LANDOVER, Md. -- A football defeat such as this one might have counted as heartache, on another day, on another field, for another team. It's just that the Washington Redskins have learned enough about genuine heartache the past week -- too, too much -- to know that nothing measured on a scoreboard can remotely qualify.

There are lost games, and there is real loss, and the latter was all over this place Sunday, long before the Redskins would lose a game, 17-16, to a last-second field goal by the Buffalo Bills.

It welled in tears and makeshift memorials at tailgate gatherings all over the stadium grounds as Redskins fans mourned the sudden, brutal death of star defender Sean Taylor. You heard it as a marching band played a slow hymn called Going Home.

Saw it in a video tribute. Felt it in the heart-rending sound of 85,000 usually raucous fans all still in an aching moment of silence.

The team came out for its first defensive play with only 10 men on the field.

''No, we didn't,'' corrected linebacker London Fletcher.

''Sean was out there. Believe me,'' said end Phillip Daniels, in a postgame dressing room so quiet, whispers seemed loud. Daniels fought to control his voice as it wavered. ``At least he started the game with us. We wanted to win the game for Sean. We didn't, and it hurts.''

Redskins players, coaches and officials, a team travel party in the hundreds, will jet in for Monday's funeral for Taylor on the Florida International University campus, and leave soon after to return home and prepare for a Thursday night game.

The burden of finding a place for football in heavy hearts and minds has been an impossible challenge the past week, since Taylor was mortally wounded in a burglary at his Miami-area home (there rehabilitating from a knee injury) and died last Tuesday.

''Everybody wanted to play hard, but it was hard to get the emotions up to play,'' said coach Joe Gibbs. ``I think everyone was kind of drained. A tough, long, hard week for us Redskins.''

CONTROVERSIAL END

The game would end in controversy on a faux pas by the embattled Gibbs, who called two timeouts in a row to ''ice'' Bills kicker Rian Lindell -- unaware that constituted unsportsmanlike conduct and a 15-yard penalty that abbreviated Lindell's winning kick from 51 yards to 36. Gibbs said an official on the sideline told him he could call a second timeout, but the coach accepted responsibility.

''I made a decision at the end that very likely cost us the game,'' he said. ``That's on me.''

Only on this day, perhaps, would such a thing have shrunk to insignificance. Only on this day would Washington falling to a 5-7 record to all but ruin any playoff hope seem such an afterthought.

South Florida and Taylor's University of Miami family get to say goodbye next. Sunday was for the Redskins, and their fans. It was 40 degrees and gray, the skies later shedding rain, the whole day feeling like dusk, the weather perfect for the occasion. Small white towels embossed with Taylor's number, 21, whipped like a snowstorm in the gathering gloom, coming in handy for the tears.

Players wore Taylor's number on helmet decals. Tributes to the slain 24-year-old were all over the stadium, inside and out. On a hand-drawn message on a bedsheet draped from the cab of a pickup truck. On small poster-board signs affixed with clippings and hearts.

Teddy bears and flowers and messages were placed at a growing memorial outside the stadium where the large number 21 had been painted on a grassy area.

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