Lions try to end their D.C. futility

Surprising Detroit visits Washington aiming for its first victory there -- ever

LANDOVER, MD. -- The Detroit Lions don't visit the Washington Redskins very often. So every time it happens a new set of players get a dumbfounded look when presented with one of the more off-kilter streaks in sports.

Despite seven decades of trying, the Lions have never, ever, ever won at Washington.

"I didn't know that at all. Until just now," Detroit defensive end Dewayne White said. "

Now that you know?

"It still doesn't matter to me," White said.

That is because most of the players on both teams were not even in the NFL during the last episode of Lions in Washington D.C. It was the playoff game at the end of the 1999 season, when Detroit quarterback Gus Frerotte returned for the first time as a visiting player -- and fans greeted him with banners reminding him that once upon a time he injured himself by ramming his head into the stadium wall to celebrate a touchdown.

"And I got fined -- extremely," said Washington fullback Mike Sellers, remembering a second-half fight that led to $154,000 in fines for 23 players in the 27-13 Redskins win. "And I had nothing to do with it."

The string of futility is 0-20, including three playoff games. It includes five games at Griffith Stadium, 13 at RFK Stadium and two at FedEx Field.

That's not to say the Lions franchise has been completely fruitless against the Redskins on the road. In fact, the team won twice -- in Boston. The Portsmouth Spartans, two years before moving to Detroit, beat the Boston Redskins 10-0 in 1932. They returned as the Detroit Lions and won 17-7 in 1935, two years before the Redskins moved to Washington.

"What's more irritating is to know that when you go into a place like D.C., they think they can beat you simply because they always have," said kicker Jason Hanson, whose 16 years with the Lions makes him the unofficial expert on the streak.

If the Redskins (2-1) are whispering, they're doing it very quietly. There's been not a smidgen of pride expressed over the streak leading up to today's game, in part because the players have come to realize these are not your father's Lions. Detroit (3-1) has already equaled last year's victory total and is coming off a win in which the Lions set an NFL record with 34 fourth-quarter points against Chicago.

"We're not going in saying we dominated them because we beat them 20 times," cornerback Fred Smoot said.

Redskins safety Vernon Fox, who spent two seasons in Detroit, warned this week that his old team appears to be shedding its losing culture.

"I think they've learned how to win," Fox said. "They've learned how to get things going and do that in confidence. The old mentality of you get in close games and you don't think you can win, they've kind of wavered away from that."

That's the point Detroit quarterback Jon Kitna made this week when discussing the streak. Already this season Detroit has ended a 10-game losing streak to the Minnesota Vikings and a four-game skid against the Chicago Bears.

"We hadn't beaten Minnesota and we hadn't beaten Chicago, and we did that," Kitna said. "We're going to slay a lot of media dragons this year. ... The fact of the matter is that for the last 10 years or so this has been an organization that has struggled. ... If we took that into account, every week there would be a new rallying cry. What happens when that runs out?"