move to Virginny permanently. That lawless target range of a state is the only joint that would even consider having them. They’re gonna infect that state like a virus, forcing Redskin history courses into local schools and branding every available surface and cheese pizza into oblivion:


On the field, the team drafted Josh Doctson, who is already on the PUP list with the kind of classic, mysterious, lingering injury that this team is now famous for. Also, running back Alfred Morris is gone to Dallas, freeing up Matt Jones to fumble 17 times per game before getting hurt.

Junior Galette is already hurt because he’s a crummy person.

And finally, Josh Norman. After Carolina made the baffling move to let their stud corner go, the Skins picked him up for $50 million guaranteed. And oh, you should’ve heard these fans talk themselves into that signing. It’s not like the OTHER golden parachutes this team has handed out to garbage free agents. No no, this time it’s DIFFERENT. Josh Norman really loves footbaw! IN SCOT MCCLOUGHAN WE TRUST, COOCH! It won’t be like the Haynesworth deal at all, until Norman also suffers a random Achilles injury and never takes a snap.


Vernon Davis is also here. He blows.

What has always sucked: Everything.


As always, this team is wart on the ass of America. I think less of anyone who thinks highly of them and their shitbag owner. Matthew McConaughey likes Dan Snyder and now I won’t watch his movies. People living in DC proper—a legitimately fantastic city—give half a shit about the Skins, because they know they’re strictly the domain of drunken racist suburbanites, rednecks dumb enough to plunk down hundreds of dollars every week to get trapped inside that roach motel of a stadium, and libertarian shitheads who abhor entitlement programs but work 9-to-5 for defense contractors. Everything wrong about the NFL is encapsulated herein. I wish the Skins never existed.

What might not suck: Fuck you. You don’t deserve anything in the way of token compliments.


Let’s remember some Redskins (NOTE: This section is basically what you get any time you turn on local radio)

Dave Butz

Alvin Walton

Ricky Ervins

Leslie Shepherd

Zeron Flemister

Hear it from Redskins fans!

Dave:

Between my junior and senior years of college I had internship in the sports department at one of the local network affiliates. This was back in the days when the Head Ball Coach was in charge and he thought that it would be a good idea to have the team occasionally practice at FedEx Field, because you know, that’s what they did in Gainesville. Anyway, the first time they do it, it’s like early August and just hot and humid as balls out there. After the twenty or so minutes of practice we’re allowed to film, all the media have nothing to do but stand on the sidelines and wait to talk to the players and coaches after practice. Like I said, it’s the middle of the day in the summer, so standing on the sidelines of the shit hole that is FedEx ain’t exactly enjoyable, especially if you’re one of the camera guys. Someone, I don’t recall who, noticed that there’s like five or six decent looking folding chairs leaning up against the retaining wall around the field. So, five or six guys go and pull them out and start sitting in them, which is what any normal human being would do in the circumstances. Within 10 minutes of these guys sitting in the chairs, some lackey in a suit comes down to the field to tell them “that those are Mr. Snyder’s chairs, and he would prefer you not sit in them.” He then stationed someone nearby to make sure no one did, in fact, sit in them for the next hour-and-a-half. Fuck him. Spurrier did let me have a Gatorade from a team cooler after practice.

Andrew:

Our stadium is a hellhole, our owner is evil, our QB is a Jesus-freak (as opposed to our last Jesus-freak QB), our best player from the last 20 years is dead, our GM is a drunk, our name is racist, our history is even more racist, the local sports media rivals North Korea for propaganda, and my team made me hate football. Congratulations Washington Football Team.


Mike:


Matthew:

Included in the garbage offers that come with the annual ticket mailing (for which we pay $25 in Fedex fees when it costs that little fucking half-a-hump mere pennies to send) is a coupon/code for a 25% discount on purchase at a Redskins gear store or on-line. BUT, it’s not valid on game days.


