Curly R: The Year In Exile

Outside looking in

*Sigh* I've been downgraded.

At first I thought it was just one level, from superfan to fan.

Later though I realized I have no idea what is happening with the 2011 Redskins and who plays for them. Barry Cofield is the last addition I remember.

Tim Hightower? You mean the guy from Arizona with the fumbling problem? Donte Stallworth? Isn't he the guy that ran a guy over in Florida?

Nope, don't know any of them, not the draft picks, not the post lockout pickups. That is when I realized my downgrade was a two level demotion, from superfan through fan straight to casual fan. There is only one level left below me now, observer, before sweet football oblivion.

And I do not even care. I was already mad at the team for botching the post Joe Gibbs transition, sandbagging Gregg Williams from the job by trumping up some bullshit story about betraying coach Gibbs over the Missing Man Formation after Sean Taylor's death, note carefully here that Gregg Williams IS NOT the guy I thought should have the job.

Dan Snyder then promptly turned the team over to the one guy everyone knew could not manage his way out of a paper bag, shadow general manager Vinny Cerrato, they wait around for a top shelf candidate that was never coming and promote Jim Zorn, the coordinator they had stupidly hired before a head coach, as the candidate of last resort.

The team then spent two years eating itself as Vinny tried the old dodge where he was responsible for hiring coach Zorn but not for his results, those two stopped speaking, then Dan soured and fired Vinny then fired Zorn on the plane ride home from the last game.

In come these two football professionals, general manager Bruce Allen and head coach Mike Shanahan, both of whom have great football pedigrees, their first move? To trade two picks to a Division rival for a perennial Pro Bowl quarterback they can count on for a couple of seasons until they get the offense where they want it.

But they don't do that. Instead they nitpick Donovan McNabb's footwork and practice ethic after the guy had only been to six Pro Bowls, won five Division titles, been to five Conference Championships and one Super Bowl, while not giving him any new targets to throw at and utterly failing to plan at the tailback position.

And in so doing squander an opportunity to install and stabilize a new offense and develop young players by focusing like a laser beam on how this guy that has been successful his whole career is just not perfect for us. Wah fucking wah.

Donovan had to be sacrificed because the Shanahans can do no wrong, that is axiomatic.

Meanwhile over on the other side of the ball Jim Haslett was busy destroying a perennial top ten defense, one with experienced players and a history of savvy coaches that could flex with talent, forcing the switch from an historical 4-3 to the more trendy 3-4. Players were moved into new positions and out of places where they had performed well for years.

And in so doing squander an opportunity to maintain some continuity in what is historically the best part of the team while a new offense can be installed and stabilized.

Too many variables in play, too many plates in the air.

And so the result of that 2010 season was an unmitigated disaster, one in which those two picks for Donovan were squandered to the Eagles, Donovan was benched and dragged under the bus, those Eagles, Donovan's former team, went for 59 on Monday Night Football, the night the team announced Donovan's quote contract extension unquote. Three games later Donovan was benched for the rest of the year.

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That's just the stuff in the game. Off the field the team was busy pushing fans away as well.

The owner is suing newspapers. All these years and the guy cannot just sit back and let the football do the talking.

They ripped out ten thousand seats from Redskins Stadium, the somewhat absurd plan announced at the time was to create standing room only party decks, yet now that the seats have been ripped out along with supporting sections of upper deck concrete, and construction on no decks has begun, it seems transparently obvious to me that the team has no intention of building decks, that removing seats was all about reducing capacity because people are not renewing tickets and no one is there to buy them in replacement. As anyone that has read this blog or listened to me over the past decade will tell you, the million mile long season ticket waiting list simply does not exist.

Sure ticket prices did not go up, thank you Mr. Snyder sir, a beer bought at your seat is now nine bucks.

And I did not even mention Albert Haynesworth. Until just now.

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The season then ended and the lockout began, two greedy camps, owners and players, arguing nakedly right in front of you over who should have more of your money, in all the negotiations, the recriminations and pontifications, which party was not at the negotiating table for those six months? You. And then the lockout, after a summer of grim warnings of ZOMG NO FOTOBALL IN 2011!!!1!! just COINCIDENTALLY happens to end right as training camps were to open, the only game that was lost to the whole drama? Yep, the Hall of Fame Game, the one played in a neutral stadium where no one gets guaranteed ticket revenues.

