Let’s Talk about Bruce Allen

By Steve Thomas

It’s taken me quite a while to finish this column, the reason being that my feelings with regard to Redskins team president Bruce Allen have changed seemingly every week during this offseason as a result of one disclosure and story after another, all coming rapid-fire in this turbulent offseason. What’s become quite clear recently is that the Redskins fan base has dramatically turned on Allen. Things seem to have devolved from a general, simmering dislike into a full-out social media lynching, complete with a #FireBruceAllen Twitter hashtag, possibly the worst fan reaction that can be put forth in 2017’s digital world (#notreally). But is all of the ire and consternation deserved? The answer is a bit more complicated than it seems. This piece isn’t so much of a pure defense or prosecution of Mr. Allen as it is an examination of his role with the Redskins and his responsibility for the current status of the team, good or bad.

The most recent news regarding Allen came from a column by the Washington Post’s Jerry Brewer from February 22, in which Brewer opined that, fundamentally, Allen has placed general manager Scot McCloughan in a position of a glorified “super scout” without final personnel authority, for the principal purpose of making Allen look better. In addition, earlier this month Washington Post columnist Mike Jones wrote that Allen might be jealous of the personnel success of Redskins general manager Scot McCloughan, and further stated that Allen appears to be putting pressure on McCloughan to have an outstanding offseason in terms of personnel acquisition, or else.

Nobody, including me, would debate that Allen’s track record as a personnel man is tenuous at best. You should understand, though, that Mr. Allen’s role with the team is quite a bit larger than some realize and includes much more than just player selection. I don’t know specifically whether the allegations made in either Brewer and/or Jones’ columns are true or untrue, and the accusation of jealousy certainly seems petty, but generally speaking, a team president is supposed to pressure his general manager. That part is okay and justified.

A team president, though, has a huge amount of duties for the franchise that do not involve the football team side of things – an NFL franchise is a regular business operation first and foremost and has a group of employees who run that side of things with next to no involvement in the team or the games. As team president, Allen is in charge of that aspect of Redskins operations. Based on what we know about the franchise’s profitability and publicly available valuations, it appears as though the business side is thriving despite the wavering game attendance of the past several years. Also, Allen’s family has obvious political connections with the state of Virginia and he’s successfully used those connections to get the Richmond training camp site built and the Virginia government to seriously look into a possible deal for a new stadium. All of these things are part of his team president duties – the part the public doesn’t care about but the side in which Mr. Snyder might be most interested.

Call this part of Allen’s duties an expansion of what Allen was trying to convey in his now infamous “winning off the field” press conference I have to give Allen credit for his abilities on the business side, because if that part of an NFL franchise goes sideways, it can most certainly have an affect on the on-field product, and by all accounts he’s done well with these tasks.

The obvious problem, of course, is that Allen has little track record as a competent evaluator of football talent. His reputation going back to early in his NFL front office career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders was as that of a contract and salary cap expert. His time as the sole personnel executive for the Redskins began with Mike Shanahan’s firing/resignation/departure after the 2013 season and ran through Scot McCloughan’s hiring before the 2015 draft. That having been said, though, despite his reputation, Allen’s 2014 draft actually ended up being fairly productive for the Redskins, with 2014 yielding linebacker/defensive end Trent Murphy, right tackle Morgan Moses, center Spencer Long, cornerback Bashaud Breeland, and wide receiver Ryan Grant (no, he’s not great, but he’s fifth round pick who’s still on the team and getting playing time, so spare me the comments, please). In that regard, at least, his record as the Redskins’ hands-on personnel executive is a little better than the total wash-out that some fans remember.

Recent history aside, the fact that Bruce Allen brought Scot McCloughan to DC in the first place lends credence to the idea that Allen himself recognizes that personnel evaluation isn’t his strength. As everyone knows by now, McCloughan is a guy with a reputation as a very strong talent evaluator who has had a documentedproblem with alcohol The open questions at his hiring were therefore (1) would McCloughan be given the opportunity to “run the show”, so to speak, and (2) were his admitted former problems with alcohol behind him? Up until as late as this month (February, 2016), the answers to both questions appeared to be a resounding “yes”. Fans did not hear media reports of meddling in the draft or free agency by Allen or Mr. Snyder. McCloughan appeared to be in charge and executing his vision. Bruce Allen was probably always there, behind the scenes, approving the major player moves, but the appearance out of Redskins Park was that of stability and progress.

And then, all of a sudden, less than a month into the 2017 offseason, that image of stability exploded. McCloughan now isn’t speaking to the media. Stories are being written about jealousy and influence by Allen. ESPN 980’s Chris Cooley inappropriately and crassly speculated, without basis or evidence, that McCloughan may be drinking too much again (no, we aren’t going to opine on that). Weirdly, Bruce Allen has taken no steps at all to refute Cooley’s allegations. The Kirk Cousins contract negotiations seem to be stalled. If there’s anything fans have learned after watching this team wallow in its own self-imposed public-relations excrement for so many years up until recently, it’s that for the most part, this sort of chaos at Redskins Park is usually grounded in reality to one extent or the other.

So, what to make of this? To me, all of this noise shows that, at a minimum, Allen was never gone in terms of personnel evaluation. He has likely continued to play an important role – Joel Corry from CBS Sports told us as much on our show (listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARMF46FYTwU). And frankly, as team president, he should play a role, but not as big of a role as Brewer and Jones allege. Trust me when I say that the team president has a say to one degree or another on every NFL team – GMs don’t normally operate in complete autonomy on all player decisions when they don’t have complete contractual control (think Bill Belichick and Jerry Jones). Where I fault Allen is for not stepping back far enough and for allowing the recent noise to escalate. He should have taken steps since the end of the 2016 season, both internal and through the media, to stop the endless controversy and give everyone the impression that adults are in charge. He’s failed at that recently. He has not created the impression that the team remains a professional organization; or, more accurately stated, he’s allowed the good impression that was created by McCloughan’s original hiring to be ruined.

So: after all of this, what’s the conclusion here? It seems most reasonable that Allen is doing a bang-up job managing the Redskins business operations, and for that reason more than any other, Mr. Snyder will likely keep him around for the foreseeable future. The other side of the coin, though, is that Allen seems to have taken too big of a role in team personnel issues and may be setting McCloughan up as the fall guy in the event the 2017 season isn’t successful. In order to improve the situation, Allen needs to take steps to stop the leaks and negativity at Redskins Park and publicly give a show of support for Scot McCloughan. If he does that, perhaps the future is still bright. If he doesn’t, then we might just see a major upheaval next year and a return to be bad ‘ole days. I sure hope that isn’t the case.