A Quip About a Hip? Surely You Jest

By Tony Kornheiser

Tuesday, December 2, 1997; Page E01
The Washington Post 

Whaddya mean, Gus broke his hip?

NFL quarterbacks don't break their hips. NFL quarterbacks'
grandmothers break their hips.

How could Gus break his hip? I was there the whole game,
and not once did Gus deliberately slam broadside into any of
the concrete walls.

First his neck. Now his hip. They're gonna have to coat Gus in
bubble wrap soon.

Out for the season. (Gus and Heath both. Quick, call Oliver
Stone.)

Gus had already broken his hip when he led the Redskins on
that heroic drive in their last possession against the Rams. Gus
was clutch, making plays on third and 10, fourth and 12 and
fourth and 10; getting a touchdown, tying the game. It was the
kind of drive that could have turned a season around.

(If the Rams hadn't, um, gone straight down the field in the next
minute-and-46.)

So now it's Jeff Hostetler. A lot of people were asking for
Hostetler earlier in the season, as early as the Tennessee game.
But after Hostetler looked so creaky against the Giants --
turning the ball over three times in the overtime alone --
nobody pined for him. Around town the presumption was that
Gus had the ball to himself for the rest of the season. So this is
a shocker. And maybe an opportunity.

Look at how Bobby Hoying has put the Eagles back in the
playoff picture. Look at how Rich Gannon has kept the Chiefs
moving forward. Granted, Hostetler played like he'd been left
in the rain since 1994. But maybe, given some practice time,
Hoss can shake off the rust and be the quarterback people
hoped he was when the Redskins signed him.

Because the terrible truth is this team is going backward.

The past three games -- against the Cowboys, Giants and
Rams -- have been deja vu all over again. It's just like what
happened after that false hope 7-1 start last year. The
Redskins are once again finding ways not to win games. I
believe we've been to this movie. Turn your head away if you
don't want to know the ending.

(Everybody dies.)

I'd like to cheer you up and tell you it's "Groundhog Day." But
that movie was funny. This is one of those dreary, frigid Ingmar
Bergman movies, where people throw themselves into the
snowbanks and slowly freeze to death.

It's scant consolation that the Redskins are still in the playoff
chase. Does anyone truly think of these Redskins as a playoff
team now? They'd be in the playoffs 60 minutes.

(Oh, thank you, Alvin Harper, for your two catches in 13
games. You've made a gallant contribution to this team. Enjoy
the rest of the season, and do send a postcard from wherever
you end up. It was intriguing that you would ask "What am I
doing here?" Many of us wondered exactly the same thing.)

I first started getting this sense that we'd all been here before at
the end of the Dallas game three weeks ago when Troy
Aikman and Michael Irvin went down the field twice in the last
two minutes for a touchdown and a field goal.

Then last week, in the tie with the Giants, there was this bizarre
combination of events, all of them bad for the Redskins: Pink
Floyd Frerotte trying to become another brick in the wall;
Darrell Green called for invisible pass interference, leading to
the Giants' only, and undeserved, touchdown; Hoss turning into
Baby Heath; Marvcus Patton making a smart timeout call, only
to see it negate a blocked field goal; Michael "You Can Keep
Your Hat On" Westbrook drawing a penalty that seals the
Redskins' fate to tie a game they desperately need to win.

Now there's the Rams game. I'm sorry, but a 2-10 team has no
business going down the field like the U.S. cavalry in the last
two minutes of both halves. That was a Ron Lynn flashback.
Losing to Aikman and Irvin is one thing. But losing to Tony
Banks and Amp Lee is quite another; at home, no less. After
the way Gus led the Redskins to the tying score, watching the
Rams win was like watching your mother-in-law eat.

The Rams game was befuddling. The Redskins started out like
they were going to store Dick Vermeil in a luggage rack; they
scored on their first possession, and forced the Rams to punt
three times in a row. After that, suddenly, the Redskins stalled.
The fire seemed to go out. And after the game, the players
searched for explanations why.

"We didn't put them away like we should have. We seem to
lack a killer instinct," Ryan Kuehl said, pondering that "maybe
guys think it's going to happen instead of making it happen."

Mark Boutte echoed that sentiment, saying: "We need to be
killers. We need to be angrier when the game's on the line.
Look at Green Bay -- when they get people down, they stomp
on them." (Defensive players love to deal in mutilation images.
Kenard Lang said, "When you have them down, you have to
break their necks.")

Dan Turk, who came from the Raiders, where traditionally one
of the requirements for making the team is to have a personality
disorder, said: "It's not just talent. You have to be mean and
nasty and tough."

There was a sense in the locker room, and in the coach's
office, of anger and frustration at the way things have turned
out lately. Almost everyone believes this is a better team than it
has demonstrated so far, and they are puzzled why they are not
making big plays when the games are on the line. "Killer
instinct" is as good an oar to grasp as any. The truth is that
killer instincts aren't instincts at all -- they're developed over
time, and learned from great players who impose their will on
the rest of the team.

Oddly, Frerotte's injury may give the Redskins their best
chance at changing the direction of their season. It will prompt
everybody on offense (where most of the problems are) to
reexamine himself. On a wavering team like this that is
searching for an identity and a rallying cry, it may even provide
the elusive "killer instinct." The Redskins may need to win all
three remaining games to get in the playoffs. After Sunday's
game there was no reason to believe they could do that. In
fact, they hadn't given their fans reason to believe they could
win any one of them. Now, with a simple twist of fate, they
may be able to re-invent themselves before it's too late. 

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