The Washington Redskins are far from a playoff favorite.
At 0-3 the odds are not in their favor. FiveThirtyEight has the Skins' chances at making the playoffs at 2 percent. Football Outsiders says it is just slightly better at 2.1 percent
But that is the noise coming from outside of Redskins Park. Inside the team facility in Ashburn? There is still a defiant belief.
“Who says we can’t run the table?” cornerback Josh Norman said Wednesday, via Michael Phillips of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
"We're not really concerned about it," Norman said in reference low fan morale after the poor start to the season. "Those same people are those people who are going to be rooting for you when you're doing good and hate you when you're doing bad. That's just who they are. Fair weather as they may come. Fair weather as they may seem. That's what we've got.
"But we're not concerned about that, because guys in this locker room, we understand what we put in, understand what we built, the pedigree that we have. We couldn't care less. Only thing we ask is that you keep that same energy, the same energy you've got because when things turn around, don't come back on the ship."
During the 2018 season, several Redskins were also critical of the lack of support from fans at home games. Norman said he would rather play more on the road because the traveling fans brought better energy.
"It seems like our true fans, they're really with us on the road and we feed off of that," Norman said last November. "When we go into the home stands, it seems like an open bubble or something. Like the other team's turf or something. You hear more of them than you do us. Then, if something bad happens, they sulk. They sit back in their seat and they boo. I don't know."
On other NFC East teams, Norman added, "Regardless good, bad or indifferent, they still showing up each and every week going hard. Even the Giants, when they was 1-6, hell they had a sellout crowd. They was all in there packed still."
The then Redskins top business officer Brian Lafemina understood what led Norman to say what he said.
"I understand where Josh was coming from," Lafemina said in Nov. 2018. "It’s very exciting when you’re on the road and get that kind of support and moments later…talking about what it’s like playing at FedExField, he said, 'It’d be great if we got that fanbase up and super loud.' I think what he meant was we want a dominant home-field advantage and that’s what we’ve been working on on the business side since I got here in June. I think in the first media session I did, I talked about how that was something we wanted to improve upon."
Lafemina was later fired by the Redskins in December, some eight months after he was hired.
Morgan Moses told The Sports Junkies Tuesday he is also a believer in the 2019 Redskins.
"It's an 0-3 start, obviously, we don't want to be here as a team, but we are here and we have to stare that in the face," Moses told 106.7 The Fan. "So, right now, we're 0-3, but we can (get to) 1-3 this Sunday and then go 2-3, shoot, hell, I've seen teams win 13 straight."
Moses acknowledged that is hard to see at the moment, but added, "At the end of the day, man, when you put that helmet on, on Sunday magic happens every Sunday."
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