COMMENTARY : Home Team and Home Fans at Their Absolute Worst

It’s not possible anymore to have a new low, just another low. You’re familiar, of course, with the general result: Redskins lose. You want a new twist? How about this: The home team, a 3 1/2-point underdog, didn’t score and still covered the spread. The home team would be the Redskins, shut out for the first time at RFK since 1980. That was also the last year they lost 10 games.

You want good news? With the Falcons, Cowboys and Vikings left on the schedule, your Redskins are cruising right ahead toward that fifth-place schedule for next season.

Well, maybe this is a new low after all. For damn sure, you can’t get lower than zero. No points. Let’s declare, right now, a moratorium on calling whatever it is the Redskins are running, “A San Francisco 49ers-Style Offense.”

Pardon me, but I don’t recall the 49ers of George Seifert or Bill Walsh -- or Monte Clark, for that matter -- scoring no points at home. I don’t see The 49ers Style-Offense being held to 150 yards or completing only 10-of-24 passes for 129 yards. I don’t recall any 49ers Style-Offense in which the punter is the MVP, which is clearly the case with these Redskins. Who’s calling the plays anyway, Rod Dowhower or Rod Serling? The Genius has a heart attack every time he watches a Redskins game.

For the sake of accuracy, let’s call this a Tampa Bay Buccaneers-Style Offense. Mike Ditka, now ripping people on NBC instead of on the Bears’ sideline, had the following to say during Saturday’s telecast when broadcast partner Bob Costas mentioned the Redskins might get one more offensive play before time expired: “The way they’re playing offense, I wouldn’t care if you gave ‘em 20 plays.”

The offense and a fair-to-middlin’ Jets defense produced a game the people at “NFL Bloopers” will be fighting over for a while. The gem came when, on an attempted field goal, Roger Duffy snapped the ball off holder Louie Aguilar’s head while Aguilar was in the middle of calling the snap count. Z-34, Bluedog left, Laurel 22, Hut 1, Hut 2 ... DOINK! This is the play (seriously) that NBC picked as the “Super Play of the Game.” It was the worst field goal attempt since Lucy yelled, “Psyche!” while holding for Charlie Brown. As Jets Coach Bruce Coslet said: “The picture tells a thousand words.”

The Redskins lost to a team that snapped the ball off the holder’s dome, had two punts partially blocked and dropped a pass in the end zone. Not just lost, but got shut out! One lousy field goal held up the entire game. It wouldn’t have, had Chip Lohmiller made his 48-yard attempt. Somebody on the sideline should have bet him a Quarter Pounder and he might have made it. Mickey D’s might want to scratch that commercial, considering The Chipster has the second-lowest percentage of field goals made in the entire league.

But three is a whole boatload of points when you’re playing the Redskins, unless you give up that double-safety, especially when your team can give the ball to Johnny Johnson. All he did was carry it 32 times for 155 yards, coming off a week when he was sidelined because of injured ribs. Johnson accounted, by and large, for the Jets’ 22-minute advantage in time of possession. Basically, the Phoenix Cardinals goofed in a major way by trading him for Garrison Hearst, the injured rookie from Georgia who may not even be ready for next year. All Johnson has done is gain more yards from scrimmage in the AFC than anybody except Thurman Thomas, who is the Michael Jordan of yards from scrimmage. “It’s a pleasure to play with him,” quarterback Boomer Esiason said. “I have no idea what Phoenix was thinking about. I can’t imagine why a team would give up on this guy.”

With the wind blowing 30 mph, it wasn’t a day for quarterbacks, not even Boomer on just his second homecoming day as a pro. Esiason completed 12-of-22 passes for a mere 105 yards, including the touchdown pass Brad Baxter dropped in the end zone. “Well, we did throw a touchdown,” Esiason said. “It was dropped. Brad owes me dinner and he knows it.” It’s now 14 quarters and counting without a touchdown for the Jets, who somehow are still stalking a wild-card spot. That’s what makes this latest loss so indigestible for the Redskins; they lost to somebody with a worse offense than they have.

But there was something, finally, to cheer. Only 13 seconds into the fourth quarter, the sight of No. 11 taking off his warmup stuff got the place all riled up. You know him, you love him, you’ve booed him in his very first appearance after winning a Super Bowl MVP award: Maaaark Rypiennnnnn! So after two years of being booed, all it took was becoming a backup for Rip to hear some cheers. Lots of them, a standing ovation, in fact. Here’s how long it lasted, however: loss of three for Reggie Brooks, incompletion, sack.

BOOOOOOOO! Lightly on second down, full-throat on third. That’s 1 minute 19 seconds.

Let me tell you about a real group of losers. Redskins fans. For years, while the team was winning, all you heard was how great Redskins fans are, how they’re the greatest fans in the NFL, how the waiting list for tickets is 40 years long, blah, blah, blah. Redskins fans, a whole lot of them, are some sorry, no-account, front-running, cocktail party-seeking losers. There were about 8,500 no-shows Saturday. They were probably trying to figure out which cummerbund to wear to Georgetown in the evening. One bad year, after three Super Bowls and a spectacular 12-year-run, and people bail.

They don’t show, they don’t want to talk about the team on the radio shows. And don’t tell me how cold it is. Let me tell you about some fans, real fans, who sit through zero temperatures and tough losses a lot of years in the past: Buffalo, Denver, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Chicago, New York (Jets and Giants). People there would think Saturday’s weather at RFK was springtime. Wimpy little frontrunners, that’s what they are; the kind of people who, whenever something’s going wrong, are so unsophisticated about the game they whine, “IT’S THE QUARTERBACK!” The only bigger whiner in these parts is Governor Baltimore, Willie Don, who thankfully was nowhere in sight. There were already enough governors in Jack Kent Cooke’s box anyway. Doug Wilder and George Allen, for those counting. I don’t get the sense the Virginia people think this Laurel thing is a done deal. But it was interesting seeing Bill Marriott there.

Presumably, his new Laurel Marriott Resort is on the drawing board, you know, just in case.