The current state of the Redskins in light of a loss to Denver

The Redskins are now 2-5. This is not good. However it is important to remember how scary the situation looked just a few weeks ago. The Redskins are now consistently competitive.

I know it's the fourth year of the Shanahan regime, and it can be frustrating to be satisfied with "competitive" this far in. But of course they got to reset their clock after the franchise went all in on Griffin III. It's unfortunate that two full years were squandered as a result of the misguided attempt to build around Donovan McNabb, but that's also water under the bridge at this point. For all intents and purposes we are only in the second year of this program, and given that it's centerpiece is coming off of major knee surgery I can't be too disappointed in the progress to date.

I don't like continually being optimistic for next year any more than you do, but if you think of 2013 as year two in a rebuild there several reasons for optimism:

Nate Jackson on the "genius" of football players

Former NFL tight end Nate Jackson has a very good piece up on MMQB that I highly recommend. It covers not just the effects of concussions but also football's allure and the sense of loss once a career ends.

I also wanted to call your attention to a parenthetical aside he throws in. It is a bit off topic, but I think it is an important point that we casual observers of sports often overlook:

"(And make no mistake, it is the athletic mind of the athlete that connects the dots; brilliant performance artists, the lot of them, mistaken as dummies because they never learned to file a report or calculate a spreadsheet. But try visualizing an explosively violent and incredibly intricate physical task, and then DOING it with your two hands, your body, your limbs, your connections, the synapses, the will and the fire, in real time against the most dominant members of the species. That’s genius too.)"