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Of everything that's happened this past year, not all started badly.
A new franchise quarterback leading the team to a 6-3 start. Nice marketing people being brought in to make genuinely transparent gestures towards the fans. A new team leader – who backed it up on the field (with four interceptions) – emerging in the secondary.
Everything, every bit of it – whether by fluke or by design – ended badly.
The only hopelessness even left is in longing for the days when Redskins fans still felt empowered enough to feel hopeless.
Even sadder, the Redskins and Cowboys – two franchises led by power-hungry owners with a propensity for meddling in football affairs – seem to exist in alternate realities.
"If you've seen Redskins home games lately," Jason Bishop said, "there's more Cowboys fans than Redskins fans."
"I'll tell you what, I did my first story on Dan Snyder about two months after he bought the team," said Myers. "I came down there and I spent a bunch of time with him at Redskins Park, and I walked away thinking, I know he wants to be Jerry Jones, but he's gonna take a little bit different approach to it."
"I thought he was a really smart guy that was off to a rough start," he said. "He didn't have his own coach – it was clear that he didn't like Norv (Turner). But I thought he would get it together and was going to be a really good owner for Redskins fans.
"And to watch how that's deteriorated over the years, to the point that you watch Redskins games now and you see like a sea of gold, empty seats... To me it's just really sad, because I remember the old days when I covered those Cowboys-Redskins games at RFK Stadium and the fans used to bang on the seats and the stadium used to shake. It was so intimidating for a visiting team and such a great atmosphere, it's really sad to see what's happened there."
"It's a different world now up here," Bishop said.
"You whiffed on Dan Snyder," John Auville added. "It's OK."
"I did," Myers said. "You know, I hate to say that. I have no rooting interest obviously, but for Redskins fans, I'm just really disappointed, because it's just such a storied franchise and the fans there deserve better than he's been able to deliver over the last 20 years. I guess some guys just never learn. They just keep making the same mistakes over and over again. What a mess now."
"Yeah. We're doomed," Eric Bickel said. "It's alright. We ponder it every day. We're doomed. It is what it is."