So now, after the players did not work out all summer while coaches could still meet and overthink their gameplans, after a hurried free agent period of extreme player movement, do you really think we are set to see quality football in the NFL before Thanksgiving?

Going to be a sloppy season.

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And so I went poof and that was it, I have not had the energy to put pen to paper for this blog since February 2011, and that was for a 2008 story. In the offseason I found other things to occupy my time:

I coached my sons' lacrosse team, the under-nine Fort Hunt Purple Pelicans, we went 2-5-1 with nine rookies on a thirteen man roster, we peaked at the end of the season and I expect we will improve heading into the 2012 season.

I also watched a crapload of college lacrosse including my alma mater the University of Virginia winning their fifth national championship.

I bought a decent bicycle and recommitted to bike commuting, my ride is twelve miles each way each day, I logged 1242 miles on the road from the start of the lockout to the end. My wife also bought a road bike and now we go on vacations based on where and how far we can ride. I have not lost any weight but all my dimensions have changed and I look a hell of a lot better.

I also spent another crapload of time watching Grand Tour bicycle racing, the Tour de France and currently the Vuelta a Espana, I missed the Giro d'Italia because it was during lacrosse season.

I bought a bunch of bicycle tools and taught myself bicycle maintenance, many summer nights I would have spent writing about football, instead I spent in the shed with Tony Almeida refurbing old bikes, I have tuned up all five operating bikes we own, rebuilt two others from the hubs up and have three in queue for complete refurb. Just last night I FINALLY finished my first bartape job. Ever try wrapping bartape on a drop handlebar? To do it right is a fucking bitch.

Now I am working on a public policy slash advocacy project to increase bicycling's profile in the nation's capital. Maybe someday I can ride my bike to a Redskins game.

So yeah, while football was forgetting about me, I was forgetting about it.

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And then when it came back, I was not one of those guys in a forgiving mood. All the league apparatus cared and care about was getting back to status quo AND FAST! Do you read the papers or listen to sports talk radio or even the league owned Sirius NFL Radio? Do you ever hear about the lockout and what it meant and means to football this season? Of course not, it is not in anyone's interest to dwell, have you seen the NFL commercial that's all like, It's Back to Football?

So that brings us to the 2011 Redskins season, I did not follow the post lockout frenzy of signings or training camp, I watched some of the Colts preseason game and also one other one that was on in the background at a party, I think they won that one too, I missed final cuts and read with a yawn that Rex Grossman was the guy over John Beck, the shrieking ExtremeSkins fanboys will be calling for Becks within four games. I may even be at a preschool open house when the Redskins kick off against the Giants on Sunday afternoon.

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So here is where I say thank you for all the emails, comments and text messages wondering where Curly R has been all offseason, to everyone reading this, I am not signing off. Curly R is not gone, it is, has been and forever will be, my creation and my outlet, all I ever wanted out of Curly R was to be a part of the discussion, to help make the Redskins a better football team. Over the past five years I have learned a lot about football and I am grateful for every pageview, every comment and every email.

Five years and I do not think the team really wants to get better. Maybe they do and this Bruce Allen slash Mike Shanahan regime will hit an upswing, it will not happen this year, I am looking at a 5-11 to 8-8 record AT BEST this season, another season with temporary players in key positions.

Curly R is not gone, it just has nothing to say right now, superfans have blogs, casual fans do not. As any Redskins fan over the past two decades can tell you, winning is not the only thing that draws fans to a team, what draws fans to a team is the feeling that their emotional investment is rewarded with smart football people making good decisions for both the short term and long term health and success of the team. We all know Dan Snyder does not own the team, we do, Dan is just the steward.

When the Redskins and football win me back, you will see Curly R back to daily posting. Do you hear that guys?

Win me back.



Photo by me.

Why Does this Keep Happening?

Is he stupid? Or just mean.

Every so often in Washington we hear about how the Redskins and owner Dan Snyder are lashing out at the media, or creating their own internet to give unfiltered or grinding axes by firing people or lamenting media coverage of the team by people that just don't know shit. Hell, even I have gotten email from the team challenging my coverage.

There is another spasm, and it is a good one and happening right now.

Background: Back in November 2010, just two and a half months ago, The Washington City Paper's excellent Dave McKenna, something of a bete noire to Dan Snyder, see here, here, here, here, here and here if you still are not sure, published an enterprise piece called The Cranky Redskins Fan's Guide to Dan Snyder, complete with an embellished photo of the owner with a unibrow, drooping mustache, pointed goatse and best of all, devil horns.