Patirck:

Forget the objectively horrible owner, the racist team name, the idiotic personnel strategy, the delusional fans, and of course the 25 years of straddling the line between consistent mediocrity and abject failure. I’m sure your other readers will cover all those things. I’d rather point out that their stadium is one of the worst places on Earth on Sundays during football season. There is no way to attend a game without committing 15 hours of your day because you will be unable to leave in anything less than 4 hours after the final whistle. And, while you are there you will have to deal with the worst of humanity (I include myself in that) and bear witness to complete football ineptitude. Here’s a sample of what I have endured at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium/FedEx Field/Dan Snyder’s House of Lies, Bullshit, and Poorly Played Football: My family’s season tickets that were moved over from RFK were placed in the upper most deck sandwiched between a lovely older couple who had been going to games for decades and a guy with a shaved head and a soul patch who went to games for no other reason than to scream at Norv Turner. I was in attendance at the Monday Night tie versus the Giants that featured Gus Frerotte giving himself a concussion and Michael Westbrook taking his helmet off resulting in a penalty that took the Skins out of range for the game-winning field goal (which, given their special teams history, the kicker most likely would’ve missed). While leaving in said traffic, I very lightly rear-ended the yuppie asshole in front of me without actually hurting his car. I took full responsibility but he tried to bilk me for a $300/day rental car because he claimed my love tap had damaged the rear parking camera on his back bumper. After hearing the metal coming from my stereo, the group of bros parked next to me asked if I liked the Deftones (I have no feelings about them one way or the other), and quickly followed that up by asking if I wanted to smoke meth with them 3 hours before kickoff. I’ve been solicited to buy beers from stadium staff while in the men’s room more times than I can count. I was blindsided—knocked off my feet and landed on my back—on the concourse after buying a beer by a fellow fan who had robbed a vendor and was trying to making a daring escape. When told I could press charges by the stadium security, I asked if I could sue Dan Snyder. I was told to return to my seat and stop drinking. I’ve found myself in the middle of a fistfight between two Skins fans at the very start of an overtime period over whether to sit down or stand up. I blew out my ACL and meniscus in the parking lot celebrating a massive 14-11 win over the vaunted Cleveland Browns that brought the record at the start of the Jim Zorn era to 5-2. It was a hopeful time. A few years ago I made the decision to not be part of the problem and I’ve refused to attend any games. I can get blacked out on my couch at home and use my own bathroom. It’s glorious. Fuck this team and fuck Dan Snyder with rusty garden shears.


David:

I’d like to apologize in advance for what is going to radiate out from the Beltway this year. The Redskins won the freaking division last year and independent of the fact it was by some metrics the worst division in the history of football in 2015, we as a fanbase still were able to sniff a measure of success which means the irrationality is going to go through the roof. Just disregard the fact they didn’t beat a team with a winning record, had a total joke of a schedule and massively overspent the second a shiny free agent hit the market. It’s literally the Redskins “Boom/Bust” cycle. We’ll be throwing draft picks away for a white quarterback from an Upper Midwest school in no time. If the Redskins are 3-1 after the preseason everybody is in trouble. And the worst storyline this season is going to be them playing for Chief Zee, who recently passed away. You watch. For the uninitiated, he’s the guy who literally still dressed up like a Native American at the games in a caricature so bad that even theRedskins fans who sing the fight song as “Fight for Old Dixie” still were thinking it might be time to put the costume away. They’re going to dedicate the season to him, you’ll hear all about how he was the greatest fan in team history, and they actually WILL win a game or two because of it, most likely against the Cowboys. That sound you’re hearing is Dave McKenna breaking out in hives. FedEx Field still looks like it was designed by Kim Jong-Un.

Sean:

I was at a bar with my buddy and there was a guy across the way wearing a shirt with a play on the Cleveland Indians logo but changed to Caucasians, similar to what Bomani Jones wore. We discussed the merits of whether it was racist or not. While I said it was subtly racist he took the other side and dropped the line, “You have no business arguing this as a Redskins fan, the most racist name in sports.” He saw the look of perplexity come over my face as I contemplated his comment and then hit me where it really hurt with our new battle cry “You like that!”


