The Drought Is Almost Over: Get Ready To Win An Off-Season Championship

March 13, 2019

by Eric Hill

Winter is almost over. In a few short weeks, the early morning air will be heavy with humidity and filled with a cacophony of birds, frogs and insects looking for love.  But right now, even though Christmas was two and a half months ago, the nights are still silent. If you walk outside in the chilly early morning air, all you’ll hear is the rustling of the leaves you never raked, perhaps a distant train whistle, your drunken neighbor peeing on your trash cans again and, if you listen really closely, you’ll hear the faint whine of the jet turbines from a Bombardier Global XRS.  You may not recognize it right away—it’s been about ten years since you last heard it—but once it clicks in your mind you’ll remember the unmistakable sound of Redskins One warming up. The Redskins team jet is in its final preparations for the start of NFL Free Agency today, March 13, as the team is poised to retake its crown as off-season champions.

That’s right.  The Redskins are back baby!  The New England Patriots can have their Super Bowls.  The Eagles, Giants and Cowboys can keep squabbling over who’s the best NFC East team when the games start. The New York Jets can tool around with their $90 million cap space like the amateurs that they are.  But they will all know by the end of March who their daddy is when it comes to frivolous spending.

Some would say that Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has learned from his past mistakes.  Gone are the days of Bruce Smith and Deion Sanders.  We’ll never see another iteration of the infamous JetSkins. A draft pick for T.J. Duckett?  Nonsense. Albert Haynesworth might as well have welded Snyder’s wallet shut with a blowtorch while he lay face down on the Fedex Field turf like he was filming a Febreze commercial as the Eagles scored a touchdown.

Former VP of Player Personnel Vinny Cerrato is long gone and with him went the fantasy football approach to team building. For all his faults, team president Bruce Allen has been effective at reigning in Snyder’s policy of fixing problems by hemorrhaging money and the team has become—gasp!— kind of boring during the first wave of free agency in recent years.

Oh, but that was all just a ruse.  Snyder just faded in to the background until the time was right.  And with FedEx Field alternating between being overrun with opposing team’s fans and looking like the team is running a “Free Ade Jimoh bobble head if you come dressed as an empty seat” promotion every week, that time is now.  Dan Snyder is desperate for the Redskins to be relevant again and he is about to open that wallet and release his money like the Kraken.

Admittedly, things have gotten off to a slow start with the trade for Case Keenum.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a horrible move, getting Keenum from Denver for swapping 2020 late round draft picks, but there’s no sizzle there. Snyder is a Ferrari guy and Keenum is a tan Buick.

Still, there is hope for an offseason extravaganza. The talk of trading draft picks for Josh Rosen quieted briefly after the Keenum trade but hasn’t completely been squelched. After all, Keenum and Colt McCoy are only under contract for the 2019 season. The Redskins got their first big deal done with free agent safety Landon Collins. We heard whispers that Baltimore linebacker and Alabama alum CJ Mosley wanted to move a half hour down I95 to join the Washington Crimson Tide defense before heading elsewhere.  The team needs a quarterback and Rosen is a young and talented one.  Collins addresses a need while weakening a division rival and Mosley would’ve added speed and aggression to a linebacking unit that lacked both last season.

The Redskins were reportedly one of the teams that contacted the Pittsburgh Steelers about trading for wide receiver Antonio Brown before the Raiders mercifully took him on. Now that’s the Dan Snyder I know.  Why worry about re-signing your own 25-year-old slot receiver, Jamison Crowder, when you can trade for a 30-year-old diva receiver who talked his way out of his last job? Because Dan Snyder, that’s why.

At safety, Collins is a talented player in his prime, but Dan Snyder needs to put butts in seats and only big names do that, so look for Collins to be paired with someone like Earl Thomas. Now we’re cooking with Crisco.

Dan Snyder knows you can’t have a spending spree without adding an aging pass rusher.  Brandon Graham, welcome to DC! Wait, he’s not old enough at 31? Well then, Terrell Suggs, come on down!  Oops, too late on that one.

The Rosen trade may also require throwing in up-and-coming defensive end Matt Ioannidis, so he will need to be replaced. Who better to replace him than 32-year-old unstable superstar Ndamukong Suh? Make it happen, Dan.

If you’re saying that the team can’t afford to do this and even if it could, it would be financially irresponsible at best and mind-numbingly idiotic at worst, you A) are correct and B) don’t know Dan Snyder. Look, I doubt he will make these moves but the point is that if he wants it to happen, he will make it happen. I believe he wants to make a splash this year and the team will make some waves in the coming weeks.

Will being the talk of the NFL in the free agency season help win games? Of course not.  Nothing works out right for this team, you know that.  But the Redskins are no better than mediocre every year anyway so Snyder might as well try to win something.  Free agency counts as something. Let’s worry about an aging, expensive, powder keg of a roster in September. For now, let’s sit back and smile while we hang another off-season championship banner from the rafters of FedEx Field.

Yep, the Redskins are ready to win the Spring again. Maybe it will take the sting out of losing in the Fall.