For sports fans, the weekend is a cornucopia of wonderful games to watch. This is particularly true in the fall with its traditional pattern of College Football on Saturday and NFL Football on Sunday and Monday. As the parent, child, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband, wife, roommate, or best friend of a sports fan, this can be a challenge. It must be true that some games are more important to watch than others but it’s hard to know which is which. As a sports fan, the power of habit and hundreds of thousands of marketing dollars get in the way of remembering to take a break from sports and do something with your parent, child, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband, wife, roommate, or best friend. To aid all of us in this, and just because it’s fun, I’m going to write a weekly post highlighting a single game that is ideal for skipping. Use this to help tell yourself or someone else: “Do not watch this game!”
Monday, 8:30 p.m. ET, NFL Football, Washington Redskins vs. Seattle Seahawks. It’s on ESPN but do not watch this game!
If you enjoyed last Monday’s lopsided game between the New England Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs, then you’ll probably love this game. It’s likely to be at least as lopsided as the 41 – 14 shellacking we just witnessed. Why? Let’s count the ways:
- Washington is on their second quarterback of the year, Kirk Cousins, who just threw four interceptions against the Giants last week.
- Seattle’s quarterback is Russell Wilson who has thrown four interceptions in his last ten regular season or playoff games.
- Seattle won the Super Bowl last year. Washington last won in 1991, when Cousins and Wilson were three or four years old.
- Vegas thinks Seattle will win by 7.5 points even though they are on the road and playing at home is usually the equivalent of a three point advantage.
- Seattle has players and positional units nicknamed “Beast Mode” and “The Legion of Boom.” Washington’s nickname is so bad that announcers won’t even say it on television anymore.
- Washington has lost their last six night games. Seattle is 10-1 since 2010.
- Stats like that are pretty meaningless because it’s always easy to find counterpoints: Washington has won the last six regular season games against Seattle.
- The truth is that Washington and Seattle don’t play that often. Those six games have been played over fourteen years. In that same time, the two teams have played three times in the playoffs and Seattle has won every time.
- Football Outsiders thinks Seattle has an 80% chance of making the playoffs. Washington? 6%.
- Washington themselves doesn’t think they have much of a chance in this game. The Washington Post got offensive lineman Trent Williams on record as saying, “Can we beat them? Yeah,” Williams said, nonchalantly. “At the end of the day, they’re not robots. They’re human beings and nobody’s perfect. Nobody plays perfect every Sunday. They have been beaten before. It’s not like they’re unstoppable. They’re a great team, no doubt about it, but anything is possible in the NFL.”
There’s ten ways of saying roughly the same thing: Seattle is very good at football and Washington is pretty bad. I’m not going to bother giving an alternate game this weekend because really, even if you are a Washington or Seattle fan, I think you can do without this game. Go for a hike. Read a book. Play some bridge.