Stephen:

I’m doubly cursed because I grew up a Nebraska fan and now make the DC area my home and both fan bases now are forced to live in the past knowing things will never be close to as good as they once were. Getting gouged to park and undergoing a rectal exam to enter the always half-empty stadium is bad enough. Then you endure watching this horrificly-assembled and mostly overpaid team surrounded by a bunch of drunken racists while losers like last year’s Dolphins make the Skins look as impotent as a 90-year old Eunuch. I can understand being mildly embarrassed to admit you’re a Browns fan, but when your team’s logo and traditions have the racial sensitivity of David Duke wearing blackface, you find yourself changing the subject when someone asks who your favorite team is. I’m genuinely ashamed to admit I root for the team. At least deep down, Washington fans know we deserve all the misery this team so frequently provides. Dan Snyder should sit on a spear.


Andrew:

Here is the exhaustive list of teams that have not made an appearance in the NFC Championship game since the 1991 season: Washington Redskins Detroit Lions

Peter:

The Skins are awful, at Volume 100, at all times. I hate them for it and it fucks up every Sunday of my fall. I’ve spent the last 25 years wondering why they can never actually put even a decent team together. But I put up with all that, because every now and then I think about what it would mean if the greatest thing that can happen to an NFL fan happened to me and the Skins won the Super Bowl. I would maybe be less resentful of all the knuckle-draggers in this city who act like the 1980s were yesterday and anyone still gives a shit about the Redskins at a League-wide level. THAT is how good winning a championship should feel. It would totally turn me into one of those assholes and I would love it. And then, you realize that if the Redskins won the Super Bowl, it would mean that Dan Snyder would be handed the Lombardi Trophy in what would surely be the greatest moment of his life. The black hole where his heart is supposed to be would grow so large that the planet might be at risk. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with this team anymore. Rooting for 8-8, I guess? Eh, the Skins would find a way to make that suck too. Fuck Dan Snyder.


Joshua:

I don’t even own any team clothing/jerseys because I don’t want people thinking I’m a confederate flag waving bigot.


Alex:

The Redskins suck because you can see Dan Snyder’s Redskins themed basketball court at his Potomac mansion on Google Maps. I wonder if he paid for it with all of that parking lot money. Either that or he helped pay for it with the 99 bucks that my dad forked over for a Donovan fucking McNabb jersey for my 18th birthday. Fuck everything about this racist ass team. I used to care but now I truly hope an asteroid hits FedEx this year and puts us all out of our misery.


Christine:



Our owner has bought out or fired every journalist in DC willing to call him on his bullshit, which is how you get people telling you that it was okay to let Al Morris go to our arch-rival with the best O-line in the league, because he was totally washed up (and not a function of the o-line excuse that they were using for the rest of the offensive struggles), and Matt Jones, who had 5 fumbles and averaged 16 freaking yards a game is a suitable replacement.


Gordon:

That season opening Monday night game at home against the Steelers will be absolutely miserable. There will be a huge showing of black and gold jersey clad yinzers, who I suspect will be chanting both Let’s Go Steelers and Let’s Go Penguins (thanks for reminder, assholes!) throughout, and will be markedly louder than home crowd; that will come through loud & clear in ESPN, no doubt. Also, the Skins will look great on their first drive and will take brief, unfairly-expectation-raising 7-0 lead en route to a 30-17 defeat - guaranteed.


Joey:

Dan Snyder has held this team hostage for almost 20 years and will continue to do so because he’s a power-hungry asshole with enough money to throw at any problem. I’m finally optimistic about this team. This means that the defense will fall apart, several skill players will express disappointment with the fans and Snyder, and Cousins will revert to throwing tons of picks and we will demand Colt McCoy start.


Dave:

Any discussion of the team name being racist will inevitably turn to how when people say the word “Redskins” they’re only thinking about the football team instead of the GIANT FUCKING PICTURE OF A NATIVE AMERICAN right there on the team’s helmets. Our franchise quarterback lost his job during the preseason. Just prior to this, a local call-in show did a poll on who should be the starting quarterback and found that 1) 72% of fans thought it should be Kirk Cousins, and 2) 7% of those fans thought his name was Kurt Cousins. Within 3 months of passing over Randy Gregory in the draft for testing positive for marijuana, Scot McCloughan signed Junior Galette, who was caught on video viciously whipping a woman with a belt and run out of New Orleans, aka the city where crime goes to get laid. Fuck this fucking team.

Alex:

I hate my favorite team. We don’t win. Our fans are generally fat racist hillbillies or rich yuppies or some combination thereof. We are named a racial slur. Our owner is the douche.


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