After The Bye..

Well, the 'bye' week has come and gone. Time to go to work again. I've slowly come to appreciate the "bye". No worries. Sit back and watch other teams squeak out wins or absorb losses. There was a time in my Redskins fan history when I viewed the bye as a reprieve from the disaster that was a horrendous season of failed coaches and player experiments. "At least we'll win this week, we have the bye." "Huh?", is what I would usually get. "Well at least we can't lose this week", I would then say. "Oh yeah that much is true.", was often the final comment. The only thing about the bye is that it's only 1 Sunday. Does it make a difference? Sure. Ask anyone and they will tell you it does. It's a time for the players to rest weary, banged up bones, coaches to relax and figure new and creative ways to get the same plays to look like something different, for fans to collect their brains and soothe their often overused cardiac muscles. Exhale, inhale. Exhale, inhale. Better. Now comes the game after the bye. Ours happens to be against our chief rivals, the Dallas Cowboys. Yes, folks....Dallas week is upon us again. And despite the Redskins being a game ahead of the Cowboys in the division, the Redskins are the underdogs for this game. Oh, silly me, I forgot, they're the Cowboys. You know the team everyone thought would be #1 in the NFC east and promptly march right into Tampa and take that Lombardi back to Texas without so much of a whisper of disagreement from the other 31 teams in the league. But here we are, week 11, the good guys are 6 - 3 and the evil ones are 5 - 4. Evils are starting to get desperate in order to live up to their own fantasies. They're coming off their bye as well, so we shouldn't even bother to play this game. Romo may be back(everyone knows that's the only reason they've been struggling of late right?) (uh huh mmmmkay). Forget that Dallas lost to the Redskins in their first meeting with Romo at the helm. That makes no difference; that was then, this is now. (So say the mediots.) The bye apparently has transformed the Cowboys' defense into some sort of a resemblance to a good defense. I wasn't aware that the bye is a miracle worker of that magnitude. Then I hear that Clinton Portis may NOT play! Seriously? Is he hospitalized? Is he on death's doorstep? I'd be ridiculously surprised if CP doesn't get on that field come Sunday night. My rested heart would immediately require an oxygen supplementation if he can't play. So much for the bye helping the fans. Dallas week stirs the very soul of every Skins fan from sea to shining sea. "Only death would keep me from it!"(Color Purple sound byte alert!) We've added some new blood to the mix. DeAngelo Hall, cornerback extraordinaire. Hails from Chesapeake, VA. Attended VA Tech. Had a bout of diarrhea of the mouth on some occassions but landed in Oakland, which seems to be the NFL's dumping grounds for those players not willing to get along well with others. He only played 8 games with them, which translates to $9 million per game with that contract that the old coot gave him. Not bad when you're only 24. He should understand the depth of this rivalry having lived in VA. Perhaps this time someone else's trash becomes our treasure. We'll watch Mr. Hall and hope he lives up to his own self image. We also get the luxury of coming off the bye to face Dallas on the national stage. Football Night in America. We have the Sunday night game which I don't like. We just poo-poo'd the game against Pittsburgh on last Monday night so I'm not a fan of the spotlight games. There was such a bruhaha made about how many Steeler fans "invaded" our house. I still don't understand the "shock". There are tons of Steeler fans in the surrounding area. Plus Pittsburgh is only about a 3 hour trek. This phenomena was discussed ad nauseaum on a number of message boards and blogs. So I'm not going to pander to that crowd especially since it's about 2 weeks removed now. I expect Skins fans will show up in huge numbers for this game. If they don't, then they don't. It's not the worse thing that can happen. The worse thing would be to receive a spanking at the hands of this shell of a Dallas team. So sharpen up your spears, tone up your vocal chords and bring your 'A' game Skins fans. We've made it through the bye week and it's time to get back to work. It's Dallas week and that means only one thing: WE WANT DALLAS!!

*The above video was put together by a fellow fan for the RedskinsHeads.com community. This talented young man has given us a song for each week of the season. I believe this is by far his best work. If you like what you hear..check his web page out at http://www.chrislouis.com/