It is long and mad and beautiful, go and read it (op. cit.) right now before you go any further.


Present Day: Dan Snyder's legal apparatus, featuring the onmipresent David Donovan and newcomer Hollywood attorney Patty Glaser, have threatened legal action against the City Paper and or its ownership hierarchy, it did not go unnoticed by me or Huffington Post's / DCist's Jason Linkins that the lawyer letters did not go to the writer, nor to the editor, nor to the publisher of the City Paper, nor to the holding company that owns the paper, but in fact went to the hedge fund that owns the company that owns the paper.

Not only is Dan Snyder threatening legal action, he wants the City Paper to fire the piece's author, Dave McKenna (op. cit.), though I cannot find that reference in the legal letters being exchanged amongst the parties (links below).

Today Amy Austin, Publisher of The Washington City Paper, posted an open letter to readers summarizing the story, the paper is standing by the reporting and does not properly acknowledge Dan Snyder's arguments because, frankly, the paper has not formally heard of them, what with the legalese being directed at organizations above the paper that have no direct involvement in the production or vetting of the paper's content. As of this moment, Dan Snyder nor his representatives have accepted the paper's invitation to write a response or meet with editors.


What It All Means: Let me give you the tl;dr up front here for a change: DO NOT PICK A FIGHT WITH THE GUY THAT OWNS THE INK BARREL.

I really do not understand what the possible benefit could be from this action by the team. Why spend so much time and energy to squash one ant, or one anthill? Surely Dan Snyder understands it is not Dave McKenna per se, it is the suckitude. As long as the Redskins keep looking incompetent year after year all those Dan Snyder missteps and fuckups cannot get into the rearview and we can never really joke about those bad old days, a notion Dave himself motivates more eloquently in the introduction to his November piece (op. cit.)

And reading through the first of the three legal exchanges posted in their entirety on Amy's post today (op. cit.) reveals a very interesting tidbit: Dan Snyder is essentially accusing Atalaya Capital Management, the hedge fund that owns the holding company that owns the City Paper, of manipulating coverage of the Redskins to harm Dan Snyder's Red Zone Capital Equity investment operation, which competes against Atalaya in restaurant and media operations.

Returning to the content of Dave McKenna's piece, it is pretty damning, most of it recognizable by me, some I had never heard of, like Dan Snyder leaving cartons of vanilla ice cream to melt in former defensive coordinator Mike Nolan's office to protest his schemes, and all of it backed by links.

Kevin Ewoldt at Hogs Haven, a Redskins insider since he landed top level interviews during the ticket fiasco of 2009, posts up the crux of the biscuit, that while Dan Snyder may pretend to be mad about contrived attacks on his cancer survivor wife and blatantly laughable charges of Antisemitism in the devil image of the owner, the main issue appears to be a reference to a legal settlement by Snyder Communications for large scale forgery of customer signatures, thousands of them, effectively switching the victim's telephone provider without his or her knowledge, the settlement was in the millions.

Kevin actually spoke to Redskins attack dog David Donovan, who pointed out that Dan Snyder had sold Snyder Communications more than a year before the settlement, leading Kevin to wonder if a rewording or fact check on that one line of the piece and all this might have been avoided.

There is some question and some wiggle room here, the Hogs Haven provided link to the legal settlement dates it in April 2001, and does not mention Dan Snyder by name, so every reference in this legal news brief to quote Snyder unquote is referring to Snyder Communications, not Dan Snyder, and this would include payments, they do not appear from the wording of the piece to be coming from Dan Snyder personally.

The other Hogs Haven provided link is to the sale of Snyder Communications to a French firm, dated February 2000, yep, fourteen months before the settlement. Of note in this piece is a reference to Dan Snyder's planned departure... after the transition to new ownership. That date is unknown by me.

Therefore it does leave some question as to Dan's involvement with the operation while the thousands of slamming offenses were taking place, it is established in law that leaving a concern does not absolve you of malfeasance undertaken prior to your departure, and the fourteen months between the sale of Snyder Communications and the legal settlement minus the transition time before Dan actually left, well he may have been there and still had an executive position when the bad stuff was happening. That would make him a party to the case.

If so, that would make David Donovan's statements to Kevin Ewoldt on the matter misleading at best and inaccurate at worst. The only way to know is to know exactly when the transgressions in the lawsuit occurred and when Dan Snyder left the company, something we likely will only find out if it goes to court.

Which it will not.

