Blog
Friends in Low Places, Enemies in Dallas
Let me set the scene. Four adults board an 11am Amtrak to Washington with the stated intention of seeing Garth Brooks, and a second, unstated intention that reveals itself somewhere around Manassas. Me, Nicole, and our good friends Sam and Jason. I will not be describing the contents of the bags we carried aboard. I will note only that we did not trouble the café car a single time, and that an 11am departure gives four adults a genuinely generous runway in which to prepare themselves for an evening of country music.
The show absolutely ripped. I don't care how you feel about country music, that man is 60-something years old and he worked harder for three hours than I have worked for anything in my entire life. He was sprinting. He was sweating. He knew every word, which you'd hope, but so did twenty thousand other people, and there's a specific kind of joy in a room that size all screaming the same chorus at a guy who has clearly decided he's going to die on that stage before he gives you a half-effort show.
And then reality arrived, as it does now that we are all this age. We got home around 11pm and it felt like 4am. There was a time in my life when 11pm was the beginning of the evening. That time has passed and it is not coming back. I'd like to file a formal complaint with whoever is in charge.
Casualty report: Sam did not quite make it. She gave everything she had to that concert and then gave a little extra to a hotel room, which is the honorable place to do it. A real trooper, start to finish. Somebody has to go over the top first and she took that hill for the rest of us.
Now, the 7:30am train back to Charlottesville. I want to be clear that there was no single point of failure here. Four grown adults, four phones, four clocks, one departure time, and somehow a unanimous collective misreading of it. That one belongs to all of us in equal measure and I will not be taking questions. What followed was me, on roughly four hours of sleep, sprinting through Union Station. Not jogging. Sprinting. I covered something close to half a mile going the wrong way, then the right way, then the wrong way again, in what I can only describe as a full-body apology to my own cardiovascular system.
Which brings me to Greg. Greg works for Amtrak and Greg held the entire train. The whole train. For us. He watched a clearly unwell man in a Commanders hat come barreling around a corner at a dead run and he made a judgment call, and that judgment call was mercy. Greg, if you ever read this, I am writing your supervisor a letter so complimentary it will be entered into your permanent file. You are the best of us.
And to everyone else on the 7:30 from Washington to Charlottesville this morning: that delay was us. That was our fault. I saw some of you look up from your coffee. I felt your eyes. You were owed a smooth morning and instead you got four hungover adults and a small track and field event. We are genuinely sorry.
And while I'm apologizing to strangers, let me get one more in, because I owe it. Ethan wrote to me on the 15th with a completely fair criticism: the beat reporter posts on this site don't refresh in real time, and when you're watching a game you want to know what JP Finlay or John Keim are saying right now, not what they said at some point earlier in the day. He's right. This whole site is a pile of static pages that rebuild on a schedule, which is the thing that keeps it free and ad-free, but it also means the ticker can be hours stale at the exact moment you most want it live. Ethan, I'm sorry it took me five days to find your message, and I'm sorrier that you were correct. He signed off with "Great job on the site!", which somehow makes the five days worse. I'm working on it.
So that's the state of the household heading into Week 2, and honestly it's the correct energy, because the Commanders are also arriving somewhere important in questionable condition. Both we and Dallas are 0-1, and since 2015 only 14.7 percent of teams that started 0-2 made the playoffs, 14 out of 95. There is already a Dan Quinn hot seat meter in circulation, in September, which is rude. JP Finlay said it best this week: "In the NFL, nobody cares. Go win the game." Correct. Go get one.
Here's my actual optimism. We lost 24-22 in Philadelphia as 5.5-point underdogs, and the defense held the best team in our division to 24 points and 318 total yards on the road in the first live game for two new coordinators. Antonio Williams caught four balls for 64 yards with a fourth-quarter touchdown on ten routes run, which is a preposterous rate of return, and they gave him rookie of the week and a Pepsi belt for it. Terry McLaurin is off to another slow start, and the fanbase has filed its formal request in the form of a subreddit post titled "Maybe this week we will GET TERRY THE BALL." Seconded, with feeling.
Sunday gets harder, though. Frankie Luvu is out with a groin injury and Chig Okonkwo is out with a hamstring, so we lose our defensive signal-caller and a tight end in the same week. Sonny Styles, a rookie, wears the green dot in AT&T Stadium. Leo Chenal steps into the starting lineup, John Bates moves up to TE1, and Javon Kinlaw is questionable with a back issue. Daron Payne is the game-day captain, which feels right.
Then there's the secondary, which the fanbase has been processing in public all week. Mike Sainristil had a hard Week 1 on the boundary and r/Commanders convened what I'd generously call a town hall. (Fair warning, I'm about to quote strangers. None of these are my words. The good people of the internet have already censored themselves, which somehow makes it funnier, and complaints can be forwarded directly to them.) The prosecution's case was two words: "He fkn stinks." The defense was longer and, I think, correct: "we don't have any other options, fam... No, we can't just bench him." Washington signed Isaac Yiadom off the practice squad and waived Ricky Barber to make room, and with Trey Amos out until Week 5, that's the group. It's Mike. Let's go win with Mike.
The backfield has its own open file, with Jacory Croskey-Merritt getting publicly put on notice about ball security after a late fumble and Kaytron Allen standing conveniently nearby. The most devastating scouting report I read all week was a fan describing Rachaad White's pass protection as "like a folding chair." Dallas, for their part, is not well either. They gave up more points than anyone in the league in Week 1, hired a new coordinator, started five new guys, and somehow the tape looked exactly like last year. The Giants beat them 28-20 and it wasn't that close. The part I can't spin: Dak is 13-2 against us and the all-time series is 81-49-2. That's not a stat, that's a family curse.
Rookie edge Joshua Josephs said out loud this week that this is going to be a dominant defense and we saw a glimpse in Week 1. The sub's reply was the only acceptable one: "Well, walk the talk. How about shutting down Dallas this Sunday?" So here we are. Burgundy jerseys, white pants, a rookie calling the defense in Jerry's building, four people in Charlottesville running on fumes and Greg's goodwill, and a football team that owes us one. It's pregame. Let's get it. Hail.
A direct appeal to Sweden and Australia. You two show up in my analytics every single week and I have so many questions. Hej Sverige! Hur i hela friden blev ni Commanders-fans? Skriv till mig, jag måste veta. Jag bjuder på en öl. I am reliably informed that every Swede speaks better English than I do, so feel free to ignore all of that and just tell me the story. And Australia: a Sunday afternoon game in Dallas lands on Monday morning for you, which makes you the only people on earth getting a literal case of the Mondays out of this team. Good on ya. I need to know what possessed you. Both of you, please write in to Wire Taps and I will run the best answers, unedited, with full honors.