Cowboys @ Redskins: What's Happening At Hogs Haven Redux

And I thought it got bad around here last year.

The Dallas Cowboys are headed up to Landover, MD, to play the Washington Redskins on Sunday. As you almost certainly know, the 'Skins got off to a very good start this season, going 3-1 and building a lot of optimism. And then the slide started. They have not won since, dropping the last five games while watching their offense sputter and break down as player after player on both sides of the ball have gone down with injury.

Maybe because that fast start got their hopes up, the gloom and doom over at Hogs Haven, our sister SBN site for the Redskins, is so oppressive I needed some Prozac after going there.

How bad is it? With seven games left in the season, five of the last sixteen front page posts are about potential draft picks or offseason free agent signings.

I know the fans over there don't want any sympathy. And there is a long history of Washington or Dallas rising up and winning games in this series that they were supposed to lose. But it is still not any fun to go to a place that exudes the air of having already given up.

But some of you don't care how down they are, and want to get in a few extra kicks while they are, so here is a quick summary of what I found.

Jump here. Just not off a ledge.

The title of this article kinda sums it up:  Ten Yard Fight: Washington Redskins Turning Into Washington Generals...Let's Just Schedule the Globetrotters and Get On With It. 

The article goes on to list ten things about the team, and the author does try to find some positives - but struggles. At least he does try to muster some of the old Dallas-Washington hate.

9. God, I want to beat Dallas...so bad...with every fiber of my fanhood. I don't care if it's ugly (good thing for me, since that is the only way we would win) and I don't care if it is because Dallas beat themselves. We have a chance to pee in the Cowgirls' cornflakes this Sunday, and hurt their playoff chances considerably. A loss to the Redskins could unhinge just about any team at this point of the season.

But then he kinds of surrenders at the end.

10. Think about it...what is worse than losing to us right now? In NFL terms, there is nothing worse in the league than losing to the Redskins right now. We can't score points, we consistently put our defense in bad spots and we are getting zero production from the quarterback position. Even if you lose to Indy right now, you could say, "They were due..." There is no excuse to lose to us this week, Dallas. NONE. Good luck with that.

There are some attempts to get the fans and/or the team pumped up. A video of some of the past Redskins triumphs over Dallas and one by Fred Smoot point out some of the reasons why Dallas fans can never rest easy going into the game.

However, even some of the attempts to be positive have a distinct air of negativity about them. As OCC mentioned already, the Positive Stats post was 80% a compilation of negative things about Dallas. And the last one is not a stat at all, just an excuse to run a video of a big LaRon Landry hit on Laurent Robinson from the first game this season - which still wound up as a Cowboys win.

(Since they are rather fond of videos, I thought I might throw in my favorite video that is about the rivalry - sort of):

American Express w/ Tom Landry (1983) (via christopherbam1989)

They are pretty wrapped up with past good things, so much so that some comments by Dez Bryant about his thoughts on how Landry and DeAngelo Hall impressed him in his first game as a pro gets an entire post.

Judging from the title, the Flashback Friday series is a weekly nostalgia trip. As expected, this one deals with a Dallas game, specifically the one from December 22, 1996. It was the last game played in old RFK Stadium. The author describes it as one of the happiest day of his life. Not particularly because of the ceremony with past Redskins greats, or the fact the Redskins won a meaningless game against a Cowboys team that had already clinched a playoff spot (gee, there's some nostalgia I can get into), but because of this:

As the final few minutes ticked away on the clock, Redskins fans were starting to get frisky. A few fans started running on the field and the sidelines and were intercepted by DC’s finest. Of course, by this time I was feeling a little frisky myself and I certainly had enough liquid courage to do the same…so I did.

OK, maybe that was a little snarky of me. But he said it, I didn't (and he included pictures of himself at the game, to boot).

I only found one article that did any real analysis of the game, and even it has a downer title: Mark Schlereth Spells Out in Detail Why Redskins Run Game is Sucky Sucky.  And that is pretty much all it talks about.

I had almost given up on finding any of the old fire you used to see in the Cowboys-Redskins rivalry. But then I spotted a title in the FanPosts section, and I was encouraged to see that it still smolders, waiting to fanned back to life by the inevitable time when Dan Snyder is no longer in a position to ruin the Redskins. Hating with H8: The Dallas Edition looked like the ticket. And when I saw that the author's name was iH8dallas, I knew this would be fun. And it doesn't disappoint.

 It's hard to hate on the city of Dallas, because I've never been there, like 99.96 percent of Dallas fans. However, I do see Dallas fans all over the place. They're at court, you see them smoking cigarettes in front of the probation office, the library (not to read, but to use the free internet) and there always seem to be a lot at Wal-Mart.

It's perfect, Vitriolic, filled with the bandwagon meme, and written by a guy who isn't afraid to predict a Redskins upset. There is hope for the rivalry as long as emotional fans like this are around.

But I was a little perturbed by the preceding FanPost - which apparently was a plea to get iH8dallas unbanned from the site. I guess I am glad it worked, even if it said this:

we need our village idiot to put together the Haterade

Gosh, guys. He's the most entertaining writer you have. At least right now.