Today We Are All Redskins Fans

Today, as hard as it may be to fathom for you Cowboys and Eagles fans, we are all Redskins fans.

Last night, I posted the following comment on Super Squirrel's blog about Sean Taylor:

Anyway, I had the same knee jerk reaction as everyone. The "OMG a famous person has gotten shot" reaction. I'm sure I would be reacting much differently if it was an Packer or something, but it's all sort of gotten numbed (can't think of better word choice) to me. My family watches the local Baltimore news every morning. Every morning its the same. Triple shooting, double stabbing, the list goes on. After a while, it's all the same to me. Sean Taylor is just another guy who got shot and I want him to recover. He isn't "Sean Taylor, football superman, who got shot fighting for his life and hopes to play football again." I couldn't care less about Sean Taylor's football career right now. This all might sound horrible, but in the society we are in where people get shot everyday, it all wears down on you. Taylor's just become another statistic of burglar's shooting the people they were trying to rob. It's just all gone numb on me.

Yeah, I hope Sean Taylor gets better, but I hope everybody else who has gotten shot gets better too. I don't care about Sean Taylor, Football Player, right now, I care about Sean Taylor the person right now.

I know this is all different for you Ben because you're one of the Redskins' top fans, but if you look at the big picture, Taylor's just another home burglary victim who got shot.

That sounds horrible, but it's the truth.

But now, after learning of Sean Taylor's death from my dad through my bedroom door at 6:47 AM, I realize that it is different. Me being a football fan, a die-hard (in my opinion), no less, has a profound impact on how I view this tragedy. The football impact on the Redskins is harsh; they lost one of the game's rising stars, someone who had a shaky start (see: spitting incident in playoffs), but had really started to pull it together personally and professionally. The impact on the Redskins (and the rest of the football world) is unimaginable, having someone taken from you that quickly, and especially after he was having good prognosis.

I was never the biggest Sean Taylor fan. I had watched him play at University of Miami, but something just didn't click between Sean Taylor the player and DJ the fan. After he went to the Redskins, more of the same followed, as I am an Eagles fan. I thought a lot of what he did was unnecessary like the spitting incident or blowing up Bills punter Brian Moorman in the Pro Bowl this past year. But I am still connected to him. On October 14, 2007, Taylor intercepted Brett Favre for the 278^th time, breaking the record set by George Blanda an eternity ago.

I did not know that much about Taylor, but I feel that if I could go back in time, I would pay a little more attention to him as a player.

It's such a shame this has to happen. Darrent Williams, now Sean Taylor. Last night, I said they were just victims of shootings. Now, as a sports fan, I realize that their loss is much, much more than just a shooting.

It was part of the game of football's soul being removed.