No Starting Free Safety for Redskins on Sunday?

[Campbell17]

I don't get to a lot of games but I'm goin down for this one, and it would be moving. Who cares what happens on the play, it's the Bills. I am going next week for my birthday too.

[Skins_FanFL]

I think everyone's ritual will change this weekend. Normally I get the game on DirecTV (I live in FL). Tune in to Sonny and Sam on the laptop. Get all fidgety. Pace around. Then the kickoff, and the ranting and raving and whooping starts. Wins put me on a super-high, and losses into the valley.

This week...I just don't know. I look at how I normally approach Redskins Sunday, and feel childish and shallow.

Win or lose this weekend, I probably won't yell or rant, cheer or jeer. The game will have a different meaning. It will represent, not a team in competition, but a team and community healing, unifying, and remembering.

Wins, losses, playoff births, 100-yard games. At the end of the day they are meaningless. Just numbers, stats, and rankings. It's the people that make the Redskins so special. Players, staff, fans. There is a unique bond here. Who remembers RFK actually moving?

I recently helped coach a football clinic with former Redskins RB Ricky Claitt. He told me watching the stadium bounce freaked him out the first time he experienced it. The vets had to calm him...tell him that was normal.

This weekend...a ground-swell of emotion. Each of us will handle it in our own way. And each way will be proper.

As for Redskin Sundays to come; they won't be complete. 21 trolling centerfield, daring receivers to come down the seam...I'll miss that. Not because of the hits, plays, picks...but becaues he was here and now he is gone. It's that simple, I think. I never met him. But I miss him. He was part of the whole, now the whole is missing a piece. Time will fill the void, and the pain will subside. But in our hearts and memories, Sean lives.

Sorry for the length and mush. Just had to get it out.