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Some people are fans of the Washington Redskins. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Washington Redskins. This 2018 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

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Your team: Go fuck yourself.

Your 2017 record: 7-9. As always, you only need to recap the Skins’ year to formally indict them, so let’s do that right now:

The starting safety, who once suffered a concussion so severe that he needed glasses afterward, retired and then unretired. Given the harrowing effects of this sport, you can understand why a guy like Su’a Cravens might be torn over whether or not to keep playing… UNLESS you happen to be the assholes running this team.

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That is just such a magnificently bitchy tweet. “This young man, who needs to sit in a dark room for 20 hours straight to soothe his migraines, needs to get his head screwed on right!”


They blew a 15-point lead with less than five minutes left to go against New Orleans and lost.

They no-showed against the Chargers.

The team president actively trolled the franchise quarterback by getting his name wrong in public, and the organization alienated the QB to the point where he was completely checked out at the end of the season and tossed three picks against an even MORE checked-out team.


They had their stadium taken over by Vikings fans, of all fans. Vikings fans travel about as well as Buddy Holly.

They replaced the GM they fired (and then anonymously tarred as a hapless drunk on his way out the door) by appointing, as VP of player personnel, yet another glory day-era Skin who gets to take home a consistent paycheck just for licking the owner’s asshole clean.


They finally admitted their season ticket waiting list was a fraud.

Their owner played Smithers to Jerry Jones’s Mr. Burns during the anthem protest negotiations. I enjoyed the side note in that link about other owners rolling their eyes at how cheap Dan Snyder is. This the most craven bunch of skinflints you’ve ever seen in your life and even they were like, “God, this guy’s such a fucking tightwad.”


They got swept by the Cowboys.

They signed Terrelle Pryor and he instantly turned to shit. Again, how do you have a worse season after leaving the Browns? The Skins, that’s how.


Their best running back broke his leg.

Frankly, this kind of idiocy is automatic at this point. The above list of failures and PR dick-stepping is a given. They are the six letters you get for free during the Wheel of Fortune bonus round. But we’re not finished here just yet, my friends. We’re never finished with these shitbags.


Your coach: Jay Gruden. The good news for you people is that Jay Gruden is no longer the dumbest Gruden actively coaching. The bad news is that he still has all the presence and oratorical skills of a disgraced golf pro. I wouldn’t let Jay Gruden direct traffic, let alone run an NFL team.

Did I mention that the offensive coordinator who used to serve under Gruden went to the Rams and IMMEDIATELY turned them into a powerhouse? Sean McVay is a wunderkind and will be coaching winning teams for the next two decades. Meanwhile, you guys are stuck with the ARS Rescue Rooter guy. I’m overjoyed.


Your quarterback: The Skins didn’t want to pay Kirk Cousins $84 million guaranteed, so here’s what they did instead: they traded a third-round pick and promising cornerback Kendall Fuller to Kansas City in exchange for a quarterback who is five years older than Cousins, averages nearly 60 fewer yards per game, and averages nearly a full yard less per attempt. Then they gave THAT guy $71 million guaranteed.

There are people here who think that was smart. I’m not even kidding. You should hear Skins fans here talking themselves into Alex Smith. Alex Smith is a very nice fellow who needs to be surrounded by Pro Bowlers and coached by a play-calling savant in order to average more than 150 yards a game. The Chiefs got a career year out of him last season and still couldn’t be bothered to keep him around. He’s authored not one, but two of the worst postseason collapses in HISTORY.


And yet Skins fans will gladly devour the sales job on him. They’re like, “Oh wow, we’ve finally moved on from Kirk Cousins’s contract drama. We’ve finally got stability.” NO! NO NO NO NO NO NO YOU FUCKING MORONS. Stability just walked out the fucking door! This is the instability! When you draft a franchise QB and kill him, and then you luck into a SECOND franchise QB to take his place, and then you freeze out that second franchise QB because he wanted to be paid appropriately, that isn’t fucking stable. Kirk Cousins somehow flourished with this team, made a boatload of money, and yet he couldn’t WAIT to leave town. If you wanna blame Kirk Cousins for that, well then you’re stupid enough to work for this organization.

