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Rhyme of the Ancient Redskin
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Mike Wise does a nice job of bringing us back from the nostalgic stupor of the weekend’s festivities.
The die-hards will shake your hand. They'll tell you a neophyte coach gets the benefit of the doubt until he gets his bearings. But the pomp and pageantry of Canton this weekend reminded them of who and what they once rooted for, how their team once competed in four Super Bowls in 10 years. They remember how intoxicating it was believing in the Redskins in the 1980s and early 1990s, how, really, that feeling never completely went away, despite more than a decade of bad decisions, wrenching losses and outright heartbreak.Until they win like that again, the compare-and-contrast game will never end. Sad but true: The best of what they have now will never come close to the image of what they had then… Because if Jim Zorn doesn't have to be Joe Gibbs, if Clinton Portis can never be John Riggins, if Jason Taylor will never frighten a quarterback like Dexter Manley and Jason Campbell will never be the first to accomplish what Doug Williams accomplished, being a new-millennium Redskin is all about starting over, moving past yellowed newspaper clippings and grainy film footage of celebrations and touchdowns.Playing for now in Washington -- for current teammates and the current coach and not simply for someone else's legacy -- suddenly becomes liberating, less of a burden…Everything behind them can stay there for now…The slate is clean, the last vestiges of those halcyon Redskins days committed to memory, upstairs from the life-size statue of Jim Thorpe, stiff-arming museum visitors for eternity.If Zorn can be glad about anything when he leaves Canton this weekend, he can be glad about this: It is time for this franchise and its legions to move forward after 20-odd years of memorably looking back.
I’ve often thought that reporters who cover this team never really got the fan base, they never truly understood the bond between the team and the fans. However, in this case I think Wise is—no pun intended—wise to something here.
Lord knows I love to wrap myself up in the warm fuzzy blanket of Skins nostalgia, but he’s right. If Zorn and the next generation to have any chance at success, they must be unburdened from the albatross of living up to the past.
Perhaps in retrospect that was the sad irony of Joe Gibbs’ second stint here. The players knew about the past glory he engineered here, and we constantly reminded them of it. Add on to that, the fact that those guys would run through a wall for Gibbs, and you’ve got pressure you could cut with a knife.
Jim Zorn knows our storied history, as much as we do. Let’s commemorate that history when it is appropriate, instead of wallowing in it. Let's avoid the mariner's mistake of killing the albatross and chaining it like an anchor to the folks who want to make new history for us.
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