This is the worlds most incredible and depressing collection of Redskins QB jerseys
Die-hard Redskins fan Kenny A., a local teacher who would prefer to remain somewhat anonymous for reasons that will become clear, might be the only person who wore a John Beck jersey while watching the former Redskins quarterback get sacked 10 times in a 2011 shutout loss to the Bills in Toronto and a Kirk Cousins No. 12 jersey in Cleveland for Cousins’s only start as a rookie the following year.
The 35-year-old has spent more money than he’d care to admit on what has become the most incredible — and depressing — collection of Redskins quarterback jerseys ever assembled, including four new additions from this past season alone.
“It’s being a fan, coupled with tradition and stubbornness,” Kenny said in a phone interview this week. “It’s a mess. I get it’s a mess, but it’s my mess. It’s always the joke of the tailgate.”
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Kenny’s collection began innocently enough around the time he graduated from James Madison in 2004. Having never owned a Redskins jersey, the lifelong fan was in the market for a current player’s threads. A self-proclaimed “quarterback guy,” Kenny settled on Patrick Ramsey’s No. 11. Ramsey had been Washington’s first-round draft pick in 2002, made 11 starts in 2003 and figured to be the Redskins’ quarterback of the future.
“So I got his jersey, not realizing what I was about to get myself into,” Kenny said. “I wore that until Mark Brunell came around and took over. I was in support of that at the time and bought a Brunell jersey, and 14 years later, here we are.”
Yes. Here we are.
The Redskins have had 14 different starting quarterbacks since Kenny became a season-ticket holder in 2004, and he owns at least one jersey for every one of them. He has jerseys for both of the numbers that Cousins and Colt McCoy have worn in Washington and throwback alternates for Cousins and Robert Griffin III. He has a J. Campbell and a plain Campbell, and a Collins No. 15 that Seahawks fans mistook for a Kerry Collins jersey when he attended Washington’s playoff loss to Seattle in January 2008. Kenny fully committed to the QB jersey bit when Beck briefly replaced Rex Grossman as the Redskins’ starter in Week 7 of the 2011 season.
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“I figured anything would be better than Rex Grossman, but I was somehow proven incorrect,” he said. “That was the first time I said, ‘Whatever, I’ve already got seven or eight quarterback jerseys, what’s another one?’”
A friend on Facebook wanted to know how much money Kenny had spent on his Beck jersey.
“Let’s just say there’s a good chance I paid with more dollars than John Beck will have touchdowns in his career,” Kenny presciently replied.
Kenny paid more than $3 for his Beck No. 12, but not nearly as much as the roughly $300 he dropped on the authentic Campbell, Donovan McNabb and Griffin jerseys in his collection.
“I’m never doing that again until a quarterback starts for at least five years,” said Kenny, whose other jerseys are $100 replicas, primarily purchased from the NFL.com shop. “I really believed Donovan McNabb was going to be a thing and then, like, eight games later, Rex Grossman was back in.”
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A photo of Kenny’s collection went viral in 2015. When the injury bug hit the most important position on the Redskins’ roster this season, his friends insisted that he update the photo of all of his QB jerseys laid out on the floor as a sad reminder of the Washington signal-callers who have come and gone.
“All my friends hate me for getting these jerseys,” said Kenny, who makes a point of wearing the jersey of the Redskins’ starting quarterback to every game he attends. “The joke is that it’s a curse now. I get the jersey and it falls apart instantaneously."
When Alex Smith went down with a season-ending knee injury this season, Kenny ordered a McCoy No. 12. After McCoy fractured his leg in Philadelphia two weeks later, Kenny made sure he had a Mark Sanchez No. 6 jersey in his possession before the next game.
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“I’m pretty sure Mark Sanchez’s family doesn’t own a Mark Sanchez Redskins jersey,” Kenny said. “But I do for some reason. I showed up at the game and people were like, ‘Who’s No. 6?’ Our quarterback.”
While Smith’s NFL future is in doubt, Kenny is hoping the Redskins don’t give him reason to add to his collection by selecting a quarterback in this year’s draft. He would prefer to see Washington address other positions of need, release a bunch of veterans, start McCoy all season, “accept going 2-14″ and use its early first-round pick on a quarterback in the 2020 draft. Perhaps there’s a Tua Tagovailoa or Justin Herbert Redskins jersey in Kenny’s future.
“The problem with the Redskins is they refuse to take the necessary three steps backwards to go any steps forward,” said Kenny, who has no plans of giving up on his favorite team or ending his jersey tradition. “They want to pretend they’re taking a step forward when they’re really taking a step backward ... I don’t want to wear 25 more jerseys in my life. I want to wear one.”
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