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Originally Posted by Ruhskins
John Clayton is quietly predicting good things for our team and he's very high on Orakpo. Glad to hear that Mort thinks we can beat the Giants. I wouldn't mind for our team to be this year's cause of the annual fire Coughlin phase that NY fans go through  |
A lot of the national media is trying to use past tendencies to pinhole the Redskins as a 6-8 win team. Specifically, they're drawing similarities between past failures and our actions this year where similarities do not exist.
There are cold, hard, statistics to support the fact that the Redskins might actually just be a 6-8 win team. But even those numbers don't support the notion that the Redskins CANNOT compete in this division with their current team. They simply suggest that the smart money would be on the Giants, and that the other three teams in the division have a 10-20% chance to win it each. Which is fine. Even the Patriots have about a 20% chance of finishing behind someone in the AFC East this year. The things that will actually determine who wins the division are largely out of our players' control anyway.
But the media is taking the above evidence, and presenting it in a way that suggets that there's no way the Redskins can outlast all three teams in the division. That's a limb and it's a completely unsupported limb.
At some point this year, maybe next Monday, maybe seven weeks down the road, it WILL look like the Redskins are the favorites in the NFC East. Same deal for the Eagles and the Giants. Perhaps the Cowboys as well. The reason the percentages come out the way they have is that for the Redskins to win the NFC East, things will need to keep going in their favor for the next three months. That's not likely, but it's certainly possible.
Long story short, there's no evidence that backs a prediction that the Redskins are a non-competitive team in the NFC East.