Chiefs next winless Washington foe

? The Washington Redskins had been reciting the same line every week for a month. Struggling teams are the worst to play, the saying goes, because they’re desperate and unpredictable.

Enough of that political correctness. The Redskins are themselves a desperate team now. They have no problem saying out loud that they should’ve been beating all these winless teams, and — now that the cream-puff part of the schedule is coming to an end — they should, must and ought to fully dispense with the Kansas City Chiefs (0-5) today.

“We’re a couple steps from getting ready to panic right now,” cornerback DeAngelo Hall said. “You’re facing teams that ain’t won a game. We gave Detroit their first win. We gave Carolina their first win. We can’t give Kansas City their first win. That’s the bottom line. We’ve got to get 3-3.”

If anything, the Redskins (2-3) are much more desperate than the Chiefs. Washington entered the season with confident talk about winning the NFC East; instead the players are dealing with daily uncertainty over the status of Jim Zorn, who looks more and more like a lame duck coach.

Kansas City was expecting a rebuilding year, having cleaned house and installed a new coach (Todd Haley), new general manager (Scott Pioli) and new quarterback (Matt Cassel). And, with all due respect, the Chiefs have become accustomed to losing: They’re on a 2-28 skid and haven’t won since beating Oakland, 20-13, on Nov. 30, 2008. They even went 0-4 in preseason this year.

“Everybody’s new, so now it’s like rebuilding all over again,” receiver Dwayne Bowe said. “Right now, we’re trying to find a way how to win. It’s hard to kind of find chemistry.”

If there is hope for Kansas City in the quest to avoid becoming the first Chiefs team in franchise history to avoid an 0-6 start, it comes from the successes the Lions and Panthers had against the Redskins. Also, K.C. has at least a smidgen of momentum, having taken the Dallas Cowboys to overtime last week before losing, 26-20.

“It was painful for us because we had worked real hard and kind of put ourselves in a position to win the game and it didn’t turn out that way for us,” Haley said, “but I do think there was a lot of encouraging signs.”