D.C. Sports Bog

I don't usually brag and boast, but I'll make an exception right now: there might be no person better qualified to copy and paste the embed code for this video of Vernon Davis curling than your author. Think about it: From September through December of 2005, I covered Davis as the Maryland football beat writer, and two months later, I spent the entire month of February covering Olympic curling in Pinerolo, Italy.

Has anyone ever covered Vernon Davis and curling in such close proximity? Highly doubtful. Plus, I used to live two blocks away from Vernon Davis's grandma.

(If you doubt my curling chops, See here, for example, in which I attended an Italian cover band's Dire Straights performance with the New Zealand curling team. Man, those were the days.)

Anyhow, for reasons unclear, the AP moved a two-minute video introduction to curling, starring Vernon Davis.

"I'm a hybrid athlete, I think i can do almost anything if i try," he says before taking the ice.

"I'm a big curling fan, I'm the biggest curling fan you'll ever find," he says at the end.

Aren't we all, Vernon.

I'm having a hard time figuring out whether Joe Theismann thinks the Redskins' play-calling system is good, bad or medium. I guess the system has its positives and its negatives, its supporters and its detractors, its highlights and its lowlights. And sometimes you just never know who's on which downward sloping side of the team's play-calling trapezoid.

So, Joe, do you want to clarify your position, maybe?

"It's horrific!" he said on his ESPN 980 show Monday morning. "Horrific! Terrible! Stupid! Dumb! Everybody's got something that they're responsible for. It's like having three people run an organization, and not one person capable of making one decision. You have one person in charge of the passing game, you have one person in charge of the running game. That is the most absurd, ridiculous thing I've ever seen, and we see the results of that when you see the Redskins burn timeouts....

"And that's coaching, to me. That is coaching. Not getting the plays in, if there's a problem with plays, whatever it is, the communication to the quarterback has to be, such that if he looks at a clock and you haven't given him a play yet, then he goes ahead and runs it. I mean, Jason has got to have that flexibility. If the coaches don't give that to him, then they are missing the boat.

"But I am so sick and tired of watching us burn timeouts and not have them at the end of the game. You think we wouldn't have liked to have had at least a couple of timeouts at the end of that football game? It changes everything you want to do. When you have the ability to stop the clock, plus the two-minute warning, it changes things that you can do. You can throw the ball down the field a little bit more, if by some chance you get protection. But I just sit and I scratch my head: 10 minutes to go in the fourth quarter, timeout. I'm thinking, what is going on?....

(By Jonathan Newton - TWP)

After Sunday's 7-6 thriller, the Cowboys are now 5-1 all-time against the Redskins in one-point games. (The teams have also tied twice.)

The "1," though, is fairly well-remembered, and makes lots of Washingtonians' lists of the greatest Skins-Cowboys moments of all time. That would be the 14-13 Monday Night miracle in 2005, full of all those Mark Brunell and Santana Moss heroics in Dallas.

The Cowboys had been dominant throughout that game. The Redskins had been thoroughly inept on offense, and still had a doughnut late in the fourth quarter. Man, do I love doughnuts. But Moss scored with about four minutes left, and then caught the go-ahead touchdown with 2:35 on the clock, just six fewer seconds than remained when Patrick Crayton reached the end zone on Sunday.

"You have to learn to close the show, and we didn't do that," Cowboys coach Bill Parcells said after that 2005 game. "When you let a team hang around, that can happen."

"A 13-0 lead is not enough," DeMarcus Ware said. "There is never enough. Even if we are up all the way to the end, we need to play the whole game."

"We had the opportunities to end the game, and put it out of reach," Drew Bledsoe said. "You just can't let them hang around."

Which is what you usually say when you lose in such heartbreaking fashion. When Larry Michael asked a distraught London Fletcher about Sunday's loss during the Redskins Radio Broadcast Network post-game show, he chose not to use that old cliche.

Things that are depressing: D.C. sports imploding.

Things that are more cheerful: D.C. sports personalities gnawing at each others' necks.

And thus, enough with the Redskins and Wizards for a minute, and let's get back to Kornheiser vs. Wise vs. Kornheiser. It's a heckuva lot more fun.

