DCist Predicts: Skins vs. Lions
The Washington Redskins travel to Detroit's Ford Field on Sunday (1 p.m.) to take on the winless, hapless Lions. The Lions already officially tanked (what's left of) the 2008 season - not when they dealt stud wide receiver Roy Williams to Dallas for draft picks - but when they took the field this fall with Jon Kitna as their starting quarterback.
What goes down this afternoon? A quick lead helps us ease off Clinton Portis, who's a little banged up from accepting the most carries in the NFL so far this season. Rock Cartwright and, to a lesser extent, Shaun Alexander get some touches today. Detroit's decent receiving corps - the too-talented-for-this-team Calvin Johnson along with Mike Furrey and Shaun McDonald - keep the Lions in the mix. Jason Campbell strikes pay dirt with a big play early in the fourth to close out an acceptably comfortable road win, 27-13.
Lions quarterback Dan Orlovsky - starting his third NFL game in his fourth NFL season - got the starting nod behind center when Kitna went down with an injury. Kitna later claimed the Lions used the injury as an excuse to bench him. Which led the rest of the league to ask why a team would need an excuse to bench Jon Kitna.
But alas, this is Detroit, a team which hung on to former Redskin great, general manager Matt Millen, through thin and very thin, when perhaps the most talented running back of all time stepped away from the game early because the team couldn't match his ambition to be a winner. It's also a franchise whose lunch Washington always eats, with the 'Skins winning 18 of the last 20 matchups, including last year's 34-3 drubbing at FedEx.
The Redskins are a markedly different team than we've seen in D.C. in the past five years. It's playing with two legitimate MVP contenders on both sides of the ball - Portis as well as linebacker London Fletcher - and a host of other guys are having breakthrough seasons (Carlos Rogers, Rocky McIntosh, Chris Horton, Jason Campbell, and even Santana Moss come to mind). Still, I'm not ready to move away from the belief that this is a grind-it-out team that will take plenty of lumps if it's going to get to the postseason, even with a potential 6-2 record.