Brandon Banks Gets No Love, and Then Gets Hurt

When my favorite Redskin Brandon Banks put on the greatest return performances I have ever seen against the Detroit Lions last week, including a kickoff return TD, it appeared a mere formality that he would be named NFC Special Teams Player of the Week. And then, there was silence....

I didn't think much of it, but for a mediocre team and an awesome player, a normally crappy award actually could give us fans some excitement. Not a peep though from Redskins Insider or anywhere, so I did about 8 seconds of research and discovered that Green Bay Packers punter Tim Masthay was actually the NFC Special Teams Player of the Week....what!?!

I did about 5 minutes more research on who votes on this award, and haven't found anything. Masthay put 5 of his 8 punts inside the 20, and the Jets had 0 punt return yards against him, but come on, a 41.5 yard net average indicates that he wasn't kicking superhuman distances. Does anyone know who picks these awards? Is it one guy, or is it a committee of idiots? Going through the play-by-play, here are the big plays from the Gamebreaker:

• 46 yard KO return to Detroit territory
• 24 yard punt return to Detroit territory
• 95 yard KO return TD nullified by penalty
• 35 yard punt return to Detroit territory
• 96 yard KO return TD

Even excluding the TD that never was, those are 4 huuuge plays and way bigger than 5 punts inside the 20. Plus, the dude's a punter...

Alas, my boy Banks will not get to avenge this wrongdoing next week as word is out that he somehow sustained an injury and had minor knee surgery this week. Great, grand, wonderful. The good news is he may only miss 1 game. The bad news is Redskin games will get even more boring as there goes the Redskin 'offense'.

In other news, the Caps are on a 4 game win streak and now have the best record in the Eastern Conference.

(Image courtesy of DC Sports Bog)