The Passion of the Gibbs: Week 8
DCist is happy to announce that Jason Linkins (aka The DCeiver) has agreed to take over our football coverage and bring his weekly "Passion of the Gibbs" column over to our bandwidth.
I gotta tell you, DC…we was robbed! Defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory this weekend at “Snyders of Landover” (as my buddy Josef V. calls it) when the seemingly miraculous Clinton Portis touchdown was called back on an illegal motion penalty that required an electron microscope to perceive. The puzzling call was made on James Thrash, who had come in motion behind center, did not, apparently set himself prior to the snap of the ball. Having now seen this play on the superset of slo-mos, I just do not see it. But I can see what it says in the Post. We lost.
Brett Favre began the game with a surgical precision, mixing passes, runs, swing outs and screens in three drives that built a 17-0 lead. Timely turnovers and a twelve yard TD toss from Brunell to Rod Gardner made it a 17-7 game at the half. The defense’s fortunes seemed to turn after Favre reaggravated his hand injury smashing it on Marcus Washington’s helmet. After that, the Pack’s offense suddenly got mortal—a lucky thing, too, because it seemed like our defensive backfield, already missing Sean Taylor, were getting jacked up on nearly every play. At one point, we had Clark, Jimoh, Dennis, and Franz—hey! It’s our NYPD Blue Nickel Package!—out on the field at the same time.
But if the dominant story was the fading Packers being bailed out by the refs, the story pushed to the background is the continued poor play of Mark Brunell. To be fair, when Brunell was good, he was passable. But when he was bad, he was execrable, tossing one wildly inaccurate strike after another. Lord Gibbs may yet stick with Saint Mark another week, but Brunell quite literally denied Gibbs a touchdown three times ere the whistle blew. From Section 208, an uneasy rumbling became a full-throated roar for Patrick Ramsey. And the fans didn’t stop there—there were calls for Hasselbeck, calls for Jurgensen…it wasn’t until someone called for Jeff George that I thought to myself: “Woah, let’s not get crazy, here.” At least no one asked for Heath Shuler. We all have limits.
Next week, the Redskins travel to Detroit, traditionally, a Washington whipping boy. Will there be a change at QB? I have no idea. Still, you have to be happy that I didn’t mention the other thing.