Sunday, in only a matter of seconds, I went from watching what I hoped would be a game -tying touchdown before halftime for the Washington Commanders to an injury that is probably going to effectively end their season.
That it turned so quickly from potential to disaster has left me still stunned on an overcast Monday morning. My mind is racing through all the “maybes”, such as “maybe he’s not hurt that badly” or “maybe they can find a brace that protects his elbow and he can still play this season.”
But it’s all whistling past the graveyard. Might as well throw in a “maybe a super model will knock on the door today and ask if I want to go with her to the home opener.”
The Commanders are cooked.
Some are trying to cast blame on head coach Dan Quinn, but that’s a waste of time. I will admit in the minutes leading up to the Washington Titanic crashing into the iceberg that I was noticing the number of penalties that usually are the mark of an undisciplined team piling up on the Commanders side of the ledger. And how in year 3 of a regime that should not be happening and perhaps Mr. Quinn might not be the man for the job.
But the injury had nothing to do with that. I guess you can extrapolate if Quinn had decided to go for the field goal instead of the touchdown on 4th down, Jayden Daniels would not have been in the game to run a play where he got stepped on by the center and thus wouldn’t have fallen and injured his elbow.
But that’s the kind of logic that could lead you to blame ME for what happened. I have Redskins jerseys of about 15 former players and for some reason, I grabbed the one closest to me in the closet to wear Sunday while watching the game. It was a No. 10 that belonged to Robert Griffin III, who also was famously injured in a game long ago. By this logic, Jayden Daniels doesn’t get hurt had I chose to wear the John Riggins jersey.
It’s like what Forrest Gump proclaimed in the movie of his fictional life: Sometimes “stuff happens.” And yes, I know he didn’t say “stuff.”
Worse yet, all of this has caused me to look back at the last three years and I’m getting a decided case of déjà vu. Back in 2016, Virginia Tech named Justin Fuente as its head football coach, and in year 1, the team went 10-4 and had some impressive wins.
I still remember walking out of Notre Dame’s stadium in South Bend after the Hokies had rallied to beat the Irish and thinking “we’ve got our coach for the next 20 years and the future looks bright.”
How’d that turn out?
I thought the same thing after the 2024 Commanders season when Quinn, Adam Peters and Daniels combined for a 12-5 season that included playoff wins over Tampa Bay and Detroit, losing in the conference finals to eventual Super Bowl winner Philadelphia.
“We’ve finally got the right people in the right seats on the bus,” I thought. “Perhaps now we’re on our way back to the days of being a Super Bowl contender.”
But that 12-5 season gave way to a 5-12 season after Daniels got hurt. Yesterday probably means a replay of those results in year 3, leading me to wonder if there’s light at the end of the tunnel, or is this the beginning of the same downward spiral that hit the program in Blacksburg.
It has reminded me of the wisdom my Dad once shared about the team when I was a kid. “The Redskins,” he noted, “will bring you a lot of joy. But you need to always keep in mind that eventually, they always break your heart in the end.”
That’s what happened Sunday.
The question now is for how long.
