Trope Season
June 21, 2019
By Jay Evans
Offseason prediction win totals in the summer are as valuable as Chicken Little’s ominous deduction that the sky is falling because of an acorn succumbing to gravity. Prognostication is big business and clickbait fuels mid-June chatter. It all means nothing in these empty months. Word to the wise: do not react to this offseason nonsense.
The Redskins world was in an uproar when NFL Network’s Adam Rank predicted the Redskins would go a measly 2-14 in 2019. No analysis offered and no deductive reasoning was present.
Rank reduced the entire upcoming season in 90 seconds and the uncompromising forthright evaluation revealed the Redskins have a difficult schedule. BOOM! And then Redskins fans immediately soiled themselves.
This Philistine’s claim, with his unwavering bravado, is insulting to the consumer. As idiotic as I felt his declaration is, the incendiary reactions are a waste of time and even this article is his great achievement. Rank ignited controversy and he became the story, not his evaluation.
How dare he trash this team?! The Redskins are one game below a .500 over the past four seasons. We have been decimated by injuries and started four quarterbacks last year. We drafted the quarterback of the future. Our defense lost no one, while adding a first-round pass rusher and a twenty-six-year-old all-pro at safety.
Haven’t the Redskins done enough to stop the ruthless character assassinations? In a fair, reasonable world, no. Do the Redskins deserve to be ridiculed to the extent they are either? no.
Pundits love the Redskins because they are easy targets. The commentators never have to eat crow. The Redskins are cemented in humiliating pillories because they have been consistently mediocre, the name is controversial, the fans don’t show, the owner is vile, whatever you want to add. The critics are lazy and their narrative is typically cheap.
The Dallas Cowboys have three playoff wins and none beyond the wild card round in the past 25 years, yet they are annually praised. Before another losing record last season, the Cleveland Browns won exactly one game in the previous two seasons combined, but currently have the public swooning with Super Bowl aspirations.
The Cowboys and Browns are over-hyped hot garbage and lack proven winners. My deduction is essentially identical to the 2-14 prediction because of the “difficult” schedule. Both teams have big names and both teams don’t win in playoffs; therefore, my shallow reasoning is sound.
Mr. Rank failed to “research” or even make the slightest attempt to Google the NFL strength of schedule rankings because the Redskins have the easiest schedule in the league.
Miami has no intention of winning in 2019 coming season and the New York Jets after one season bizarrely fired their General Manager immediately following the draft. Rank has both teams winning more games than the Redskins. The entire AFC east passively awaits Tom Brady’s eventual retirement and those teams aren’t seen with the same indignation as the Redskins.
There is a useful purpose in discourse and earnest analysis. That isn’t what is provided by chatter boxes in the media like Rank. Hatchet jobs like this are all about self-aggrandizing name recognition. They want the attention and they get hits.
My initial reaction to seeing the clip was, “who is this clown?” The Redskins Talk Podcast titled their episode on the matter “Is the analyst who picked the Redskins to go 2-14 totally wrong?” That was the appropriate response. Do not acknowledge trash takes and don’t feed the ego by giving it a name.
The squawkers on your tv, writing the fantasy blogs, and scouting podcasts don’t know the Redskins better than an informed fan. Scare tactics are a common trap to the hopeful and Rank snared more than Redskins fans. The Denver Broncos and Tennessee Titans took umbrage with Rank’s ubiquitous predictions for similar reasons, tough schedules.
The fake news conundrum is a matter of time and perspective. Who do you trust? All of us have only so much time to consume the newswire and the Redskins, for most of us, are a distraction from the rest of our responsibilities. That is the effective draw of Redzone to me; I want see the scores, I want see the stars, and I want it all quick.
I am a lifelong fan of the Redskins. I like to think I am well informed on the league, and I am glued to the Redzone on Sundays when the Redskins aren’t playing. I can efficiently talk about the 90-man roster and that’s because I actively work at acquiring that knowledge.
I can do that for only the Redskins, not the remaining thirty-one other teams. The attention required to have the same thorough insight on all 32 teams is virtually impossible and anyone who attempts such a task exposes their vulnerability.
Adam Rank is as reliable a source as the Redskins Larry Michael. Rank’s proclamation that Redskins will lose fourteen games is the same as believing they will go 16-0 because of Michael’s “Skintangibles.” The two are identical in their reasoning, or lack thereof.
Few talking heads explore true, unbiased analysis. Sifting through the wasteland of “analysts” can be exhausting because there is no shortage of self-fulfilling prophets. Can I suggest some resources to follow? Absolutely. Should I? No.
The only advice I can offer is to not be upset that some clown didn’t make you a balloon Lombardi trophy. He is a performer. A stooge. Same has been said about me. All Redskins news and analysis is not created equal. Just try not to feed the hysterical fearmongering, because “Chicken Little” already had a busy week and there are still three months to go before the real analysis can begin.