Michael Wilbon was on 106.7 The Fan's LaVar and Dukes Show Friday afternoon, and Chad Dukes wisely asked him about D.C.'s hottest sports feud.

"Mike, I gotta ask you about a situation you are very close to," Dukes began. "We've become friends with Mike Wise; he's a great dude, I really like him. I love your show with Tony Kornheiser and enjoy reading him. This rift of theirs, you know both of these guy, they are talking about it on the radio. What is your take on all that?"

"I have two words," Wilbon responded: "STEEL CAGE!!!"

I was glad to hear Vinny Cerrato discussing the perils of having an aging offensive line without much depth during his ESPN 980 radio show last week. I was encouraged to hear him note that having such a line was one of the problems with the 2008 Redskins. And I was--I don't know, pick a word, stupefied? dumbstruck?--that the thing that got him talking about aging offensive lines was, yes, that's right, the Cowboys.

This all happened when Cerrato--wearing his Official Media Person hat--was interviewing ESPN's Ed Werder about what to expect from the Cowboys, which is just unspeakably bizarre to begin with. Cerrato brought up some of Dallas's injuries.

"The biggest concern, obviously, is the injury to Marc Colombo, which forces Doug Free, a former fourth-round pick, to make his first career NFL start, and disrupts the continuity that they have had on their offensive line," Werder said, as the dramatic irony music began in the background. "He has started 41 consecutive weeks next to Leonard Davis, so I think that's the biggest challenge they face going forward, is that when they put their team together the thing they had the biggest concern about was the lack of depth on their offensive line. And I think if they try to help Doug Free too, much then they sort of expose another guy who seems to be suffering from the advance of age on the other side, and that's Flozell Adams."

Now, this has to be hitting close to home already. If I was hosting this show, I would be rifling through my notes for a new topic. Ask Werder about Bill Belichick. Ask him about the playoff chase. Ask him about the weather in Nova Scotia. Just don't discuss the perils of having an aging offensive line.

(By John McDonnell - TWP)

That was kind of unfortunate. Leading and shutting out Dallas in the Cowboys' ridiculous home stadium for most of the game, then losing by one at very end after two missed field goals feels more nauseating than losing to Detroit, I think.

"There's no loss tougher than this," Doc Walker said at the end of ESPN 980's radio broadcast. "This makes you sick to your stomach, to be here in this cesspool and lose."

A few quick reactions.

Bleak

"I really believe this is a special team of players who will not just chuck things in," Jim Zorn said. "Being 3-7, it is bleak. You know, being 3-7 is bleak. And yet we're gonna come back, we've got another big name next week, we're gonna look at our roster, and patch it up and go again."

All that being said, I'm going to focus on "it is bleak," not just because I'm a negative person. Well, largely because of that, but also this weekend, the Caps lost twice, the Wizards lost twice, Terps football lost, and this happened. For a lot of local sports fan, it was a bleak weekend during a bleak year.

(As always, apologies to the Caps; you're not bleak, and even this weekend wasn't so bad, but still.)

Defense did enough

It's pretty common for reporter types to say that "the defense did enough" or some such, when you go on the road against a previously explosive offense and keep them to seven points. It's less common for defensive personnel to say that. London Fletcher hinted at that to Comcast SportsNet's Kelli Johnson, and defensive spokesman Jerry Gray came right out and said it.

This was predictable, but when I posted the other day how Dexter Manley and Darryl Grant still hate Dallas, out came the comments about how those were the good old days when real men knew how to hate The Star, when winning was more important than making a few bucks, when various organs would be left on the field, etc.

And maybe so. Certainly those guys won a lot of games, and certainly they helped elevate the rivalry to the point that it would star in strange athletic ad campaigns, as seen above. But I figured it was worth pointing out that there are plenty of current Redskins who at least know how to hate the Cowboys. For example:

"I've been playing against them for so long, it's pretty much the same emotion every time: you hate em, period," Mike Sellers told CSN's Kelli Johnson. "If you have to get up for this game, then you're not a Redskin."

"Every guy looks forward to this week, all the fans look forward to this week," Phillip Daniels said. "Fans always say, if you don't win no other game, win this one."

