Embattled Black QB's cont...

Do you remember how we were talking about the Stages of Black Quarterback Fanhood? 

Well, we’re talking about it again, as some shit’s happened.  Namely the benching of ‘Skins quarterback Donovan McNabb in the final two minutes of a road loss to the Detroit Lions. Classic 'Concerned Dad' behavior-- or is it?

The incident, now more than two weeks removed, speaks to some of the issues I attempted to address in my Embattled Black Quarterback post: the interplay between race, sports and cultural perception, the public's skepticism of black leadership, and, most importantly, our complete inability to predict how these elements will play out, particularly in a city like Washington D.C. where racial sensitivities run deep. 

Rather than re-invent the wheel, I'll link you to some of the better local coverage. 

Here’s Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon’s response to the benching. A confessed McNabb fan, he sides with the Donovan mostly on account of Shanahan’s decision to openly question the competence and intellect of the six time Pro Bowler. 

And here’s an excellent read by another Post writer, Mike Wise, who puts the McNabb benching in the context of the Redskins' long, turbulent and frankly abusive relationship with black players and D.C.’s  African-American community. 

This quote by a former ‘Skins player stuck out to me: 

"One of the reasons there's so many damn Cowboy fans in Washington is because many black fans in this area refused to support a team that would not employ an African American player for so many years," says Rick "Doc" Walker, the former Redskins tight end and a Washington media personality the past 20 years. "So they became fans of the team's arch rival. They had kids and they became Cowboy fans - and so on and so on. Hell, some of 'em have never even been to Dallas."

***

Fast forward to this past Monday night.  Questions still swirl about Coach Shanahan’s judgment and McNabb’s commitment to the game, but the Redskins have had the benefit of a bye week to pull the themselves together before facing off against their division rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles. 

Finally, there’s football to play, and off-field complications can be set aside (if only temporarily).

Only a new wrinkle emerges in the hours leading up to the game: McNabb is signed to a $78 million-five year extension by the Redskins , the same team that publicly impugned him over the last couple weeks.  It’s a head-scratcher, to say the least. He’s about to turn 34. He’s had a mediocre season. His coaches, by all accounts, don’t like him , or at least have a funny way of showing it. 

And they gave him $78 million. 

If you think the decision to extend McNabb seemed odd before the game, things got muddier after it.  The Redskins went down in a 59-28 blowout loss to the Eagles, led by Michael Vick – McNabb’s good friend, mentee and eventual replacement – who on Monday night put on one of the most dominant displays of football I’ve ever seen in my life (McNabb was once again so-so).

 To sort through the implications of this one, you have to look back a year or two.

Does this mean the Eagles were right to discard McNabb after years of pro-bowl caliber play? Possibly, although they clearly didn’t know what they had in Vick at the time. They traded McNabb, after all, to make room for Kevin Kolb, who they signed to a big contract and named the starter at the beginning of the season.

Maybe McNabb’s performance in 2010 is justification enough for the Eagles moving him. Only, true to form with the Redskins, they have neither the personnel nor the offensive schemes to give McNabb the protection he needs to thrive. Who knows how he’d have looked on the 2010 Eagles, who, with an offense significantly improved over last season, now share a lead for the Division.

Maybe the Redskins offering McNabb a contract extension was an acknowledgement of that fact. Coming off a 4-12 season, the team is a work in progress with several pieces that need time to gel. They desperately need improvements on the offensive line which has allowed McNabb, an expert scrambler, to be sacked more than any QB in the NFL not named Jay Cutler this season.  Paying McNabb what they did may have been the organization’s way of saying we’re willing to be patient with you, if you’re patient with us.

It certainly appeared that way, until you looked at the fine print of the contract.

ESPN reported Tuesday morning that of the $78 million the Redskins inked McNabb for, they'll only be on the hook for $3.75 million if they cut him after this year. So what does the contract mean, really, if it involves virtually no commitment on the part of the organization?

You want the skeptic’s take? The contract was meant to create the illusion of security; not for McNabb’s sake, but ours. The Redskins are tired of controversy. They’re tired of the local and national media tearing them apart for questionable decision after questionable decision, and they certainly didn’t want to raise the specter of racism once again – not everything they’ve been through, recently and long ago. Ignore the fine print of the contract, as most casual fans are wont to do, and it reads like a vote of confidence. A reason for fans, particularly those who took offense to the way McNabb’s benching was handled,  to shift their focus elsewhere.   

It also affords the organization an incredible amount of wriggle room. Now if McNabb’s performance doesn’t improve in the second half of the season, 16 games of sub-par play will be enough to convince Redskins nation that $78 million (a figure agreed upon after the team initiated negotiations, mind you -- the extension was their idea) is about a kajillion dollars too many for this bum.

