Photo by Rory.

The Washington Redskins will play an actual preseason football game against the Pittsburgh Steelers tonight. Clocks keep ticking and Earth keeps spinning, but tonight has snuck up on me. Perhaps it was the newsworthy decision to reduce the newsworthiness of the team by shipping out Donovan McNabb and Albert Haynesworth? Partially, but not quite. Maybe it was all the attention I didn’t pay to the never-ending stream of bullshit coming from the mouths of the Redskins’ quarterback tandem? We’re getting warmer. Oh, I know! It’s snuck up on me because I’m struggling to confront the expectation that this team is going to be terrible.

Terrible is such a strong word. The 2008 Detroit Lions are the towering pinnacle of Terrible that will be extremely difficult to replicate. I fully expect the 2011 Washington Redskins to win at least one game (preseason not included), if only because they’re bound to face a team with a worse passing attack and a worse secondary than they currently possess. However, the cautious optimism that I normally possess in my sports fandom — thinking that a playoff spot is possible if they would just try hard enough and break Michael Vick’s ribs — is M.I.A. at the moment.

Blame the quarterbacks, where McNabb’s departure leaves Rex Grossman, who is very confident, and John Beck, who is awful mouthy for a guy who hasn’t taken a snap in a game since 2007, at the top of the depth chart. Blame the secondary, horrendous all of last year, where the addition of one just-fine corner (Josh Wilson) to replace another (Carlos Rogers) doesn’t move the needle much. Blame Kyle Shanahan and Jim Haslett, who still coordinate the offense and defense, respectively, despite last year’s woeful performance.

It’s not all bad, and if pressed for positives, I’m looking forward to seeing how if the new defensive front seven, highlighted by the addition of Stephen Bowen from the Cowboys and Barry Cofield from the Giants, can get to the quarterback and stuff the run. I’ll also admit that once Ryan Torain gets healthy, I’m looking forward to seeing if the running attack improves with the addition of Tim Hightower. Aside from that, I’m looking forward to watching this team play football much in the way that my parents must have felt watching my performance of Macbeth back in fifth grade — the performance was choppy, lines were messed up, but it was just so damned cute to watch your son pretend to cut off the lead character’s head on stage.

Results in the preseason mean nothing (just ask those 2008 Detroit Lions, who finished their preseason 4-0), and all the vitriol I just spewed will hopefully be tempered as the roster contracts and everyone gets their reps in the game. After all, as a Redskins fan, I don’t want them to lose. I’m just starting to accept that I expect that they will.