And The Washington City Paper will not fire Dave McKenna.

As expensive as the Dan Snyder legal machine want to position litigation to be, the courts do not look favorably upon free speech cases replete with factual evidence to the public figure subject's incompetence, simply because the subject got all butthurt when he read it.


Dan, stop attacking the media, stop trying to build your own media fortress, just run the frigging team and give us a winner on the field. All the attacking will stop if the team wins, just look at the trainwreck that was Jack Kent Cooke's family and no one gave a shit. Just give us a winner and it all goes away.



Dan Snyder: Getty Images from here.

History Will Not Be Kind to the Jim Zorn Years

We'll always have Z-Shades

The way things went down at the ragged end of 2009 you just knew the whole idea in owner Dan Snyder's mind was to wipe it away as fast as possible and move on and he did, in a big way. The problem for Dan Snyder though is that, like a bad breakup ex girlfriend in the same social circle, Jim Zorn popped right back up down the road in Baltimore, as a result Redskins fans, love or hate Jim Zorn, are not going to get the chance to move on any time soon.

First get into the Wayback machine for a one graf review of 2009:

A crappy team and managerial infighting bred fan unrest and the Burgundy Revolution, the team was actually removing fans and threatening cancellation of season tickets for articles of clothing and paper signs. Then with three games to go, all three turned out to be losses, shadow general manager Vinny Cerrato quote resigned unquote and in less than two hours was replaced by Bruce Allen, son of Redskins legend George Allen, as real actual general manager. Head coach Jim Zorn was marched all night from San Diego then dispatched at dawn, we had butterfiles for 24 hours as Mike Shanahan was spotted in town then BAM it was over, time to close the door on the Jim Zorn Era.

And that era is going to be remembered as the true bottom of the barrel, amateur hour in Ashburn, a two year slow burn of incompetence that left the team, its players, its fanbase and its history in blasted wreckage.

It all started in the muddled coaching search after Joe Gibbs left in January 2008, the team spent 32 days into February looking for a coach and making the team a league laughingstock, into this moment shadow general manager Vinny Cerrato was promoted to Executive Vice President of Football Operations.

Jim Zorn was hired as offensive coordinator largely on perennial candidate Jim Fassel's recommendation, though at the time I thought it looked more like the rubber stamp of a guy that would have done anything to get a head coaching job. After chasing off all the other respectable candidates and taking Steve Spagnuolo's advice not to consider lack of coordinator experience as a black mark on Jim Zorn's resume, Redskins management interviewed Zorn for the job and by all accounts Vinny Cerrato, who would be system-connected to Jim Zorn from Bill Walsh through Mike Holmgren, became a big Jim Zorn fan and the deal was done.

Well we all know how that worked out, 6-2 then 2-6 in 2008, by the start of the 2009 season Jim Zorn and Vinny Cerrato were not speaking, that whole second Jim Zorn year was a series of Inception-like bad dreams within bad dreams, while the season collapsed in extreme slow motion on the next level down the fans and the team were at war, and on the next level below that Dan Snyder was interviewing for every position on the team, including that of Vinny Cerrato, Dan's confidant and bulletproof guy for a decade.

Now it is all in the rear view and Redskins fans have reason to hope, even if just for hope's sake. So what are the big takeways of the Jim Zorn era? Many of them are obvious and do not require advanced degrees to discern: A players hire A players, B players hire C players; Management, coaching and players need to air differences indoors; As a rule do not interview an assistant for his boss's job; Leave the fans alone, they are the conscience of the team; Building and maintaining a roster really is hard; If you do not believe in a guy, let him go that moment, do not string anyone along.

I think I could go on and if you have a good one liner takeaway from the Jim Zorn debacle, drop it in comments.

In the aftermath, a year and a half after he was hired and seven months after he was fired I have a view on the whole thing: It could have worked.

It was not really Jim Zorn that was the problem, yes he was inexperienced and yes he was unable to motivate a veteran team with a lot of big contracts and not enough hungry youth.

The problem lay in the management atmosphere. A guy like Jim Zorn can succeed if he has defined boundaries and a strong support infrastructure, make a play yard for the guy and let him be him, make good roster and contract decisions, back up the guy in public and give him time to get it together.

Andy Reid and Jon Gruden, they had some success moving from analogous positions to head coach and they had the infrastructure to make it work. In the new generation of wunderkinds, every Josh McDaniels and Raheem Morris is not going to light it up out of the gate, I will bet the ones that do have the support of a real football organization around them. For two years the Redskins did not when they really needed it and it sank everyone.