Alex Smith isn’t the solution. He is yet another symptom of a disease that has ravaged this organization throughout the entire 21st century. All they do is re-package one bad lie after another. It would be fucking sickening if it didn’t result in hilarious, abject failure year after year after year. At least when Trump lies, it works for him. Look at this shit:


Vibe, my ass. “There’s a general sense of peace and harmony now that we get to openly shade our old quarterback like a bunch of fucking weirdos.” The Skins always want you to think it’s gonna be different this time around. Look up at the half-pint dictator in the luxury box and the illusion is shattered within seconds. If you guys can talk yourselves into Alex Smith, you should save that energy to talk yourself into something more productive, like finding a better job.

What’s new that sucks: LOL they gave Paul Richardson $16.5 million guaranteed. That’s a perfect signing now that the Skins have an older version of Jason Campbell at quarterback. All six fans at FedEx will be like THROW IT DEEP COOCH, deluded in the belief that they can rip off six straight wins if they just have their yarn-armed quarterback chuck the ball to Seattle’s former fifth-string wideout. OOOOH PAUL RICHARDSON I’M QUAKIN’ IN MAH BOOTS.


They also had Derrius Guice fall to them in the second round. Hey, remember this?


Oh nothing, just an NFL analyst randomly fucking with a guy’s reputation and then suffering absolutely no blowback when nothing turned up. I really wish that the Skins had hired Mike Mayock to be their GM. He would have fit right into the culture. Anyway, Guice tore his ACL to pieces on his third carry of the preseason and now no one is excited about this team. The only people who were talking Skins this offseason were talk radio hosts forced to do so at gunpoint. There’s no vibe. There’s no nothing. The whole thing is just one big, wet sack of shit.

They signed Orlando Scandrick, hyped him up as one of their “Hey, we’re signing mid-tier free agents like the big boys!” signings, and then released him before he ever played a down.


What has always sucked: Deep down I think you and I both know that NFL owners own their teams not because they want to win games, or even because they like football. They just like having a showcase. They like owning a public concern, and all the attendant social perks that come with presiding over that public concern. They like having local captains of industry and other assorted phonies pass through to pay their respects. An NFL team little more than billion-dollar cigar club for men intent on razing the Earth, and nowhere is that more evident than in Washington, where the Skins took their own poorly paid cheerleaders and pimped them out to a bunch of handsy old scumbags:

They had a special assignment for the night. Some of the male sponsors had picked them to be personal escorts at a nightclub. “So get back to your room and get ready,” the director told them. Several of them began to cry. “They weren’t putting a gun to our heads, but it was mandatory for us to go,” one of the cheerleaders said. “We weren’t asked, we were told. Other girls were devastated because we knew exactly what she was doing.”


These are your Washington Redskins. Forget the Cousins fiasco, and Jay Gruden losing his playsheet anytime the offense gets into the red zone, and Jamison Crowder trying to catch balls with hands made of fucking plexiglass. All of those failures exist to distract you from the much deeper human failures that go on behind the scenes. The Skins exist so that Skin Jung Un (thank you) can drink Crown Royal on private airplanes and so Bruce Allen can get loaded in his office and so any number of hunchbacked goblins passing through can cozy up with Snyder and ram their hands up a cheerleader’s skirt.

They are a meeting ground for fucking pigs, and nothing more. They are emblematic of an America run by rich dickheads who stomp and cry and piss and moan and actively destroy lives anytime someone doesn’t give them what they want. Over the past two years I have marveled at the sheer number of horrible people who hold positions of unfathomable power in this country. How are they so fucking evil? And how are there so MANY of them? They are conscienceless and they are EVERYWHERE now, selling every last piece of the country away for flash money, and they always make sure to pass through Snyder’s luxury box to play kissy-face with a man who makes an ideal stand-in for all of them. Dan Snyder is worthless pile of shit and I hope he chokes on a lit Cohiba.