Am I convinced that it’s all a ruse? Nope. McNabb didn’t have to sign the contract, after all.

As a professional athlete, he could have decided that D.C. isn’t a winning situation and chosen to go elsewhere. As a businessman, he could have held out for a smaller, guaranteed contract instead of signing for prodigious sums he may never see. 

And, as a man, he might have decided that whatever slights were directed his way, racial or otherwise, are too significant to overlook and flown the coop for an organization that respects his talents and his commitment to his craft.  

Look, I don’t know what McNabb should have done.  I don’t know what the Redskins should have done. And frankly, as a recent transplant to DC, I’m still trying to understand the place that McNabb’s benching (and ongoing humiliation) occupies in the city’s racial history. I think it’s all terribly interesting stuff, however, and I hope that this digression from the weekly posting schedule hasn’t been entirely tiresome.

In any case: coming your way in the next couple days will be Cowboys @ Giants - ROAD EDITION. Beltway Tribes travels to Oakland, CA to watch the game with my brother, who, for 3 hours, was the biggest Giants fan on the planet. That's right -- he had money on the game. And now it's gone. Stay tuned for the carnage... 

JETS @ LIONS

 It’s week nine. I’m at 51^st State Tavern in Foggy Bottom, a self-proclaimed ‘New York’ bar that hosts both the Giants and the Jets games.  Jets get the prime real estate on the ground floor, unless the game times are staggered as they were this week. Then the Giants fans simply replace the Jets fans  in the downstairs space, or vice versa.

We’re at the halfway point in the season, and just as teams know what they can and can’t do now, I know my limitations, too.  Before I get to the bars on Sundays, I consult Google Maps or WMATA for road or train directions.  At the beginning of the season, if my estimated trip time was 25 minutes, I gave myself 25 minutes. By midseason I know that I’m not a turn-by-turn guy. My mind is goofy.  I miss exits. I can’t resist the occasional ad-libbed short cut that almost certainly tacks an unnecessary fifteen minutes onto my commute. I get too ambitious with my parking search, passing on the safe spot that’s two blocks away from the bar in favor of the imaginary one right out front, then double back for the safe spot only to find that it’s been taken. Now anything inside a half mile radius will have to do; kick off's in two minutes.

And then, once I actually made it into the bar, my inclination would be to order the most interesting beer on tap – a porter or an IPA or some such. The more micro the brew, the mo' better. Turns out hoppy beers early in the afternoon give me a headache. These are the things you learn about yourself early on in the schedule.

 I might have also ordered some kind of burger, forgetting what I, as a food service veteran, have known my entire adult life: only the most apprentice grill cooks get assigned to the weekend day shifts.  With the exception of those much-lauded crab cake sandwiches from the Baltimore game, it was one rat ass burger after another those first four weeks. 

When after the overlong commute, the migraine and the low grade meat I got down to the business of watching the game, I figured that I didn’t have to write shit down. I'm a relatively young man with a taste for mental rigor - no problem, right? Wrong. By the time I got back to the apartment and napped off the beer and bad food, all I was left with were faint memories of the Pulitzer insights I was generating just a few hours earlier.e

 

But guess what. It’s mid-season, now. And my game is tight. Peep me in this photo. Notepad. MEDIUM BODIED beer (I go Amber at the darkest). Order of French Fries that, while absolutely terrible, only cost me $3.00. I should have time-stamped this pic so you could see it’s only the first quarter, and there I am – sitting at a GOOD table. I’m clicking on all cylinders, sensitivity to my own weaknesses. I want this W, so I prepared to get it. 

 I’m like the Jets in that regard. Forgive that bush league transition and hear me out for a second. The Jets thought they were invincible coming into the season, or at least made a real effort to project that they were. Nobody talked more ying-yang in the offseason than these guys. It struck me a little strange that a team that went 9-7 last year, and felt so insecure in their ground game (a supposed strength) that they brought in a washed up RB in LeDanian Tomlinson to shore it up, was flapping their gums.  But hey. The NFL is a talker's league. In fact that's one the best things about it.

After seven games, the Jets are 5-2. That’s solid, especially with the state of parity in the League this year. They’ve picked up quality wins against the Patriots, Vikings and Dolphins and dropped a close one against the Ravens.  Their lone  IPA-migraine was clearly last week’s game at home against the Packers: a 9-0 shut-out loss and a confirmation of what Jets fans already knew – second-year QB Mark Sanchez (16-38 passing, 0 TDs, 2 INTs) is at his best when you’re asking him to manage the game, not win it for you. 

Yes, that is a 2008 Favre Jets Jersey. I'm baffled.