Nota bene, Jim Zorn and Dan Snyder have not talked since coach Zorn was fired and he is not certain if they will talk Saturday. Remember kids, every year the Redskins do not play the Ravens in the regular season, they play in the preseason so we will be treated to this awkward fest annually for as long and Jim Zorn is in Baltimore which I hope is a long time.



Jason Campbell and Jim Zorn: Gregg Trott / Getty Images from here.

This Is So Crazy There Is No Way It Can Be True

Right?

This morning I got an anonymous comment on a thread from last week:

Redskin QB rumor in Philly. Schanahan [sic] wants his old QB Jay Cutler. Philly trades McNabb back to his old hometown in Chicago, Chicago sends Cutler to Redskins. Philly gets draft picks in 3 way deal.

I went on to the intertubes and was unable to find any substantiation, not even a recitation of the rumor. So I have no idea where that comes from.

Still, conceptually there are four reasons this is not a crazy idea:

1. We know the Redskins were interested in Jay Cutler in the 2009 offseason. Ultimately they could not pull it off. In the aftermath of that story there was at least one rumor that the Redskins had made it known to Jay Cutler, way back in April of 2009, that the team was looking at Mike Shanahan as its next coach. Were Mike Shanahan and Jay Cutler just taking a year off from each other?


2. Mike Shanahan would be happy to reunite with Jay Cutler. As the 2009 season wound down and coach Shanahan's name entered the coaching sweepstakes around the league, the Chicago Bears surfaced as potentially a good fit, principally because of coach Shanahan's quote comfort level unquote with Jay.


3. Chicago did not warm up to Jay Cutler. In his first season with the Bears, after turning the league on its ear with demands to be traded away from Denver and new coach Josh McDaniels, Jay set a career high for interceptions. The team and the fans are clearly frustrated and it would not surprise me if Jerry Angelo and the Bears front office was spitballing ways to get one of those first round picks back, or get another proven quarterback with some tread left.


4. Donovan McNabb is the subject of many trade rumors around the league. Despite Eagles coach Andy Reid's assertion that Donovan is his starter for 2010, there is a head of steam among the Eagles faithful that it is time to part ways with Donovan while he still has some trade value. Personally I think that is crazy, the guy has done everything in the world for that franchise and they should be announcing publicly that Dono will be there until he decides to leave football. Nonetheless, coach Reid waffled on his options for 2010 and the fanbase wants him gone. Donovan McNabb is originally from Chicago.


So in this trade scenario the Bears get Donovan McNabb, the Redskins get Jay Cutler and the Eagles get what they always want, more draft picks.

Notwithstanding my serious manlove for Jason Campbell, Jay Cutler would be a good fit with Mike Shanahan in Washington for all the reverse reasons Jim Zorn would not be a good fit with Jay in Chicago.

Stay tuned.



Jay Cutler: Uncredited image from here.

Being and Becoming the Team Fans Want

Bet his first film study was this press conference

Mike Shanahan has begun his tenure as head coach of the Washington Redskins. It is true, that is a true fact. And that guy seated next to him at Wendesday's introductory press conference was not team owner Dan Snyder, it was new actual general manager Bruce Allen. The Redskins have a real actual general manager, also a true fact, that actually happened.

You are not dreaming. Rub your eyes, it is all still there.

Will it work out? Impossible to tell and for Curly R this is not the time to deconstruct the reasons why not.

The owner is mad with power, that much we know, the last time he did this step aside gig head coach and president of football operations Marty Schottenheimer fired Dan's toadie shadow general manager Vinny Cerrato within days of taking the job and as the 2001 season waned and with the team on an 8-3 tear after an 0-5 start when Dan asked Marty if he was ready to cede some of his contractual authority back to the owner and Marty said GTFO it was worth nearly eight million dollars to Dan to shitcan Marty and take it back.

So no, it may not work out, we will get hints all along the way, how coach Shanahan's staff is formed, how current players and coaches are dealt with, if coach Shanahan's operations muck with tradition or history, how the team handles free agency and the draft, offseason workouts, by training camp in July observers will have a legitimate body of evidence to start making informed judgments on early returns.

On the surface though you have to look at this as clear progress: a real actual general manager and a real actual coach with real actual Super Bowl experience, neither of which have real actual reasons to kiss Dan Snyder's ass and both of which have real actual reasons for wanting to succeed and show the world they can succeed.

