This time last year, the Washington Redskins were fresh off an election-eve home beatdown by the Super Bowl champs–elect, the Pittsburgh Steelers, in a game noted for the stunning prevalence of Steelers fans at FedEx Field. A little past the halfway mark of the season, that game officially kicked off the team’s late-season demise, where they’d go 2-6 and labor to put up points in virtually every game. The offensive line looked slow, tired, and hurting, and so did Clinton Portis — whom we all hoped only looked like that because he was behind that slow, tired, and hurting o-line. The defense, for the most part, manfully willed the team into games before the offensive ineptitude just became too great a burden to bear.

We expressed surprise at last year’s collapse (I believe it was Mike Wise who granted us a playoff spot after week 4?), but there were plenty of signs in that 6-2 opening stretch: the inability to put teams away, narrow wins over Cleveland and Detroit, and a lackluster home loss to the Rams. Flash forward one year and we have team that’s already collapsed at the half-season mark being steered by Mr. Kurtz into the dark heart of complete NFL irrelevance. The Redskins have enjoyed a schedule that very nicely (very nicely) favored them to be 5-2 at this point. The rest of the schedule could see them go 1-8 or even 0-9. That begins this week, with Atlanta handing Dan Snyder’s bunch a 23-13 loss on the road.

At this point, the question is to what extent Snyder realizes that this is no run of bad luck. He has a 2-14 team on his hands, despite the incredible cash he laid down in the offseason to try to improve it. I would guess he thinks this team is mediocre, maybe in the 7-9 range, but I have trouble believing he grasps the depths this team has reached. I think we start to see those today — on the road against a good team coming off a tough loss, a team that needs wins to stay in the playoff chase and a team with loads of offensive talent. The ‘Skins ought to be able to fool QB Matt Ryan into a few mistakes, and maybe they can cash in those for a few points. And by “few”, I mean 3.

I don’t think this game will necessarily be as ugly as some previous ones or some left to come, but are there any circumstances under which it might be “pretty”? Nope. No chance. It’s a 70-degree, perfectly clear autumn day in November here in D.C. The ‘Skins are playing in a crappy dome in Atlanta, and the Fox broadcast will almost certainly feature one of their bottom-of-the-rung booth teams. I’m not suggesting that you don’t watch today — I’m just saying that you might want to think it through.