The Washington Commanders opened their common season Sunday with a slim, ugly win at house over the dopey, self-sabotaging Arizona Cardinals. In some ways it was a typical Landover efficiency for this bozo franchise. Washington’s offense, coordinated by ballyhooed assistant head coach Eric Bieniemy and led by rectangular second-year placeholder quarterback Sam Howell, was sloppy, simply flustered, and irritatingly low-wattage. A collection of dangerous turnovers quieted the house crowd to a grumbly nervous murmur and saved the undermanned Cardinals within the recreation, together with an excruciating second-quarter strip-sack for a defensive landing. Washington’s solely actual scoring drive of the sport, a 91-yarder within the first quarter, was aided by a whopping 67 yards of defensive penalties.An excellent workforce would’ve crushed the shit out of the Cardinals. Even a messy good workforce, even one with a goober of a 23-year-old quarterback making simply his second regular-season begin, would’ve had some eye-popping huge performs and labored itself into fitful rhythms and strung collectively some encouraging drives. The Commanders regarded like trustworthy friends of the Cardinals, like a rest room workforce in a battle of bathroom groups, however the fortunate one which acquired its nostril over the road in a contest that requires a winner. What a win like this portends in Washington, by custom, is a irritating season of silly ugly soccer and plenty of dangerous emotions. It’s far too early to foretell something, however the product on the sector Sunday regarded very very like a seamless continuation of the identical awful product that this franchise has put onto its depressing shaggy discipline for the higher a part of 25 years.But this time the vibes have been totally different, for apparent causes. For starters, the workforce’s far-flung hellhole of a stadium was moderately stuffed up with followers—a wholesome 96 % of capability, in response to game-day reporting—a bigger than normal share of whom seemed to be supporting the house workforce. This is a welcome and notable change: Last season’s house opener, a six-point win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, had a reported game-day attendance of simply over 58,000, an 86 % turnout that, for reference, would’ve been a hair over the edge for the NFL’s infamous former blackout coverage. Their Week 1 recreation in 2021 set a brand new low mark for house opener attendance within the stadium’s 20-plus years of operation, and that was for a workforce coming off of a divisional crown and a (temporary and disappointing) playoff berth. The house workforce was jeered by a pro-Cowboys house crowd throughout a gap day loss in 2019, and in 2018 was viciously booed by a sparse and hostile then-all-time-low opening-day crowd of 57,000. Getting asses into seats was a humiliating long-term vexation below former proprietor Dan Snyder and an ongoing referendum on his disastrous stewardship of the franchise; after some time the group stopped even daring to hope {that a} majority of these asses can be connected to followers of the burgundy and gold. A 2023 home-opener with a voluminous and partisan pro-Commanders crowd is itself a marker of a brand new period.The Commanders invited again a bunch of alumni for the event, on the implicit understanding that for the primary time in a really very long time folks would possibly proactively select to be related to this franchise. Robert Griffin III, whose misuse and flameout as Washington’s final nice hope was one of many ugliest, most dispiriting turns in latest WFT historical past, was available, telling anybody who’d pay attention about how the workforce’s entrenched dysfunction flowed down from the highest. Champ Bailey, who was swapped to the Denver Broncos in 2004 for Clinton Portis in a uncommon star-for-star commerce, agreed to function designated Legend of the Game after declining the respect below Snyder’s regime. Bailey, who alluded to Snyder’s administration model as the reason for some resentments that saved him away from the workforce, mentioned he “would like to be part of the group” below its new possession. Old-timers John Riggins, Sonny Jurgensen, and Billy Kilmer, who’d taken to avoiding the Commanders through the latter phases of Snyder’s possession, have been collected by way of non-public jet and introduced enthusiastically to the stadium to inaugurate the Josh Harris period.Even the expertise of watching Sunday’s recreation on tv had a unique, refreshing feeling. Washington’s soccer workforce was an ongoing shame for entire complete generations, till first rooting for them after which even simply watching them on tv felt like an act of bizarre racist defiance, or of extraordinarily willful ignorance, or of indulgent self-hatred. Finally dumping their slur of a nickname earlier than the 2020 season would possibly’ve helped, besides that it was by no means doable to neglect that that change was compelled in opposition to the expressed needs of Snyder, who for many years engaged in essentially the most deranged stunts and insulting public-relations campaigns so as to withstand the long-overdue makeover. The change was lastly made solely when Snyder wanted cowl for the collection of brewing controversies that finally compelled him to promote the workforce, associated to the insanely poisonous company tradition he’d fomented and inspired over his many years in cost. Jumping again on the bandwagon after the hasty rebranding of 2020 would’ve felt like giving energetic cowl to one of many worst and most abusive piece-of-shit homeowners within the historical past {of professional} sports activities; it was unimaginable to look at WFT house video games, even after the identify change, with out feeling some measure of disgusted contempt for the poor addled dipshits up there within the half-empty stands not actively rooting for the workforce’s demise.Sunday I form of reflexively cycled by means of the assorted causes to hate this workforce—past the same old and completely sound causes to hate your entire NFL and recoil from the tradition of soccer—and located myself weirdly disoriented to find that, for the primary time since I used to be an adolescent, the Commanders exist in my thoughts as simply, you understand, a soccer workforce. The on-field product was shoddy, however then so was the on-field product of their opponent, and that of the New York Giants, and the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Cincinnati Bengals, and the Houston Texans. Unlike these different bullcrap groups, the Commanders gained! It was not a win to really feel significantly good about, however for the primary time in my complete grownup life, it additionally was not a win to really feel significantly dangerous about. It didn’t reward or spite a person who made himself a villain to a whole fanbase and area and nation and continent and species; it was only a awful soccer workforce pratfalling its method by means of a dopey recreation in opposition to one other awful soccer workforce, and successful. It meant nothing in any respect, besides to followers for whom a change in possession lastly stripped away a whole lot of painful and humiliating context from their expertise of an autumn Sunday.Magic Johnson, who’s now a part-owner of this franchise, spoke with Commanders gamers this week, hoping to inspire them for the beginning of a brand new regime. Johnson is a goober, however a lovable one, and this dopey management train for positive beats the hell out of something past a misspent paycheck that anybody acquired out of Snyder’s possession. The message was about greater than Championship Secrets of the Truly Successful: “This is what I informed them,” recounted Johnson, who by his personal retelling was successful along with his workers. “I mentioned: ‘You don’t have to fret about no issues from this possession group. You simply have to focus on Sundays, taking part in soccer. You ain’t going to learn no headlines. You’re not going to have to fret about nothing. No questions from [media] about stuff off the sector. Your job is simply to focus on doing all your job and having enjoyable each Sunday, each Thursday or each Monday. That’s it.'” This is an unfamiliar state of affairs for everybody concerned, like rising into vibrant daylight after hiding for years in a darkish cave. The Commanders can win or lose, they’ll make you grind your enamel to powder with shitty soccer, however they’ll not put you into any form of relationship with Dan freaking Snyder. For now, for the primary time in eternally, and for nevertheless lengthy it lasts, the Commanders are simply taking part in soccer.
First seem at The Washington Commanders Played A Football Game And Dan Snyder Had Nothing To Do With It