I have been a Redskins fan long enough to know that Dan Snyder does not care much about anyone outside his bubble or what they have to say so the notion that any of what has happened over the past two years has been fan driven or the result of pressure by the media or football tastemakers still seems far fetched to me, there is a paper trail forming:

Jim Fassel gets one hair from being named head coach of the Redskins during the search without end in January and February 2008. When word leaks out that Jim Fassel was the quote mystery candidate unquote there is a fan uprising that is so severe the Washington Post reports on it in the Sports section. After Jim did not get the job he blamed bloggers, message board posters and sports talk radio callers for influencing Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato. Dan Dan the Sports Bog Man singles out four bloggers for behavior detrimental to Jim Fassel's candidacy.

Then all through the fall and collapse of 2009, the fights with fans over signs, the stripping down of the head coach, the failure, the lack of talent, spark and execution, a common thread formed outside the Ashburn bubble: Dan Snyder needed to get out of the way and turn the business over to professionals, like a small businessman with too much success too fast and not enough skill or confidence to delegate, Dan was stuck trying to shove too much through a small pipe and was making bad decisions. Enter professional management and a gentle invitation for the owner to go spend some time on his private island.

Dan's kneejerk reaction to go from trying to hold the status quo in the face of a customer revolt to becoming a humble man of deference in itself is suspect. After firing Norval Turner at 7-6 and still in the playoff hunt pissed off Redskins fans, his kneejerk reaction then was to throw it all at Marty Schottenheimer, then when the team was 0-2 then 0-3 then 0-4 then 0-5 Dan, who was then still engaging the media and the public, made his message basically, don't look at me guys, you wanted me to find a football guy and put him in charge, none of this is my fault.

And because he did not give Marty even two years of his three year plan in his mind Dan gets to rescue the team from a problem he does not realize he has created.

The same thing could happen this time, it would cost him a lot more money and this time he is not playing with Monopoly money, Redskins fans are seriously ready to drop their tickets, something they were not ready to do in 2001.

We can quibble and oh believe you me I intend to address the disastrous end of the Jim Zorn era next week, we can quibble over how we go to this moment, the journey to becoming a good NFL owner starts with hiring a general manager to oversee operations and a head coach who has the vision and capacity to shape the team on his own. There will be other hires designed to bolster this new power structure and we will analyze them all. Maybe Dan Snyder will let them work.


Today, I am happy with my team's owner.



Mike Shanahan: AP Photo from here.

The Redskins Got Their Football Guy

Student of the game

It is official, the Redskins have hired Mike Shanahan to be the 28th coach in team history, completing a leap from a failed experiment with an inexperienced head coach and an ineffective football management team to a franchise with an actual general manager and coach with deep experience in football operations.

Dan Snyder armed coach Shanahan with a five year deal worth approximately seven million dollars a year and handed over near total control of the day to day football operation. Expect everything from the signage to equipment checkout processes to practice habits to dress code to walkthroughs to gameday routine to reflect coach Shanahan's vision of a football team.

The management plan as I understand it will feature coach Shanahan working closely with actual general manager Bruce Allen on high level strategic football matters, player selection, draft prep and selections, roster moves and trades, while Bruce handles contract negotiations and manages the salary cap.

Coach Shanahan is expected to have the final word.

This is not peepee caca news for the Redskins. The implications of this football management structure are huge for the Redskins and their fans. If this is all true then it means Dan Snyder, after more than a decade, has realized he should not be in those meetings, should not be viewing that scouting tape or driving those draft picks. He has realized he needs to step back, put it all in the hands of professional football people, sign the checks and let them work.

Will it work? Who knows, we all thought Dan had had this same revelation before the Marty Schottenheimer hire, from the beginning it went off the rails with veteran players such as Bruce Smith complaining in the media about coach Schottenheimer's tactics, Dan let the coach be undermined, never sold out to Marty, never let it be known that it was Bruce Smith's tough shit, if he did not like it he should retire.

Marty, for his part never batted an eye, armed with a solid contract he went about the business of transforming the team, jettisoning the bloated contracts and unneeded player, steady in the belief that he was right and in charge.

And then Dan fired him because he panicked, he got mad that someone else was playing with his toy. And for what? Fucking Steve Spurrier.

This could all happen again, Dan could get cold feet when the 2010 Redskins are 6-10 or 8-8, fire everyone and bring back Vinny Cerrato, give himself a parade and give the finger to Redskins history.

