Weekend holds promise of exciting football, but lack of RGIII adds an air of sadness
Four games and Robert Griffin III’s marvellous knees down, seven games and countless Mike Shanahan recriminations to go in these NFL playoffs. We’ve already waved goodbye to Adrian Peterson, to Chuck Pagano and Andrew Luck, to whomever is in Cincinnati, and to RG3’ s lateral collateral and anterior cruciate ligaments, respectively, which were surgically repaired this week. His rookie season was both mindblowing and knee- blowing.
Which is really, really depressing. All along, the essential problem posed by Robert Griffin III is that he was this thrilling hybrid being who made football look so easy, like he was in a dimension in which time moved slightly slower and sadly, he was employed by the Washington Redskins.
Beyond the racist nickname, owner Dan Snyder is also literally the most wretched plutocrat in the NFL. As the great Washington City Paper piece by Dave McKenna once recounted, Dan Snyder’s Redskins once sold beer in the bathrooms, sold expired airline peanuts, sued a 73- year- old grandmother for not being able to keep up her season tickets and tried to ban pedestrian traffic at FedEx Field in order to increase parking revenues.
You always figured the Redskins would ruin the magic of RG3; the suspense was in the how. Would they do it by signing over- the- hill offensive linemen to cap- busting contracts, leaving him exposed to pressure? Would Rex Grossman somehow start ahead of him?
Or would he just be so transcendent that he actually made the Redskins good, making Dan Snyder some kind of sympathetic character, leading to fawning newspaper columns and magazine articles about how the miserable miser had changed, which would mean having to hate the brilliance of RG3?
That last one had a real chance, but it turns out if you had “play on a field made of dried clay and tufts of expired airline parsley” and “leave him in the game after he has clearly suffered another knee injury, after the team lied about RG3 being cleared by Dr. James Andrews following the previous knee injury, well, you win.
Yes, Shanahan left RG3 in the playoff loss to Seattle last week even after he stopped being able to throw the ball with the same paralyzing- dart-into-the- opposing- spy’s- neck-from-your- hiding- spot- near-the-curtains precision he had exhibited all year and started limping badly. And this week Shanahan got to see his franchise quarterback undergo reconstructive surgery on his LCL and ACL, along with the repair of a meniscus tear.
So what do we do with Shanahan? Censure, or scorn? Gitmo, or merely Leavenworth? What about Snyder? Should he have to sell the franchise immediately and move to Guatemala, where he will do charity work for the rest of his life?
Well, yes, but the worry is that there is now a chance that their sentence will be the same as everybody else’s: to live in a world where Robert Griffin III might — might — never be the same again.
Last week, this space went 2- 2, but at least nobody got hurt. Well, until my bookie Phil gets here.
The picks Baltimore (+ 10) at Denver
The Broncos haven’t lost since the first weekend of October, when they had to visit New England and lost 31- 21; it’s been an easy schedule, with only Baltimore and Cincinnati as playoff- bound opponents, but nobody’s been within a normally- converted touchdown of the Broncos in that span, either. Basically, they’ve been a flying death machine. Over that same span, despite annihilating Indianapolis at home last week in what could charitably be called the penultimate Ray Lewis redemption telethon, the Ravens have basically been a Ford Taurus. Pick: Denver 28, Baltimore 17
Green Bay (+ 2.5) at San Francisco
Remember the replacement referees? Golden Tate? The sense that you were watching a sport break before your eyes on Monday Night Football? Well, had the Packers been awarded an interception in that game in Seattle, they would be 12- 4 and they would be playing this game at Lambeau Field. Instead, they have to deal with the hammer- blow defence of San Francisco in San Francisco. It will also be disorienting because going from facing Joe Webb to facing Colin Kaepernick is like going from facing a fire hydrant to facing a dog. Pick: Green Bay 27, San Francisco 24
Seattle (+ 2.5) at Atlanta
Despite the fact that the Seahawks will be flying across the country for the second time in nine days, nobody takes the Falcons terribly seriously. Really, who talks about Atlanta? At all? They went 13- 3 and essentially put the lie to the New York Giants with a couple of weeks to go, but it was as if everyone just agreed to pretend Atlanta did not exist, for football purposes. We just pretended they weren’t there. Which, when you think about it, meant nobody was calling Falcons QB Matt Ryan “Matty Ice,” so maybe we should all just run with this strategy going forward. Pick: Seattle 24, Atlanta 23
Houston (+ 9.5) at New England
If Tom Brady wins this game, he passes Joe Montana for the most playoff wins all- time, with 17. If Matt Schaub wins this game, then holy crap, Matt Schaub beat Tom Brady on the road five weeks after the Texans went to Foxborough and got ripped apart 42- 14 without tight end Rob Gronkowski, who by the way is healthy again. Is this likely? Well, just as Philadelphia’s four wins came by a combined six points, New England’s four losses came by a combined 11 points. Pick: New England 37, Houston 20 Last week: 2- 2 Season: 120- 134- 5