The receiving corps comically awful. Josh Doctson is a bust. Jordan Reed only has eight or nine toes left. Depth along either line is nonexistent.

What might not suck: THE CAPS WON THE CUP! THE CAPS WON THE CUP! Who gives a shit about football? THIS IS A HUKKY TOWN NOW.


Let’s remember a guy who sucked: One of my favorite Snyder drafts is when they took Malcolm Kelly and Devin Thomas and Fred Davis in the second round, and all of them sucked. Putting on a Skins uniform instantly makes you 30 percent slower and 40 percent uglier.

HEAR IT FROM SKINS FANS!

Matthew:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH [indiscriminate sobbing]


Drew (not me):

There’s nothing left to say. I hate my own team with every fiber of my being.

Spencer:

This team is by far the most disgraceful and embarrassing thing happening in D.C


Kyle:

We let Cousins walk and replaced him with what Cousins will look like in five years.


Jack:

The only benefit of working my dead-end job at a big box retailer is that I’m always scheduled on Sundays.


Ben:

Betsy DeVos’s family has more yachts than the Redskins have playoff wins this century.


Ryan:

Dan Snyder was definitely rooting against the Caps in the Stanley Cup right? There’s no way he can stomach glory for another DC team.


Jesse:

The only two people who think DC is still a football town after the Caps won the Stanley Cup are Larry Michael and Chad Dukes.


Steve:

Alex Smith makes watching paint dry seem like a lap dance. Saying Jordan Reed is made of glass is an insult to the structural integrity of glass.


Ronald:

If Russia ever invades, they have my blessing to bomb FedEx Field first.

Andy:

My 11-year-old son said that he wants to root for the Arizona Cardinals. I asked him why and he said that he won with them in Madden and I can’t argue with him. I used to enjoy watching football on Sundays, now I just watch the Red Zone Channel so I can see good teams score.


Patrick:

Mother Teresa could be named the next GM and Bruce Allen would find a way to spin it for her to look like the devil.


Gabe:

The Redskins under the Snyder and Allen regime are a clown show of corruption and political back stabbing that would make Mitch McConnell’s many chins quiver with delight.


James:

When I got married, my brother-in-law said I was going to a great husband because “He’s stuck by the Redskins for 30 years, so he can deal.”


Griffin:

So I have nothing clever or pithy to say regarding the front office, coaching staff or players. Just want to use this yearly opportunity to say that Dan Snyder is the devil and fuck him forever. I won’t be watching football again until Snyder is dead or sells the team. Got two years under my belt so far and I don’t miss it.


Mike:

One morning sports show in this area invited Rob Ford and George Zimmerman on the air after finding out they were fans of this disgusting team. Zimmerman turned the radio show down by the way. Somehow that man has a line, and publicly associating with this fanbase is where he draws it.


Patrick:

My roommate got me into hockey last year so, at the beginning of the year, I decided to root for Vegas because I figure I’m a new hockey fan I don’t have to pick my hometown, I had family in Vegas, and I don’t want to root for another stupid Washington team. FML.


Marshall:

Shout-out to my mom, who once said, “Of course, I can’t stand the Cowboys at all, but I respect Jerry Jones for saying his players WILL stand for the national anthem.” Kill me.

Cory:

When I was in third grade, after Gus Ferotte tried to sever his own spinal column, my father consoled me by betting me that the Washington Football Team would win a Super Bowl before he died. That was 21 years ago, and he’ll turn 71 this year. I’m going to win this bet and he won’t even be around for me to gloat about it.


Andrew:

The last two jerseys I purchased were Kirk Cousins and RG3.

Go Caps.

Canaan:

1. In addition to all the horrible things from previous years, none of which have changed for the better, the team can add human trafficking to its list of dis-accomplishments. 2. It sure was great to hear constantly in the aftermath of the Cap’s Stanley Cup win that DC just needs to bring “football back to the city” to really make this year a good one. Presumably by putting up a billion dollars of taxpayer on a stadium with a moat.


