It’s one thing for “the media” to lose sight of reality—it’s what they do. They have bills to pay and sponsors to appease; it’s their job to create drama, ignore context and blindly compress the marathon NFL season into weekly hype segments.

It’s another thing when fans and followers of a given team—those who take it seriously enough to read, listen and talk it up on a daily basis—let ourselves fall into the trap.

As “serious” Redskins fans, we’re supposed to know better.

Listening to a large percentage of callers to local sports talk radio, however, reading the blogs and message boards and even just batting things around in line at the grocery story, I’ve discovered there are many among us focusing this week on all that could go wrong when the 5-2 Redskins travel to 0-6 Detroit to play the Lions on Sunday.

The mantra I’ve heard more than any other, and find most jarring, is the one I’d like to address today:

“They have to win this one big.”

I beg to differ. Before getting into my reasoning, a brief overview is in order ...