It may take longer than that and still fail. Bruce Allen and Mike Shanahan may not be able to work together, they may conspire to sign a bunch of ineffective old Bronco players and pick the next Heat Shuler in the draft. The job of coaching the team and running the show may be more than a 24 hour a day job, hell Jim Zorn could not even coach the roster given him and call plays at the same time!

Redskins fans though will tolerate a lot of failure from this regime before they give up, Bruce Allen and Mike Shanahan are name brand guys putting their reputations on the line, tthey are not lining up to be anyone's pet the way I think poor Joe Gibbs did in his second go round.

No matter how you look at it, no matter what prospects you think this management team has for failure or success, the moves to hire an actual general manager and bring two time Super Bowl champion Mike Shanahan to the Redskins represent bona fide change to the status quo in Ashburn.


Now the fun begins.



Mike Shanahan: Rob Schwane / AP photo from here via here.

Mike Shanahan Is In Charge of the Redskins

Oh yes there will be yelling

It is official, or rather not official official, it is leaked official, the Washington Post is reporting that the Redskins have signed former Broncos coach Mike Shanahan as head coach and head of football operations, coach Shanahan may have near complete control over football operations. Details will start to pour out in the morning and we will learn more, my expectation is that Bruce Allen is in charge of putting together the lists and negotiating the deals, coach Shanahan will have final say on all football decisions.

Needles to say Redskins fans, THIS IS A VERY GOOD THING. Mike Shanahan is experienced, with sixteen years as an NFL head coach, including his own private Zorning in Los Angeles with the Raiders and Al Davis.

Mike Shanahan will likely assert himself down to the most minute details of the franchise as he crafts this team in his image, coach Shanahan and Dan Snyder have a double dare going here, the owner daring the luminary to take on the reclamation project that is the Redskins and the coach daring the meddler to keep hands off. If it works the Redskins can once again be a team Redskins fans can be proud of.

As Dan Snyder is wont to do he has thrown us from the fire back into the frying pan, from a flyer on a guy that was never a head coach to a likely future Hall of Famer. Be sure you save a dessert pocket for the obligatory naysayers and doubting thomases that question Bruce Allen's personnel skills or whether Mike Shanahan can really run it all and coach on Sundays and whether he was really successful in Denver because if so why was he fired? It didn't work with Holmgren, Dan Snyder will never step back, the culture is rotten from the inside, these players will never get up for him, etc etc yada yada and so on and so forth.

Of course all of that may turn out to be true and Mike Shanahan and Bruce Allen may not be able to turn this team around. I have already been challenged by the guys at Hogs Haven to predict the number of NFC Beast division titles and playoff appearances in these coming five seasons, it may all flame out just as it did with Marty Schottenheimer.

Redskins fans know losses can still equal progress. Show me you have a plan to move forward and we will tolerate the building process, the growing pains and the oopses. Just make sure you beat the fucking Cowboys.


It worked kids, the fans freaked out in 2009 and demanded change, and Dan Snyder has delivered. Tip your glass back and let us drink to coach Shanahan.



Mike Shanahan: AP Photo from here.

Report: Redskins and Mike Shanahan Have an Agreement In Principle

Coming to town

Queue it up kids, the Denver Post is reporting that Mike Shanahan and the Redskins have an agreement in principle making Mike the seventh Redskins head coach in the Dan Snyder era, hat tip to Jason Reid for the news.

The rumored contract particulars are five years in the neighborhood of seven million dollars a year and I would have to assume a high degree of control over player personnel.

Dan Snyder is about to do it to us again.



Mike Shanahan, Super Bowl winning coach: Uncredited image from here via here.

Can't Wait Around to Start Talking Offseason

Time is a wasting

The Washington Post's Jason Reid reports that Mike Shanahan's agent has been summoned from whatever wretched hive of scum and villainy agents dwell in to get down to brass tacks on a contract for Mike, it is still perplexing that it is taking this long, I mean seriously, the team negotiated a one hundred million dollar contract with defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth in five hours so what is the hold up?

Methinks Mike has Redskins owner Dan Snyder over a big old barrel and is larding up the deal with every possible privilege and perk he can come up with, and the coach shall have final say on all personnel moves and the general manager shall defer to the coach on all matters of assistant coaches and the owner shall shower the coach with rose petals on Mondays...