MW:

A solid percentage of my friends who still follow the Redskins do so expressly because of their racist traditions and merch and because Dan Snyder so aggressively defends them. If Snyder was a quarter as good at running a team as he has been at defending the caricature/brand through litigation we’d be a regular playoff team. Fuck Dan Snyder with a mature-growth tree trunk.


Ian:

The Cousins debacle will be the high point we look back on fondly for the next 20 years. This was as good as it will get until Dan Snyder dies. Unfortunately, it is 2018 and he is a fantastically wealthy asshole. He will live to be 180. I will not live to see a Redskins team without him. Admitting you’re a Skins fan anywhere outside of DC is embarrassing. It’s a thing you hide from your friends and family and then make apologies for. You rationalize it even though you know it’s unhealthy. Like a gambling problem or a dependence on sleep aids. I can’t even say the team name out loud. It’s always “Washington team” or “Skins” or “Snyder’s merry band of fuck-ups”. I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself.


Ethan:

Listening to Redskins sports-talk radio is like listening to an hour-long eulogy in another language. Fuck Dan Snyder with a Theismann’s menu.


Ned:

Jon Gruden hasn’t coached in over a decade and we still have the shittier of the two. Derrius Guice is cool which means he will last roughly 8 carries before some cataclysmic injury befalls him. [Editor’s note: Email sent July 26th]



Erik:

The Caps won the fricking cup and I no longer have to give a shit. I can officially not care about the most morally repugnant team in the most morally repugnant league. I don’t have to care that the Skins managed to ostracize their best QB since the 80s, run off the first GM to put a competent product together this century, or do predictably sleazy cheerleader photo shoots. I am free.


Danny:

Now that the Capitals won the first championship the District has seen in my lifetime, I really don’t have to support the Redskins anymore (even though I’d basically given up 4 years ago). It’s a huge relief honestly.


Steve:

The NFL is the easiest sport to go from bad to good in a short period of time but it takes vision, risk and good management and ownership. The Redskins are characterized by none of the above. The Redskins no longer have legacy on their side now that the city knows what current success feels like.


Andrew:

The Redskins decided that having Ned Flanders as the quarterback was too big a hassle, so they decided to bring in a quarterback who won’t throw the ball farther than 10 yards. I can’t wait until Smith goes like 15-for-32 with 130 yards passing for zero touchdowns and zero interceptions, yet the Skins still win 16-14. Then, and only then, will Bruce Allen and the fanbase scream: “Kurt wasn’t a winner! Now we’ve got one!” The idiocy of this team and fanbase makes me sick. Why I even give a shit anymore is staggering beyond belief — the Capitals won the Stanley Cup. I hope Alex Ovechkin comes to a game specifically to shove the Cup up Dan Snyder’s ass.


Brian:

It’s everything, right? That’s why the Skins suck. The name is racist. Dan Snyder is an ambulatory bag of assholes. Bruce Allen is more interested in his own ego than in building a quality football team and completely buttfucked the Cousins situation as a result. Free agents don’t want to play here (I understand!). Alex Smith is going to get murdered behind our o-line. Our best wideout is… actually I’m not sure who that would be right now. Basically we’re hoping that all of our various units will step up (they won’t) and that Alex Smith – yes, that Alex Smith, we didn’t find a new model somewhere else – will turn out to be the leader the Skins have always needed (he won’t). I’m old enough to kinda remember the Gibbs Super Bowls, but for all of my adult life the Skins have only occasionally lucked into being good, and when that happens they inevitably shit all over their own dicks the next season. They never have an idea on how to expand on and replicate success, which helps explain why the second they experience any they follow it up breaking what works and doubling down on what is already busted. Fuck this team, fuck Dan Snyder, and ultra-triple-super-fuck Vinny Cerrato, possibly the single least-qualified person to work for an NFL team in any capacity.


T:

The name is racist, the owner is a three-foot-tall caricature of every evil stereotype of a rich person, the stadium is impossible to get to (and now they’re probably going to put it even further away), and the fans...don’t get me started on the fans. Imagine typing out this tweet (attached below) without a shred of irony. I dream of the day that Dan Snyder falls off his step stool while trying to reach something on the middle shelf of the fridge and breaks his neck.


