That’s right. We’ve loaded up the imaginary internet trucks and relocated the Redskins Blog to the easier-to-remember http://blog.redskins.com, so update your bookmarks accordingly.

See you there.

When Baugh was with the Redskins, his jersey number was 33 — the same as the total score in last night’s game. Not quite the same as all the occurrences of 21 toward the end of last season, but a nice incidental tribute nonetheless.

When you’re taking grade school math, one of those questions you ask is “When is this going to be useful in real life?”

And now you know the real answer to that question: “When you need to use the awesome power of arithmetic to assign false significance to arbitrary events.” Also, “When calculating gratuity on a restaurant bill,” but that’s less important here.

Photo by Ned Dishman

It’s been a little while between awards, what with the losing skid and the falling-out-of-the-playoff-picture deal, but we’re back on the right side of things this week: Ryan Plackemeier is your NFC Special Teams Player of the Week.

It was hard to imagine this day, back when people were savaging the initial Pro Bowl balloting that had Plackemeier as the leading vote-getter in the NFC, but I think we all knew it would arrive eventually. I mean, when you pick a guy up mid-season to replace your rookie draft pick, you always expect that guy to become Player of the Week just a few weeks later. It’s inevitable.

And speaking of inevitable, here’s what I wrote about Plackemeier during the fourth quarter of the Eagles game:

Plack attack! Ryan Plackemeier pins his third punt inside the ten, and his second inside the five. Part of me is deeply frustrated that so many guys are showing up now that things don’t matter, but the more optimistic part of me is pleased to see that no one’s given up on the season just yet. He’s making a strong case for himself as Redskins special teams player of the week.

Redskins Special Teams Player of the Week? I was aiming low.

Thank goodness for this video, then. Happy holidays!

• So the 49ers are growing throwback mustaches to go with their throwback uniforms this Sunday, which has prompted an outbreak of Redskins Mustache Nostalgia. Leading the photographic charge is Mr. Irrelevant, with the Sports Bog combing through the archives for text ‘staches. The Clint Didier picture above is my contribution.
• Riggo’s Rag argues both sides of keeping Coach Zorn, while Fatpickled takes a bittersweet run through the ifs of 2008.
• The epic struggle of Chris Cooley attempting to conquer a gingerbread house.
• Oh, and also: FOX 43 in Hampton Roads, Virginia, will still be broadcasting the Redskins game, even after the flexing of the schedule. Just a public service announcement to save people from having to call the station.

Photo by Robert Peyton Sherwood

Mark Moseley and Joe Theismann, presumably on the set of some kind of talk show. Both of these guys look remarkably the same despite the passing of 25-ish years.

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Photo by Nate Fine Photo

Former Redskins guard and current Arizona O-line coach Russ Grimm, taking a bite out of crime with McGruff the Crime Dog in 1984.

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Photo by Nate Fine Photo

Joe Gibbs, of course, blocking Gary Clark with his writing arm. Current Redskins pro scout Don Warren (who smiled when he saw the picture, and said that he thought it was from a Giants game — an assessment borne out by the date on the back, October 20, 1985) next to current tight ends coach Rennie Simmons, current Redskins Radio sideline reporter Rick “Doc” Walker, and Theismann again. I can’t quite tell who that is just to the right of Theismann.

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Photo by Dudley M. Brooks

The first place winner in the Black-and-White Feature category of the 16th Annual Pro Football Hall of Fame Photo Contest (sponsored by Canon!), this is “Riggo’s Agony” (with a young George Michael leaning in from the right). Here are the winners of the 40th annual contest, from last year.

Only two shopping days left until Christmas — and if you’ve been meaning to give Chanukah presents, now would be an excellent time to do so — and the folks at Redskins Park are getting into the spirit of things. Andre Carter was wrapping presents in the lobby, a Redskins-ornamented Christmas tree stands in front of the 70th anniversary team picture, and the training room has its own tree, complete with holiday CD collection.

Players are ducking in briefly before heading out to finish their holiday shopping. “One more gift left to buy,” said Pete Kendall. I asked if he had an easier time bulling through the crowds, given that he blocks for a living, and he shook his head. “I hate crowds, because I don’t try to plow through ‘em. I always find myself–” and he mimed twisting and turning through a crowd.

I suggested that this made him more of a Barry Sanders type than a Jerome Bettis type, and he laughed. “I don’t know that I’d use that exact analogy,” he said, before leaving to take his daughter shopping.

If you’ve ever worked in an office, it’s pretty standard holiday workplace stuff. And every workplace has the Wacky Guy Who Gets Very Excited And Dressed Up For The Holidays; at Redskins Park, it’s Rocky McIntosh.

Wearing antlers and sunglasses, with a reindeer in a rocking chair around his neck playing “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” and a sign pinned to his back reading “Santa’s Helper,” McIntosh walked around the park, greeting everyone and wishing happy holidays. “Gotta get in the spirit, man,” he said.

Even McIntosh’s socks were holiday-themed.

His travels around the park even took him into the Redskins.com TV studio, where Coach Jim Zorn was taping his appearance on tonight’s Redskins Nation. Zorn remained mostly stoic at the turn of events, but did offer up the Seeing His Linebacker Dressed Up As A 6-3, 238 Pound Elf Face for Dan Steinberg’s pantheon of Zorn faces.

(You can presumably see the exchange on tonight’s broadcast.)

So, yeah, the holidays abound at Redskins Park. Why, even Thursday’s schedule celebrates the season — although it does so by printing “Merry Christmas” in red ink after the day and date, not by canceling practice or anything drastic like that.

For Sunday’s game, Tong decided to do something special for Davison. He managed to get hold of Dream Seats, down in the corner of the endzone directly next to the Redskins tunnel, and pregame field passes.