Enter the Detroit Lions, this week’s opponent. A couple of posts ago I said that teams want to play the New England Patriots because the team itself is not as good as the organization’s brand. The opposite is true of the Lions. Detroit, to use a sports cliché, is dangerous (‘dangerous’ being what you call teams that you don’t want to commit to calling ‘good’). But because they still have the stink of that 0-16 season, nobody’s throwing a parade if you beat them. In fact you should probably take a Red-Eye back into town under an assumed name if you don't.

Hence the Jets fans state of distress when this game turns out to be close. 

I have to hand it to them.  I haven’t been around a more intense fan base this season. Everyone that dared claim a stool at the bar is wearing Green and White. They curse at the screen, and will not suffer judgment from any quarter over it. A family of four sitting at a corner table rolls their eyes and mutters something about the yelling being too loud, and draws death glares from no fewer than five guys, including ole' #4 pictured above. There was no more of that out of them.

 Things get ugly for the Jets quickly.When Lions Cornerback Alphonso Smith intercepts a Sanchez pass in the third quarter, I get ready to flip the script on this entire blog to accommodate a 4,000 word post on the Branch Davidian scene that looked like it would go down (did I mention these guys are intense?). Or at the very least, I would have landed an interview with the family of the one Detroit fan who inexplicably decided to show up at the bar, and was torn asunder after loud-clapping the yet another Lions touchdown. 

[As an aside, I don’t know why people do that -- go to the opponent’s bar wearing their team’s colors. I applaud the Jets fans for tolerating him with good humor, but there was a point when I just wish they'd bum rush the guy already.]

All is well in the end, however. The Jets win on an a dramatic overtime FG, raising their record to an AFC-leading 6-2 and a tie in the division with the Pats. If I ultimately decide to join these guys to ride out the season, I'll need to elevate my game yet again. Arrive earlier to grab a stool. Get my New York swagger going. Or at the very least hydrate at home so I can try the house heffeweissen, which I'm told is off the chain. 

K.C.

Clips Episode!

Everyone's favorite kind, right? In any case, we’re overdue a recap. So here it is. A rerun in new episode's clothing.

Eight weeks in, we’ve visited with six teams in our whirlwind tour of six Washington D.C. metro bars. It’s been fun. It’s been an ordeal. I’ve watched some great football and eaten some great bar food, though never in the same week, it would seem.  Rest assured this has been a blast.  

But, consider this your warning that in two weeks’ time, the tour will come to an end. Life on the road has beaten both me and my 99 Dodge Stratus down.  As every man needs a home, so must every man have a home team, and once I’ve visited with each of the last two teams on my schedule I’ll choose one team – ONE TEAM – to ride out the season (and the postseason, God-willing) with, at one Metro-accessible venue. A decision is in order, obviously, and while I can honestly tell you I have no idea which team I’ll choose, a set of criteria have finally begun to crystallize. And these are they:

Venue  

[Sidebar] Guess what – I’m unemployed. Yup, after bitching and moaning about balancing the blog with the rigors of my work-week, I am, at the moment, a full-time student. And that means two things. 

1)      I’m ready to kick it. All that junk about abstaining from beer during the games so I can stay fresh for my afternoon workload. It ain’t me. And it’s not gonna be me. No sir, not any more. I make no promises about getting plowed at 1:00 pm on a Sunday as I don’t see how that would enhance your  experience or mine, but let’s just say that the bar culture, which,  until this point, had been merely an ambient presence in my world, just got a lot more important. 

2)      I’m on a budget. If this were Oregon Trail, I’d be set to Meager Rations. In other words nothing on this Earth would set me off more at this point than showing up to a bar that advertises Game Day Specials only to find that the best they’re offering is $4.00 taps. I can’t afford it, I won’t have it, and as a practical matter, I will disqualify venues and the team they host on this basis. I’m sorry. This isn’t a game. Nobody’s floating me rent. 

Fans

When it comes to fans, I like intensity. I like commitment. I also like congeniality, humor and a heavy dose of perspective. Look, freak out when your team’s up big. Freak out when they’re getting murdered. But  in between, let’s get in a little chit chat. Come on. We got drinks and everything.

Team

I, like anyone else, prefer watching good football to bad football. And for the purposes of the blog, I’d rather run with a team that’s headed for the playoffs. That said, this project is about the ‘Tribes’ and their dwellings more than anything else, and as such, I’ll be careful not to over-penalize those whose teams happen to suck this season.

And now, a run-down of how the teams stack up so far, in order of how they appeared.

I hope that's your 'disappointed but not surprised' face, man. The writing was on the wall.

