That smashing sound you hear is the shattering of countless hopes and dreams of countless D.C. sports fans as the temporary relevance of the region's professional sports teams come crashing to the ground. Exhibit A: The Redskins.

Less than a year ago, less than a month ago, you couldn't swing a cat around here without hitting someone who honestly, fervently believed that the Redskins' first division title in nearly a generation, since the last millennium, somehow guaranteed a return to the glories of Grimm, Green, Gibbs, Riggins, Monk, Mitchell and Theismann.

RGIII's second-to-none rookie season, steamroller Alfred Morris, a creative (and career threatening) playbook and the return of injured stars Bryan Orakpo and Pierre Garcon paid for a region's worth of rose-colored glasses. Everyone seemed willing to overlook the fact that Griffin would be having his OTAs, off-season and preseason workouts during the season.

Everyone seemed willing to overlook the fact that all the defenses and defensive coordinators Griffin, Morris and Kyle Shanahan spent 2012 tormenting would not spend their off-seasons convincing themselves they could do the same things that didn't work last year and expect different results this year.

Everyone seemed willing to overlook the fact that Griffin's rookie season, certainly looked at through the prism of efficiency, may well have been the quintessential lightning strike, ripping across the sky, impossible to bottle, never to be seen again.

Everyone seemed willing to overlook the fact that the Redskins' defense, not good last year, to be kind, did not do a thing to get appreciably better in the off-season. Orakpo returned, to be sure, but he's not a team unto himself. The same team that cut DeAngelo Hall (woohoo!) signed him later (ack!), albeit at a steep, steep discount.

But most remarkably, everyone seemed completely, mystifyingly, bafflingly willing to forget that midway through last season the head coach of this team was packing his bags and had, for all intents and purposes, turned to greener pastures. For lack of a better word, he quit. He'd written off the season, a season saved by a magical run, one that will always be remembered for its hope and promise, and the delight it bestowed upon a giddy populace.

This past week, following a heartbreaking loss to a vulnerable Lions team, a game many preseason prognosticators had giddily penciled in as a win, the long knives came out and the same "fans" who'd so recently anointed Robert Griffin III the second coming were, quite seriously, calling for Super G's benching or, even more traitorously, his outright trade.

I can only wonder if they've asked for the return of their earlier wedding presents…

Over in NatsTown, a season that started so full of promise finally crumbled under the weight of unwieldy expectations, victim to too much springtime bluster, an early-season lack of fundamentals and assumed strengths that were later revealed as weaknesses.

The good news for Mike Rizzo and company, including their yet-to-be-named 2014 manager, is that their window remains very much open. The talent really is there, and the lessons learned from this lost season, if taken to heart, can serve as fuel for a fire that should be burning hotly come spring training.

The Braves should still be the frontrunners, but the rest of the National League East cupboard is pretty bare. The Marlins still have a lot of rebuilding ahead of them, as do the Mets, particularly if Matt Harvey's decision to pass on off-season surgery comes back to bite them. The Phillies might be a dark horse, but the realistic assumption is their best days, at least as currently constructed, are behind them.

All those signs point to legitimate potential for the Nats to compete for a Wild Card, if not a division title, in 2014.

Better put away those World Series or Bust t-shirts, though. At least for now.

And, from the you-really-can-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too file, Larry Ellison, CEO of tech company Oracle, the nation's third richest man, according to Forbes magazine, with a personal net worth in the forty to forty-four billion dollar range, depending on the fluctuations of his Oracle stock portfolio, and the largest backer of the Oracle Team USA yacht competing for this year's America's Cup, skipped out on his already-scheduled keynote address to some 60,000 attendees at the Oracle OpenWorld users' conference to attend that day's boat race.

This after skipping out on Oracle's first quarter earnings call just a week earlier for, you guessed it, the boat race.

Oracle Team USA has, to be fair, clawed its way back from a seemingly insurmountable deficit, winning seven straight races to tie the challengers from New Zealand and force a winner-take-all final race.

To all those people who called Ellison a blowhard, well, what better sport to put all that hot air to good use…