(AP archives)

If you've ever heard Dexter Manley talk, you know that it can be a sometimes baffling yet thrilling experience. His answer to one question will quickly veer to something else entirely, then something else, then something else, then a plug for Certified Building Services, then a sharp dash of pathos, then an aside about Joe Gibbs, and then finally he'll be interrupted and asked something else after 15 minutes or so.

So trying to piece together two of Manley's radio interviews this week, both on ESPN 980, is a bit of a job. But let's get to some highlights anyhow. Like, here was when he was asked about knocking out Danny White during the 1982 NFC championship game at RFK, which remains one of the indelible images of this Dallas-Washington rivalry.

"I could tell as he was going down, he was whining like a baby, and I knew at that point in time this guy is done," Manley said on The Sports Fix. "He'd never play another down, and I knew that the Redskins' fan base was all excited and happy and we were on our way. But then we had to keep coming back, because they brought in a guy named Gary Hogeboom. I couldn't pronounce his name at the time. I was pronouncing his name sort of wrong, and then Joe Theismann kept telling me the correct name. You know, his name is Hogeboom. I didn't know how to pronounce the guy's name at first."

From making Danny White whine like a baby to being schooled on the pronunciation of Hogeboom; that's a Dexter Manley interview. If I can switch around here, Manley's teammate Darryl Grant was on the John Thompson Show later in the day, and he was asked about the defense during that game.

Earl Boykins man is listed at 5-foot-5, 139. His max bench press is 315 pounds. This makes him the Wizards' strongest pound-for-pound player. And a lot of people, I told him, are surprised by that number.

"I think they should be," he said. "I think they should be."

Teammates, too. I guess to NBA veterans and longtime observers, the 315 number is sort of legendary, but to newcomers, it's still a shock. If Shaquille O'Neal could bench a number in the same proportion to his weight, he'd be hoisting 736 pounds.

"That's amazing for a guy that little in stature, but he's got a big heart," said Randy Foye, whose all-time max was about 290. "It's just amazing to think about It like that, a guy that small can bench that much."

"That's a lot of weight," said Mike Miller, who joked (I think) that his max is 105. "He's strong. It's been well known throughout the league, and that's why he's able to do the things he does on the court, because he can guard guys, he's strong enough to keep guys off the block. At that height, it's impressive."

"They say he can bench like 315, but I've got to see it, I've really got to see him get up there and do that weight," Brendan Haywood said. "I've got to see it to believe it. I don't remember my max this year, I don't know man, but it's got to be close to around there."

"He benches more than you, they said," Flip Saunders noted, as he walked past Haywood.

"Yeah, that's what they say, though, that's what they say," replied Haywood, although he noted that Boykins has "midget arms" which means the weight has to travel a shorter distance.

(Unrelated: Despite his pledge not to Tweet until he got to a million followers, Gilbert Arenas posted a video on Twitter showing himself whipping Nick Young with a belt or something. Seriously. Watch it here.)

(By Frank Franklin II)

Since this has obviously been declared Matt Bradley Week, I'm gonna take another crack at this thing.

Bradley was on Mike Wise's 106.7 radio show earlier this week, and since Wise is never shy about asking exactly what he wants to ask, the interview turned into a nice extended discussion of the fighting ethos. (Listen here.)

"I don't know, it's just one of those things, it's just part of the game," Bradley said. "You know, to people who don't play the game, I know it seems kind of weird. But it's something we've grown up doing, and I guess it seems normal to us. I guess it does seem a little odd to other people....

"There's still nerves. I mean, any time you go into a fight, whether it's just spur of the moment or you want to go out and get a guy or whatever it is, in the back of your mind you're always thinking about it. And you obviously don't want to embarrass yourself out there. I think the key is just going out there and kind of forgetting about everything and just going on instinct. You punch him, he punches you, and you hope you get the best of it."

That's a slogan for you. Anyhow, I don't think there's any question that the Bradley fight doesn't get the same amount of focus and appreciation minus the blood. And Bradley again said that the bleeding thing seems to be a part of his constitution. He only ended up needing six stitches the other day, and he dismissed the bloodiness of his face.