Party Like it's 1992! Or 93.

Among the other things that have changed since 1992, Republican states used to be the blue ones.

I'm as hysterical (adj: displaying excessive emotion) a Redskins fan as the next person, and as such, I take the Redskins' winning and losing seriously. I'm not ready to call it quits on the season yet, though after two games, I see less to be hopeful for than I would like. As David at Skinsaphrenia reminds us, the Redskins were 5-6 on November 28 of last year (that after a weak 1-3 in preseason), before reeling off five straight to get to the playoffs.

In those playoffs as we all know, the Redskins beat the Bucs in a game that happened entirely inside an anomaly in the space-time continuum. All the clocks around the stadium appeared to show the normal procession of time, but the game somehow appeared to end in approximately half the time of a game played outside the anomaly. There was no entropy. Nothing happened. Atomic decay rates slipped to near zero. It was as if someone slipped the whole Buccaneers team decaf at the team breakfast. At the end of the game, Chucky looked up at the gameclock and said, wait, that's the end of the half, right? No? Wait, what just happened? I call it 'submission hold' football. The Redskins never got anything going, so Gregg Williams just made sure the defense was like the summertime Virginia forest: dense all around. He earned his money in that game. And then they lost to the Seahawks in the exactly the same way they beat the Bucs.

(author's aside: I went to the Tampa game. We were among the Redskins fans that used the leaked password to the Tampa season ticket holders' Ticketmaster page and bought Club seats. A friend and I did the 22-hour surgical strike on Tampa, flying in from Washington to Tampa at 8am, renting a car, dropping our excess shit at a hotel room walking distance from the stadium, partying like rock stars for four hours (Bucs fans know how to party, that's for sure), watching the Redskins grab hold of the Bucs and not let go for four quarters, then we drove to Orlando, partied until 2am, drove back to Tampa, rescued our stuff from the unused hotel room, got the car returned and strolled right onto the airplane at 6am to sleep it off with about 40 other stankin, up-all-night Redskins fans coming back to Washington, all in time to catch the afternoon playoff games from home.)

So there is nothing to say the Redskins 2006 season is done. I'm seeing some things I don't like, though. For one, it bothers me that Joe is second-guessing himself on the preseason. La Canfora yesterday:

Gibbs said criticism for conducting too soft a training camp and not implementing enough of the offense in preseason games is not unfounded with his team winless in six games, including preseason, heading into Sunday's contest in Houston. "Will I approach the preseason next year the same way I did this year?" Gibbs said. "No, probably not."

Well, at least I feel better that he's publicly admitting he's planning on coaching next season.

So where's the historic parallel for this Redskins team? I'm looking at two possibles: 1992 and 1993.

In 1991, the Redskins rolled up a 14-2 record and won the Super Bowl in a walkover. Jim Kelly had more rushing yards in Super Bowl 26 than Thurman Thomas, Helmet Loser. The next season in 1992, the Redskins came out flat in the Monday Night Football opener against the Cowboys (a game I remember well because I had 20 people over to my filthy house, all of whom were heckling me by the end of the game). They went on to win 9 games in a 'disappointing' season, make the playoffs and win a game against Minnesota before losing to San Francisco (and if that !@#$% Steve Young to John Taylor TD does not go right through AJ Johnson's open arms, Redskins win that game). Joe retired after that season, fully prescient as to what impending free agency would do to his way of football life.

That 1992 team was basically the 1991 Super Bowl team, just a year older. Rypien, Byner, Gary Clark, Kurt Gouveia, et al. They were unable to return to the same heights as the previous season, as the O-line bocking went downhill, so the running got tougher and the yards per pass went down.

That team is remembered, by me at least, as a hard-nosed team that played great defense and underachieved on offense, and was reported in the media as a something of a disappointment. Sound familiar? Like maybe 2004? Maybe even 2005? Could be the same in 2006.

That 1992 team needed help to get into the playoffs and got some, backing in when Minnesota beat Green Bay in week 17. Minnesota needed to beat Green Bay to make it into the playoffs, else Minnesota would have lost the tiebreaker to Green Bay and missed the playoffs. By beating the Packers, the Vikings doomed the Packers' playoff hopes and promoted the Redskins, who had the same 9-7 record as the Packers, but a better Conference record, in part because the Redskins had beaten the Vikings earlier in the season. The 3rd seed division winning Vikings, tied with the 5th seed wild card Eagles at 11-5, got to play the lowest playoff seed, the Redskins, whom they had promoted by beating the Packers which they had to do to avoid losing the spot to the Packers in part becase they had already lost to the Redskins. The Redskins, of course, beat the Vikings handily, sending Denny Green to the first of his many playoff losses.

Will this 2006 Redskins team underachieve and yet outplay most of the league? Like 1992, the Redskins were coming into the season with high expectations and a solid returning core of players. While that team never looked dominant for longer than a few stretches, they did what it took to secure a playoff spot (that season, the Eagles and Redskins sucked up two of the three Wild Card spots for the NEC East).

At the time, we knew the team had underachieved, but had no idea how lucky we were as fans that they had nine wins in the tank. It would be 7 years until the Redskins got back to the playoffs.

Richie Petitbon, who had turned down the opportunity to succeed Mike Ditka in Chicago eight weeks earlier, got his promotion when Gibbs handed the reins over. Petitbon promoted quarterbacks coach Rod Dowhower to offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator Larry Peccatiello to assistant head coach for defense.

Player-wise, the 1993 team was once again basically the same team as the 1992 team, though Gary Clark was gone. Byner and Ricky Ervins were dinged and fell in the depth chart to Reggie Brooks, the #2 guy at Notre Dame behind Jerome Bettis. Jeff Bostic, Ray Brown, Joe Jacoby and Mark Schlereth were still there, but there was not much left in the tank. Mark Rypien played poorly

1991: 16 games / 28 TD / 11 INT / 97.9 passer rating
1992: 16 games / 13 TD / 17 INT / 71.7 passer rating
1993: 12 games / 4 TD / 10 INT / 56.3 passer rating

leaving for 5 games when his knee was injured in week 2 against the Cardinals. When he came back, he never looked the same.

That team stumbled to 4-12, a bad combination of age, injuries and bad coaching. Petitbon may have been in a class by himself while running the defense, but he never took hold of the team as head coach. You could see him on the sideline, looking across the field with the 1000-yard stare, wondering how to get it together while Dowhower ran amok with the new 'short passing game' offense (Rypien's average in 1993: 4.75 yards per attempt, the lowest of his career, which ran another 9 years after 1993) and the defense seemed to change strategy every week. Cooke was right to dismiss him after the season, though it was not handled properly. Petitbon has never agreed to any off the team's requests to return to Redskins Stadium to be honored, and the one time there was any interest from John Kent Cooke about bringing him back, the team was rebuffed. That 1993 experience clearly hurt Richie, and badly, which is a shame because he taught me the value of a 13-6 football game.

Is this 2006 Redskins team that 1993 team all over again? Like 1993, it's a new system, but not entirely new. Like 1993, there is a core of returning players, all a year older and questions are being raised about ability at the QB spot and along the offensive line. Like 1993, the guy in charge was there before that season, but adjusting to a new role, and not looking entirely comfortable in that new role. Unlike Petitbon in 1993, if Gibbs in 2006 sees things aren't working, will he be strong enough to take charge and make changes? Or, like Petitbon, will he let his assistants run the show and just hope for the best?



1992 Electoral College results: presidentelect.org
Ricky Ervins: Getty Images
Richie Petitbon: Washington Post File Photo