The Redskins are Close, Yet So Far
by Richard Rogers
This has been an eventful off-season so far. It has the feel of one similar to a team coming off of a 5-11 record. There’s talk of dysfunction, calls for firing of Team President Bruce Allen, and organized fan protests at team headquarters. There have been scathing articles written and comments made about the Redskins’ handling of Scot McCloughan’s dismissal. There have been whispers of the Redskins will not be able to attract any top general managers, and their reputation has taken another major hit around the league.
But let’s talk pure football with some historical perspective. If you poll Redskins fans about the low point of Snyder’s tenure, you’d probably get a myriad of answers…Marty’s firing, the Zorn years, or maybe even Scot McCloughan’s firing. But if we’re talking football, this team seems to be on the cusp of taking some major steps forward. I remember when Mike Shanahan took over the team in 2009, the Redskins had only 5 draft picks. Chris Samuels and Ray Brown were our starting tackles, and Jason Campbell was the starter on paper. A year earlier, the Washington Redskins had perhaps one of, if not THE worst draft in NFL history. They had ten picks in the 2008 draft and all were out of the NFL by 2013. Let’s put that into some perspective. It’s not that they are no longer on the team, none of the ten players are even in the league after 8 seasons!
As much chaos and dysfunction that has surrounded this team, for me, it’s all come down to a lack of talent. For nearly two decades, this organization has lacked a true system for acquiring and developing talent. Sure, you can point to a couple of the Gibbs 2.0 teams that had Portis, Moss, Fletcher, Cooley, and Taylor, but there was a shortage of draft picks and a talent evaluator to restock the cupboard. This brings me to my point about how close the Redskins are. In 2015, the Washington Redskins won the NFC East with Kirk Cousins as quarterback. Some called it a flash in the pan. Maybe. But I’d assert that it was different. The Redskins won the division in 2015 with a young, incomplete roster, not an aging one. In 2014 and 2015, the Redskins made a pivot and invested draft picks into rebuilding the offense and offensive line. The roster already had a cornerstone left tackle, wide receivers, and tight end in Trent Williams, Pierre Garcon, DeSean Jackson, and Jordan Reed. They added Morgan Moses, Spencer Long, Arie Kuandijo, and Brandon Scherff. Jamison Crowder was a jewel of a find in the fourth round as well. Again, the Washington Redskins seemed to be finally BUILDING a roster of home grown talent.
In 2014, the Redskins hired Jay Gruden as the head coach, and after the 2014 season, it seemed as if he would go the way of those who had come before him under Dan Snyder. Then something happened – Jay Gruden declared Kirk Cousins the starter for the 2015 season. Keep in mind Gruden was eviscerated for his scathing criticism of Robert Griffin III the season before, but Jay seemed to have a moment when he said, if I’m going down, I’m going down with my guy. There are reports that Scot McCloughan met with Dan Snyder for hours trying to convince him that moving away from Griffin was the right move. It worked, and Kirk Cousins would quarterback this team to a division title, consecutive winning seasons, and franchise passing records. Bill Callahan is probably the “MVC” (Most Valuable Coach). Barry was a disaster, but the vision with Manusky and Callahan is that they are “teachers”. We’ll see.
So why all the long faces among some in the fan base? We’re closer than we’ve ever been in decades to sustained winning, if you’re looking at the product on the football team. Yes, this defense was absolutely horrible in spots last season, but we all knew going in that would be the case. Maybe we didn’t know it would be as bad as it was, but clearly there had been no investment in the defensive line the likes of what we’d seen with the offensive line and skill position players.
Let me put this another way. There was time when the Redskins didn’t have any top players at any positions. In many cases, we had a bunch of retreads and overvalued draft picks. There was a time when most of our draft picks wouldn’t make it to their second deals, at least not with this team. But haters be damned, this team has a young nucleus of talent on offense, and an incomplete one on defense. But when was the last time the Redskins had four legit WR’s on offense under 30 years old? I can’t remember.
Look, none of this matters if you don’t win. All this talk about dysfunction, firings, back stabbings, under-the-bus throwing is all talk for losing teams. This is not a losing team. We’ve seen losing teams. The Redskins made a mess of the Scot McCloughan firing, and it’ll take more than a couple of winning seasons and a division title for fans to ignore these continued missteps, but I would assert that this team is so much closer to becoming a winning team on the field than it had been in past years under owner Dan Snyder, yet so far from becoming a respectable organization off the field. But take care of the former, and the latter will follow.