I came into the season with no expectations. Or rather, with the same expectations as last year: awesome defense, pathetic offense with no quarterback. Suddenly Mark Brunell seems to have found himself and has taken over as the starting quarterback. I’m not sad to see Patrick Ramsey on the sidelines. I think he is always going to panic and choke. He was a bad draft pick. They should trade him for a good towel boy. Ok, maybe that’s a little harsh, but, still. I don’t even want him as a backup QB.

Turns out trading Champ Bailey for Clinton Portis was about the smartest thing the Redskins could have done. Who saw that one coming? Well, other than Joe Gibbs that is. That man deserves a hell of a lot of credit. The Redskins went 6-10 last season and he had to take the heat for that. As if you can come in to a team and turn it around instantaneously. I don’t know what the season will end up being, but I know what it is right now: 3-0.

I’ve taken great joy week after week watching the experts pick whoever the Redskins are playing against to win, especially King Kaufmann over at Salon.com, but that’s probably just because I read Salon a lot. Once again, everybody has picked their opponent going into week five: the Denver Broncos. Most Redskins fans that are publishing their predictions have them at 1-5 over the next six games. Maybe I’m an eternal optimist but I think they can do much better than that. I had originally gone 2-4, but after reflecting on it a bit, I can see 3-3 or better. After all, they’ve proven everybody wrong three times already, haven’t they?

I’m not just being a blind optimist here. They’ve held their opponents to an average of 12 points a game with only two turnovers so far this season. People don’t seem to have noticed the changes in the defense that have been consistent so far. Every week people talk about how much they expect the Redskins to blitz, but they haven’t been blitzing all that much. Look for Gibbs and Williams to mix things up. Gibbs likes to do that. If they’ve been winning by an average of a measley two points per game, something everybody keeps talking about, imagine what they can do if they force two or three turnovers in a single game?

I think they’ve been playing a more conservative defense against the weaker teams in their schedule just to be able to throw off the stronger teams when they change things up. Based on that assumption, I don’t expect much blitzing from them in the first half of this Sunday’s game. I expect they’ll see how things play out and then decide if they need to change things up during the halftime. From a strategy standpoint it makes a lot of sense.

On a different note, it’s always been about a good defense getting teams into the playoffs which in turn get teams into the Superbowl (no, I have no illusions about the Redskins going to the Superbowl this year, this is “on a different note”). One season differs from the norm on this (last season) and suddenly it’s all about the offense? Since when do we throw out years and years of statistical data in favor of the anomaly? Here we are a quarter of the way into the season and has anybody noticed anything? Like maybe that the strong defensive teams are dominating right now? It’s only a quarter of the way into the season, but I’ll take that statistic over last years fluke. Meanwhile, I suspect the experts will go on waiting for the NFL to correct itself and reassert the dominance of the strong offensive teams.

In case you haven’t guessed, I’m predicting a win for the Redskins this Sunday. So far, their offense has proven itself to be the better of the two (statistically) and I’m confident they have the better defense too. Brunell was the biggest unknown for me and watching him connect over and over again when throwing backwards while running for the sidelines has convinced me that he’s the real deal. He may have only connected 20 of 36 passes last week, but those were the 20 that mattered. Twelve of the twenty were 3rd down conversions! A quarterback that gets better the more pressure there is? Talk about the exact opposite of Patrick Ramsey.

Here’s hoping I’m right about Sunday.

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There are a lot of topics in the web development world that come around every so often like clockwork. Usually it’s a “how do I do this?” question from another newbie for the umpteenth time on a list you’ve been a member of for five or six years. Sometimes, it’s a higher-level discussion about “where is the web going?” I suspect the newest discussion that will ebb and flow will be about the “Web 2.0.”

Then there are the meta-discussions that contain dozens of smaller discussions that also go around and around. The separation of style and content would be a meta-discussion. Originally it was just a regular discussion, but then it actually start happening and it spawned (or maybe it was spawned by) discussions about the semantic web. One of the conversations that further fractured from that regarded a standardized nomenclature for styles.

That is something I’ve thought about for a while for my own personal use. As a designer, I could create my own templating system akin to what they do over at CSS Zen Garden. I’ve even thought about using the Zen Garden HTML template and seeing how well I could adapt it to my customers’ websites. Taking it a step further, I thought about using the Zen Garden HTML template to develop WordPress themes and seeing how well I could adapt those to my customers’ websites. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? It might be.

It’s entirely possible that, in many instances, such applications wouldn’t be the best solution for a client. In those instances, the solution would have to be abandoned in favor of a better one. But, in other instances, it might work out great. For that group, a common set of solutions would exist which would improve my workflow and turnaround time. As an independant web developer that would improve my bottom line.

More altruistically though, it would also allow me to apply that common set of solutions to give back to the community by creating templates. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but hear me out. Each template could be put up on CSS Zen Garden as an example of what is possible and at the same time could be used as an actual WordPress Theme. People use blogging tools like WordPress because it lowers the barrier to entry: they can self-publish on the web without having to learn how to write XHTML, CSS, and PHP code. They don’t have to create their own .htaccess files to make their URLs more human (and machine) readable. In as little as five minutes they can be up-and-running with a robust content publishing/management system and all they have to do is put their content out there for the world to read.

You might think this is a bad idea since, let’s face it, most content will be utter schlock, but that’s ok. You don’t have to read it. Blogs are the harbinger of the Web 2.0. The web as a two-way medium. I post something that, like this very post, is only read by a handful of people, half of whom probably know me in “real life.” But they can comment on my post and I can comment on their comments. It’s the web as a two-way communications medium, not just me pushing content out there and you can like it or shut up–or both.

Putting out templates that could be used by people to help them communicate their message to a wider audience, when they might not otherwise have been able to communicate their message at all, is a great thing. Besides, as a designer, it’s the best contribution I can make to the blogging community. As a WordPress user, I feel a certain obligation to give back for what I’ve gotten.

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