Spencer:

Bruce Allen’s negotiating power move is to publicly call a guy named Kirk “Kurt.” The dumb fans of this team think trading a 3rd round pick and one of the best young CBs in the NFL for a considerably older and less good version of the same QB they let walk for nothing was a zero sum move. This dumb team is slowly trying to reassemble the 2016 Alabama Crimson Tide. I genuinely feel bad for any player who joins this team. No player has ever had a successful post-Redskins career, this team is the NFL’s Hotel California.


Justin:

Every time I go to ShitEx Field I am greeted by the amazing smell of Port-O-Johns, stale beer, and shame while counting no less than 20 different team jerseys in the lot that aren’t even playing. Yet every year I stupidly pull out my wallet and pay for these god damn tickets because “it’ll be worth it when they finally win” but you know what? THEY WON’T FUCKING WIN BECAUSE WE ARE THE GOD DAMN REDSKINS AND DOUCHE SNYDER IS OUR FUCKING OWNER. P.S. Fuck you Drew for always hating on the Redskins. I hope Kirk Cousins throws a season ending interception for the Vikings against the Packers. Hail to the Redskins.


Graig:

Dan definitely sides with Papa John. The day that tattoo artists can do GIFs, I want a tramp stamp of that time Snyder was caught dancing on SNF after kicking the shit out of the lardass Packer fans. I hate this team.

Adam:

Honestly, how is Dan Snyder still allowed to own the team after facilitating the human trafficking of his own cheerleaders in Costa Rica for the benefit of some rich old men? How did everyone just kinda sweep that aside within a week of the story breaking? All that jerking around with Kirk Cousins contract for two straight years and they finally settled on replacing him with a slightly older, worse version of the same guy in Alex Smith. Jordan Reed can barely stay upright. They forgot to find good WRs or DBs, and their O-Line is hanging by a thread. I’m done with this team, except as an excuse to drink with friends.

Jeremy:

The Caps winning the Cup has completely softened my misery over this garbage dump of a franchise. But it’s still fun to listen to the local radio hosts completely disregard that championship already to talk about this team that fewer people care about each year. My favorite talking point this summer is the ‘quiet’ offseason they’ve had. Maybe it means Danny Boy has changed and that maybe they’ll be sneaky good this year! They are also talking themselves into how good Alex Smith will be. None of those statements are correct. Here’s some of the offseason highlights: -They allowed a mediocre, underachieving, white, 20-something quarterback leave so they could acquire a mediocre, underachieving, white, 30-something quarterback. -They are paying Seattle’s (!) #4 receiver to be their #1 or #2 receiver. He racked up the majority of his yardage and TDs in garbage time or on insanely broken plays where Russell Wilson ran around in circles for 20 minutes before chucking the ball downfield. -Their star tight end has roughly 85 career concussions and is one hit from being a vegetable. He’s guaranteed to appear in less than half their games this season. -They are maintaining a relationship with Papa Johns. -They are counting on Malcolm Kelly 2.0 (Josh Doctson), who is made of wet cardboard, to be their #1 or #2 receiver -Jay Gruden is still the head coach. -They cleared out even more seats at the wasteland called FedEx Field to ‘enhance the fan experience.’ At the rate they are going they will soon play before less people than the Nats on a Tuesday night against the Marlins. They’ve also yet to enhance the players’ experience by allowing them to continue playing on a field that’s a death trap. -Fuck Bruce Allen

Kyle:

