By Michael Wilbon
Sunday, August 27, 2006

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. If you want to believe, based on preseason play, that the Redskins are more pretender than contender, there's plenty of circumstantial evidence to back you up -- and it's mounting.

The Redskins, after stinking the joint out here in New England, are 0-3 in the preseason. The starters have trailed in all three games when they left the field. One of the teams the Redskins lost to, the Jets, figure to be an absolute wreck this season. Challenged by their Hall of Fame coach to put forth a better effort last week, the Redskins promptly went out and looked like somebody's junior varsity in a 41-0 loss to the Patriots. The Redskins didn't do anything well. They were bad "all the way across the board," to use Joe Gibbs's exact words.

They didn't play defense, couldn't run, couldn't throw, couldn't protect the quarterback even from a vanilla pass rush. The first-team offense has yet to score a point with one preseason game left. Gibbs said he wanted to give a "big thumbs up" to the Patriots and the way they played. He didn't need to stay it, but the Redskins have earned a big thumbs down in preseason, with only one game -- Thursday at home against the Ravens -- remaining.

Gibbs was very restrained in his comments afterward and gave his boys something of a verbal postgame hug when he said, "I like being in tough times with this bunch of guys." But it's hard to turn a deaf ear to a coach's concerns when the team looks as bad as the Redskins did Saturday night.

The Redskins were worse this week than last, if only for the reason that the starters played into the third quarter. The backups, scrubs and hopefuls couldn't be blamed for this.

The offense, whose impotence has drawn most of the attention so far, looked puny again, but no more so than the defense, which made sure Tom Brady and the Patriots got in a good tuneup. The Patriots' offense looked to be in at least Labor Day form as it went up and down the field without defensive resistance.

Sure, the Redskins' defense was playing without three starters; Phillip Daniels, Cornelius Griffin and Shawn Springs were all sidelined with injuries and it's quite easy to make the case that they are the three most important players to the defense. At least we've seen enough of Gregg Williams's defense over the last couple of seasons in real games to have every reason to believe that, come Week 1 of the regular season, it will be at least as good as it was last season.

But giving the offense any benefit of the doubt based on what we've seen so far is very, very risky.

I must admit that I don't believe in drawing any important conclusions from preseason football. That these NFL exhibitions draw so many fans and such excessive media coverage speaks to just how thoroughly the NFL has been able to brainwash America's sports fans, not to mention the saps I like to call producers and editors. The NFL has both created and filled a need for football, which is scary on several levels. But that harangue is best saved for another day.

The primary reason I don't believe in making grand declarations based on NFL preseason games is that coaches aren't trying their hardest to win.

Don't get me wrong, they're not trying for the right reason. To showcase all the good stuff in the preseason would be stupid beyond words. Why do that in games that don't count in the standings with players who won't be on the team in three weeks?

It's not just a matter of opinion that coaches don't go all-out.

You think Bill Belichick would be doing a lengthy halftime chat with a local TV station as he did Saturday night if this junk mattered as much as it will in two weeks? Al Saunders, boss of the offense, said as much the other day. He told The Post' s Jason La Canfora that he has used perhaps 2 percent of the 700-page playbook.

Two percent is good if we're talking milk. But offense? The Redskins haven't tried to run any offense and I don't blame Saunders one bit. People who know about such things say Antwaan Randle El is going to be a big part of the offense, and the Redskins have barely had him on the field in the preseason.

And historically, I've seen too many Joe Gibbs-coached teams look blah in the preseason, then light it up in the real season. In fact, during the Joe Gibbs I era the Redskins went 0-4 in the 1982 preseason and 1-3 in the 1991 preseason. And guess what they did both years? Uh, they won the Super Bowl.

Whenever the Gibbs-coached Redskins have gone .500 or worse in preseason, they've gone on to make the playoffs. This includes last season when they were was 1-3 in the summer and went to the second round of the playoffs when it counted. Asked about the lack of correlation, even Gibbs said, "It's hard to figure and put your finger on."

So, I'm hesitant to believe what I think I see. The Indianapolis Colts were 0-4 in the preseason last year and went 14-2. And let's not forget Steve Spurrier, who ran up the score on everybody one preseason -- you see where that got him.

But I was cautioned by NFL scouts who have seen the Redskins on film or in person the last three weeks that there are some red flags.

They emphasize that the final scores of these games are meaningless, but the starters being so feeble is not. Scouts say that the starters for the Panthers, Eagles, Buccaneers, Seahawks, Giants -- among others -- have looked good in their limited appearances. Quite a few teams, the scouts caution, are showing progress each week that the Redskins haven't shown. Mark Brunell completed only 7 of 16 passes for 51 yards. And there's the problem of those injuries to Clinton Portis and Springs. Renaldo Wynn might have to be added to that list depending on how his sprained ankle feels after suffering what he felt was a low block.

You could feel the panic move all the way up I-95 through Northern Virginia and into Maryland, all the way north to Exit 9 for 2.8 miles, right into Gillette Stadium. No doubt, a good number of folks in and around Washington want to postpone the regular season right now, push it to the beginning of October or later.

But the reality is that the Redskins have two weeks and one preseason game to get themselves into game-day form. If they don't make it, those already in a panic will say the preseason ineptitude was proof the team was doomed. If the Redskins light up the rebuilding Vikings on national TV two weeks from Monday, folks like me who are totally dismissive of the preseason will say we should never have paid so much attention, that the preseason is as pointless as the Redskins' starters right now. With preseason football so wildly unreliable as a predictor of regular season success, this truly is a case of "only time will tell."