Not This Week

Looking over the next three weeks, when the Washington Redskins are in contests that are supposed to be no contest, I get the feeling that the Redskins will struggle at some point. They will have a bad game, they will stumble, they may—gasp—lose.

But not this week. Not against this St. Louis Rams team.

The Rams could be historically bad. They are 0-4 this year after going 3-13 in 2007. In one stretch from November 11 through December 2 last year, they won three of four games. Other than that one warm streak, they haven't won a game since December of 2006.

This isn't one of those high-scoring teams that can't stop anyone, nor are they a stout defense that is the equivalent of the pitcher who can't get any run support. No, this team is bad all across the board.

The Rams aren't in the top half of the NFL in any offensive or defensive category. None of their four opponents has scored fewer than 31 points against them. Their peak output has been 14 points. The average score of a Rams game this year has been Opponent 37, St. Louis 10.

Such spectacularly incompetent play got coach Scott Linehan fired. Interim coach Jim Haslet, along with offensive coordinator Al Saunders, are left to try to make some chicken salad out of all of this.

And so on. I'm sure I don't have to go into much more detail about bad the Rams have been. Nor to I have to tell the audience here about how well the Redskins have been playing.

As I said, a trap game may be coming, but it won't be here. The Redskins will control the proceedings throughout. Look for it to be a typical 2008 Rams game.

Redskins 38, Rams 10

Rich Tandler blogs about the Skins at RealRedskins.com and he is the author of the upcoming book The Redskins Chronicle. You can reach Rich by email at