ASHBURN, Va. - How did the Washington Redskins manage to win an NFL playoff game with only 120 yards of offense? That’s like shooting nothing but bogeys to win a major golf tournament. Or winning the local bowling league with a bunch of gutter balls.

There are plenty of ways to express it, but the fact is that the Redskins set a new standard for futility in their 17-10 wild-card win over Tampa Bay on Saturday. Never in league history has a team won with so little offense.

“We couldn’t run it,” quarterback Mark Brunell said, “and, obviously, we didn’t throw well, either.”

The loyal Redskins fans didn’t care, just as long as the team brought home its first playoff victory in six years. If they thought penetrating the Tampa Bay defense was tough, the Redskins were totally mismatched when they arrived on their buses at Redskins Park late Saturday night.

More than 500 fans overwhelmed three security workers and rushed the players and coach Joe Gibbs, trying to exchange congratulations for autographs. Some looked forward to next week’s game by chanting “We want Seattle!”

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“In 12 years of playing, I’ve never been on a team that won a playoff game,” long snapper Ethan Albright said Sunday. “That was awesome. They were singing the fight song. Cars were lined up in the grass out there. There must have been a thousand people around.”

Still, looking back a day later, one item after another leads to the inevitable question: How did the Redskins win that game?

• Clinton Portis, who had five straight 100-yard games, got 53 yards on 16 carries and left the game periodically after his sore shoulders got banged up. The Redskins had 95 yards rushing total, and the only run over 10 yards was an 11-yard reverse by receiver Santana Moss.
• Brunell went 7-for-15 for 41 yards and threw an awful interception that gave the Buccaneers good field position in the fourth quarter. His longest completion was 15 yards. He’s now gone eight straight games without throwing for 200 yards.
• Moss, on the day he was named a Pro Bowl starter, was constantly double-teamed and caught two passes for 18 yards. The team’s only other receiving threat, Chris Cooley, fumbled after one of his two receptions.
• The Redskins’ only touchdown drive was 6 yards, following LaVar Arrington’s first-quarter interception. Their only decent drive of any kind was a 10-play march that yielded a field goal in the second quarter. They lost the time of possession stat by nearly 9 minutes.
• The Redskins played without their best cornerback, Shawn Springs, who sat out with a groin injury. Steady defensive lineman Renaldo Wynn broke his arm in the first quarter. Safety Sean Taylor was ejected in the third quarter for spitting in the face of Michael Pittman, leaving the defense vulnerable to deep passes in a late Tampa Bay comeback attempt that nearly succeeded.
• Punter Derrick Frost shanked a 14-yard punt with 1:05 to play, giving Tampa Bay great field position for its final drive.

Ugly. Ugly. Ugly.

“You don’t care about numbers,” Brunell said. “You don’t care how pretty it is, or how effective it is, or how effective you were on offense. To get a win is huge. You are on the road in the playoffs against a very good defense. We will take it.”

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The Redskins won the same way they’ve been winning since late November: They won the turnover battle. The top two plays were Arrington’s interception and Taylor’s 51-yard fumble return for a touchdown, which made for a 14-0 lead before the game was one quarter old.

Meanwhile, when the Redskins fumbled, they got the ball back each time. Cooley, Marcus Washington and Antonio Brown all put the ball on the ground, but the Bucs couldn’t recover it.

“Things are starting to go our way, I guess. If you want to call it luck,” said Washington, shrugging his shoulders. “(But) luck is opportunity plus preparation.”

Turnovers do involve quite a bit of luck, at least that’s what the Redskins were saying when they had a minus-13 turnover differential in November. At that time, they lost 15 of their 21 fumbles, and had recovered only three of their opponents’ 18 fumbles. Since then, they’ve lost one of 11 fumbles and have recovered 10 of their opponent’s 16.

So, either the Redskins are living a charmed existence that will take them to the Super Bowl, or they’re riding a bubble that’s about to burst. Either way, they know they need to find a way to gain more than 120 years against the Seahawks.

“We’ve got to really bring an offensive threat to the field next week,” guard Ray Brown said. “We didn’t carry our weight.”