December football is largely equated with playoff runs and nail-biter games that have a chance to swing the postseason while several upper-echelon teams duke it out on their hopeful road to the Super Bowl.
However, that viewpoint disregards approximately half of the teams in the league, many of which are left struggling at the bottom, waking up every morning to a note on their bedside table that reads ‘There’s always next year.’
While the NFL’s array of fanbases are divided at this time of year — some with hopes for January and the playoffs; others with dreams of April and the NFL Draft — a reporter from ESPN took a trip to Dumpsville and profiled some of the most incompetent teams in the league. What he found was disturbing.
What David Fleming witnessed in Washington had little to do with the Redskins, but more the environment they inhabited. The scene-setting graf panned away from rookie quarterback Dwayne Haskins to detail the vibe of a cluttered garage out of the show ‘Hoarders.’
Just out of frame to the left are boxes of sports drinks stacked halfway up the wall, next to a row of steel dead-lift bars, burgundy laundry carts, random piles of electronic equipment and postal boxes. To the right is a blue floor-cleaning machine the size of a pony parked between red metal dollies, another tangle of electric cords and several restaurant-size soda canisters.
The piece goes on to question what Haskins may think of his surroundings, after having spent time in the state-of-the-art facilities at Ohio State before seeing his dream of playing the NFL realized, only to walk through the front doors and see a locker room that likely closer-resembles the one he occupied in high school, rather than college.
The dysfunction in Washington has never been a secret, but at least before getting a mental image of the facilities, fans could trick themselves into believing that it was an on-field issue, and not a brick-and-mortar issue.
Through all of this, though, we found ourselves asking one question: Does any of this come as a surprise?