“Kim had no idea about the Dream Seats or field passes,” he says. “She just thought we were going to our regular seats in the upper deck until we got to the security check and I handed her the dream seat ticket. I just told her Merry Christmas.”

This would probably have been enough of a surprise on its own. So when Tong dropped to one knee in that muddy corner of the field and pulled out a ring, Davison was just about speechless.

The two met online in April of 2007 (“Yeah, I guess those commercials are true,” Tong notes), the same month that the Redskins selected LaRon Landry and H. B. Blades in the NFL Draft.

They went to their first Skins game together a few months later, the preseason opener against the Titans at LP Field in Nashville, which the Redskins won 14-6 on two late touchdowns, and the two hosted the ExtremeSkins tailgate for the game. “That’s where I found that she can yell louder than me,” Tong says.

He describes himself as lifelong Redskins fan, and Davison was a college football fan who has grown to love to pro game – and the Redskins – since meeting Tong. Now the two are engaged to be married in Tennessee some time during the summer. “She’s already told me, no way in hell we are getting married during football season,” Tong says, which shows a couple whose priorities are firmly in order.

Their first game together was a win in 2007. Their first game as an engaged couple was an upset win over the Eagles that took them, as Tong notes, “from the last row to the first row”.

So, in addition to wishing them well, I’m going to encourage them to attend Redskins games after every significant event in their lives. I’m not a particularly superstitious guy, but you can’t argue with results.

Photo by Ned Dishman

One more note from Coach Zorn’s press conference today. This one’s going to disappoint a few of the regular readers of the blog, so I think it’s best if we just tear it off like a band-aid: the rookies aren’t going to be seeing extra playing time just because the team is eliminated.

Here’s Zorn’s reasoning on the subject:

“I’m not gonna experiment that way on the last game, when we have a chance to go 9-7. I think that’s what we’re here for, because we can experiment during preseason. We can get these guys a little more ready during the offseason, where we can have a better evaluation of those guys when the preseason rolls around.

“So I think we’re gonna stick with our group and, barring injury, it’ll hopefully be a similar group with the same type of attitude and preparation as they had this past week

“The guys that haven’t played, it is a little bit harder because the game experience is very important, as we’ve seen – Devin Thomas really has been the guy that has gone the distance and has played more than [the others] – besides [Chris] Horton – and has improved himself and worked himself into a guy that actually is participating now, on the offensive side.

“Malcolm [Kelly] is still working his way, and it is hard, because you’ve gotta get the guy that actually is gonna do the work, you’ve got to get him reps with our starter, with Jason [Campbell], and it’s hard to get any major rhythm down by not getting enough reps.”

So it looks like the Colt Brennan crowd is probably going to have to wait a bit longer. Don’t worry, August is just a few short months away.

If I had to pick one phrase I don’t particularly want to hear my coach saying with any sincerity, it’s probably “I’m the worst coach in America.” Well, we cleared that hurdle last week, and I actually thought Coach Zorn delivered the line well, and recovered from the fallout well also.

If there’s a second phrase I don’t want to hear, it’s probably “I was in the fetal position, plopped over sideways.” Not really your traditional chest-out leadership posture, although Zorn isn’t really your traditional chest-out leadership kind of guy. Which is, ultimately, what led to the fetal position story in the first place: someone asked if he had ever engaged in any sort of unusual motivational techniques a la Mike Singletary’s now-legendary pants-dropping.

Zorn’s answer — along with his comments on the defense in Sunday’s game — after the jump.

“I’ve been thinking about taking off my shirt in front of my players, and kinda … no. Hm.

“I did one thing unusual, if it was out of the ordinary. After a practice this year, I started talking about how … I forgot which team it was, but as I started talking I started talking about all the things that could happen to us. And I started to act like I was getting stiff and not being loose, you know, every negative thing I talked about. Whereas in the end of it, I fell over.

“And I was in the fetal position, plopped over sideways, I was explaining how this. is. how. it. could. be. this. Sunday. if we play. all tight. But if we choose. Not to do those things … I think while I was on the ground in the fetal position, our players were thinking, okay, he’s lost it.”

So even this turned out not to be so bad. When you have a coach who can say both those thing in a one week span and still seem confident while he does it … that’s a fairly impressive trait.

Less unusual, but still interesting, was Zorn’s story of when he faced off against Singletary when the two were both players:

“Unfortunately, it was my first start with the Green Bay packers in 1985, and that’s the year [the Bears] went to the Super Bowl. So I have him staring at me with those, y’know, those eyes that sort of are these big orbs through his facemask. Now, I will say we were competitive. In fact, he never sacked me, but a couple of the other guys hit me pretty good. We played ‘em twice in that year, cause they were in our division. Just a tremendous football player. An intensity level that just would be pressing against the ceiling here. Really intense player. He played the game the way most coaches would want it played, and I think it’s the way he wants it played as well, as a coach now.”

And, speaking of intensity, here are Zorn’s thoughts on the defensive performance that carried the team on Sunday:

“One of the things that has impressed me most of all is our ability to stop the run. We’ve faced some very good run teams…. [Defensive coordinator] Greg [Blache] has them taking responsibility for their own gap and not getting pushed back, maintaining the point of attack and then rallying to the ball. We’ve forced teams to try to throw the ball to win football games.

“I really feel like that’s been the key to our success. Yesterday our secondary came alive. We played against a pretty good quarterback in Donovan McNabb and he threw a couple great throws and we were able to disrupt things and bat the ball down. And then the heroic play at the end where Fred Smoot stopped [Reggie Brown] and really set him up for the shot that LaRon [Landry] had. Fred Smoot right there on the goal line making that tackle and spinning him around was a superior play. Overall those are the kinds of things that we’ve seen from our defense all year long and that’s pretty impressive.”