Washington Redskins The hometown team in the town nobody calls home for more than three years at a time. I liked Redskins fans perspective coming into the season and I like it now. They’re 4-4 in a Division in which no team has excelled and one has fallen completely off the map (Cowboys). Redskins nation whispers about the playoffs, but sounds more concerned about developing young talent to replace their veteran rentals (McNabb, Haynesworth). And speaking of McNabb, he’s officially ushered us into Stage 2 of Black Quarterback Fanhood. His commitment to and knowledge of the game have been brazenly questioned. Check. He was benched in favor of an inferior backup (Rex Grossman? Be serious).  Check. And now Stage 3 is knocking at the door as Redskins management has apparently been sneaking QB prospects into FedEx Arena just to ‘throw a few balls with the second unit’. Uh huh. I’d get mad if I hadn’t already been mad in advance.  

Don't be jealous, just come with me.

 Baltimore Ravens At 5-2, they’ve gotten their shit together since I checked in with them, which ought to surprise no one. Their offense is stacked, their defense (albeit long in the tooth) is resilient. This team is elite. Expectations are sky-high going forward. But MORE IMPORTANTLY… McFadden’s in Foggy Bottom has $6 dollar crab cakes sandwiches during games. I love crab cakes. I get upset if I travel North of the city and don’t get to eat a crab cake. The thought of getting to go somewhere – nay, being obligated to go somewhere – that serves crab cake sandwiches on the cheap every Sunday almost makes me forget that Ravens fans are weirdly intense. 

I'm gonna pass, bro.

 Philadelphia Eagles I’m going to be honest. They benched Michael Vick. The pre-eminent Eagles watering hole in DC is a frat bar in Georgetown. I don’t think I can do it. I’m sorry, I’ll do them the courtesy of saying ‘jury’s still out’, but on real – it isn’t. 

One more time, Jamal and his dad, finer gentleman than my crappy camera phone could ever do justice.

 Buffalo Bills GREVEEEEEEY’S! Win, lose or draw the Bills fans will always occupy a soft spot in my heart by virtue of where they hang out, Grevey’s in Falls Church, the most hospitable bar on earth. Every man’s a King at Grevey’s, and by king I mean you don’t rule shit but rather sit comfortably while they serve you their finest bread puddings. At 0-7, the team is historically bad, and if they somehow cop their first win against my Chicago Bears this Sunday, I might have to pull them from consideration. But taking in sum everything BUT the on-field product – surroundings, good people, free and abundant parking – they’d be ahead of the pack by a mile.

The Pats generate new arm flesh in the bye week, baby!

 New England Patriots I already vetoed the Eagles, didn’t I? Damn. Two vetoes would be bush. And that’s fine; I can find a way to get behind this team. Marinate on this:  a lot of the talking heads guessed  that unceremoniously dumping Randy Moss would make the Pats offense worse, and they were right. With Randy Moss, they’d averaged 36.25 points per game this season. Since the trade? Just over 25. Recipe for disaster, no? NOPE. Their defense has held the Ravens, Chargers and Vikings to 20, 20 and 18, respectively, in each of the last three weeks. Offense goes soft – defense steps up, coincidentally. How does that make sense? It doesn’t. It really doesn’t…UNTIL you remember that football is a machine sport and the Pats are an almost perfect machine. Wounded by the Moss departure, they went all Terminator and absconded into a public bathroom and used broken sink fragments to repair their bio-mechanical arm. Which is all to say, if once I plug all of their metrics into my Pick-a-Squad calculator, the Pats turn out to be the ones, there’s lots to maintain my interest there.  

Pierogis, per Google Images. I don't remember them looking so much like won tons. Huh.

 Pittsburgh Steelers Did I mention I’m from the Midwest? Dropped a Bears reference a couple paragraphs up so I could circle back on it. Catch it? No? Anyway.  I’m from there. And this past Sunday, watching the Steelers game at the Tortoise in the Hare bar in Crystal City, Arlington felt like going home. First, the menu: pierogis and kebasa and brats and tots and sauerkraut. That’s 100% Chicago right there. Also 100% Chicago were the Steelers fans, who looked like they’d eaten a lot of pierogis and brats and tots and sauerkraut, which, I promise you, is an affectionate observation on my part.  I found it oddly reassuring. The Steelers kinda play like the Bears, too – how they used to play, I mean. Hard hits that verge on head-hunting (or at least as you can come to that under the League’s new helmet to helmet rules). Strong running game. Conservative play-calling. That stuff pulls at my heart-strings. If over the course of the next two weeks I’m overwhelmed by nostalgia. Like if I don’t find another job in this cut-throat city and the proverbial wolf is at the door, believe me, the Steelers, and the Tortoise and the Hare bar, will receive strong consideration.

That’s it. Those are the teams we’ve covered. And the teams remaining are only two: the Jets and the Giants.  I’m working on renting a space for the selection party and buying bulk card stock for the invitations. Check your mail, hold your breath - the search is almost over.