Where do I even start with this shit-ass team. • The team fired its best GM in fucking forever because the team president wasn’t getting enough credit for things he wasn’t doing. • Our owner is hated by everybody in the area is only 53 so he’s got a very low chance of dying soon. I’m 31 and have a better chance to see a man on Mars than a Super Bowl win. • The stadium is in no man’s land and is impossible to get to during game days • The team refuses to change the name despite there being the massive opportunity to make a mountain of cash by selling more merchandise with a new team name and logo. • They’re actively seeking a new stadium in Virginia at the end of a metro line being built that has had multiple reports of shit quality work, and is equally difficult to get or or would cost $15 on a toll road. • Fat Chucky hates the running game and is quick to abandon it despite having a solid line. • The only game I went to last year was the Thanksgiving game against the Giants. I was able to find a friend to go with me because she wanted to sneak out of family dinner too. I bought two tickets for $28. I then spent $40 on a parking pass. The stadium was half empty and it took two hours to get out of the lot. • My grandmother, who has been a fan of the team since the 50’s and vividly remembers the good times, will openly wonder how they’ll blow a 4th quarter lead and is never surprised by the new and creative ways they figure out how to. I feel like it would be time better spent punching myself in the dick and balls for three hours each week than watching this team.


Chris:

Dan Snyder went out and hired a new COO & President of Business Operations so that Bruce Allen can focus more on the football operations... This is to the absolute horror of all Redskins fans. All we have heard from the moment Bruce was hired is that he was really more a politician / cap / team operations guy, and that he was there to lean on real football people to make the decisions. Why now is he all of the sudden a guy who needs more time to focus on football?!? This will end horribly. It is so egregious that it bears repeating: rather trading Kirk Cousins during the 2017 offseason, when it was already clear to all parties involved that (A) The Redskins weren’t interested in paying Kirk anything close to market value and (B) That Kirk was intent on leaving DC, they chose to hang on to him for a year and then let him leave via free agency. So rather than trading him for what probably could have been a 1st rounder plus maybe even something else, they got a 7-9 season and then what will actually amount to a 4th round pick TWO YEARS LATER (3rd round comp picks are a misnomer - they are really 4th round picks). Finally, I am a lifelong die-hard fan, but it would still take at least four figures of cold hard cash to get me to attend another game at FedEx field. That place is a complete hell-scape. And if you think going for a Redskins game is bad, go for a soccer game, where cheap ass Snyder only staffs it with 15% of the needed people. You will find yourself praying for the apocalypse.


Joe:

What can you even say about this team anymore? The owner is a pathetic little shit of a man who embodies everything that is vile about this country; the front office is a group of incompetent dickholes who will go out of their way to fuck up every player acquisition and contract negotiation; and the players just don’t give a shit anymore (rightfully so) because they know that winning will only increase the profile of this racist-ass team and rehabilitate the image of Dan Snyder. Let me give you a few examples that demonstrate how competent this front office is: Did you know that since 1991 Washington has drafted 13 quarterbacks and that the best player to come out of that group is Kirk fucking Cousins? They hired Steve Spurrier as head coach. They hired Jim Zorn as head coach. They hired Mike Shanahan as head coach only so that he would fire Albert Haynesworth. Now, they have fat ass Jay Gruden who always looks like he’s wondering if that fart he just let out was actually some poop. I have tried and tried to come up with one, literally ONE REASON, to remain a fan of this team and I cannot do it. Ever been to Fed Ex Field? Once you get to the stadium, which is no small task, you’re surrounded by power drinking, smooth-brained assholes who will slur their way through a treatise on why it’s OK for them to take pride in the racist fucking team name because they’re 0.0000001% Native American. No matter where you sit your view will suck, and there will undoubtedly be a fight that security will take approximately 3 hours to even get to and another 2 hours to break up. I can’t wear the team’s logo, I can’t use the team name in polite company, and I can’t justify another season of fandom. Fuck this goddamn team and fuck my high school football coach for making me a fan of them.


Matthew:

After the 2008 playoff loss to the Seahawks, I was so drunk and upset that I walked outside my buddy’s apartment and climbed on top of his annoying neighbor’s white Acura and urinated through the sunroof. Only it wasn’t his annoying neighbor’s white Acura. It was his girlfriend’s white Pontiac (RIP). I never admitted that to anyone until now. Sorry, Melanie. I then went back inside, took a bunch of bong rips, and listened to my buddy and his girlfriend have sex.


Submissions for the 2018 Deadspin NFL previews are now closed. Next up: Green Bay Packers.

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