In the meantime I can no longer wait to start discussing what happens to this team in the offseason, I am still a bit confused about exactly what no salary cap will mean, who will become disposable and how hard it will be to acquire free agent talent and at what cost, I am sure the focus will turn to this topic in short order once the team's coaching vacancy is filled.

So the quick takes on some of today's news should be taken with the big old grain of salt that these are my opinions in a vacuum and without regard to salaries, draft picks or complications in free agency. Ok, ahem.

Reacting to John Keim's piece at Redskins Confidential:

On drafting versus free agency: OF COARSE YOU CAN'T BUILD A TEM THROUTH FREE AGENCT ALONBE!!!1! Bruce Allen better know that, draft picks are more valuable than ever in a world where decent free agents cost real draft picks, so the Redskins are now in a position to try and hoard picks which could be difficult since the Redskins have only five picks out of a possible seven, plus any supplemental picks awarded, hey thanks again Vinny for that Jason Taylor deal last year.

So in a world where free agency costs draft picks, the Redskins need to be sellers, not buyers. No one is going to give up first and third round picks for Jason Campbell and as much as I like Jason if Mike Shanahan has his eyes on a young guy then get a second or third for Jason and move on. If you can get a ham sandwich for Carlos Rogers, do it. Anyone else that is tradeworthy, listen when other teams call.


On Chris Cooley versus Fred Davis: If it is true that Mike Shanahan likes one tight end that can catch and one that can block that would make him... exactly like every other coach. I never figured out why the team drafted a guy projected to have an upside no bigger than Chris Cooley's with a second round pick, nothing about Jim Zorn's style screamed two tight end sets, and they had one and a half seasons to implement the Unicorn set with both Fred and Chris in there and never did it.

See free agency versus draft directly above, Chris Cooley is probably the most tradeworthy player on the roster right now, young, mid contract and productive. Fred Davis is inferior at this point to Chris, I counted at least four major mistakes on his part in the season finale against the Chargers, and yet he managed to achieve almost exactly Chris' output.

The verdict is simple: Trade Chris Cooley, especially if you can get a team to part with a first round pick. Fred Davis is good enough that having him and not playing him next season is counterproductive.


On Bruce Allen is a good listener: I bet he never forgets your birthday either does he?


On Mike Shanahan is a control freak: I wish I could be there the first time he politely tells the owner to get the fuck off his practice field.


On the players addressing grievances above Jim Zorn's head: Yes it is true that Jim Zorn was a player's coach and more of a friend than a father figure, you cannot fault him for that. I lay that dog at the feet of Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato for creating a culture where the parade of spoiled brat players like Clinton Portis and LaVar Arrington before him can ingratiate themselves with the owner at the expense of the coach.

Given the egos on star football player I cannot really fault these players for flowing like water through the path of least resistance to the most powerful person in the building that will blow sunshine up their skirts and as such this is really Dan Snyder's problem. He needs to learn the discipline to keep a professional distance from the players and not show favoritism, like a teacher banging his students, temptation and opportunity are there, it seems harmless at the time, and nothing good can come from it.


On coach Zorn losing the players as far back as September: Blame that on Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato for creating a locker room culture that ensured Jim Zorn was neutered from the moment the 2008 season ended. Really though that is almost beside the point, look at how fast the fans sussed out the 2009 Redskins, there were four thousand no shows on a sunny late summer football day for the Redskins first home game against the Rams, the Redskins were only 0-1 after losing to a team they had not beaten since 2007 and the fans booed the team off the field after a win.

Like dogs the Redskins fans could smell that cancer in that team the moment we met them.


On Clinton Portis and Albert Haynesworth not having a lot of friends in the locker room: Clinton did it to himself and Albert has at least a season to get back in good graces. Another season of dogging it in the first quarter and worrying publicly about his legacy while on the inactive list in a late season game and Redskins fans will be done with him as well. Fifty percent chance that if Clinton Portis is gone this offseason that Albert Haynesworth inherits the mantle of player Redskins fans hate because we think He Doesn't Get It.


On Danny Smith being endangered: Danny Smith this, Danny Smith that, the Redskins special teams were not spectacular this season, punt returns were awful, the star punter came in and got hurt, there was never a solid plan at kick returner and cutting your kicker in midseason does not accrue well to the special teams coach no matter how you slice it. Toss them all out and start over with new coaches in burgundy and gold.


On Carlos Rogers coming back next season: Only if it is that or a stick in the eye. Carlos has not had a consistently good season since his rookie year and a cartoonish superhero weakness like being a cover corner that cannot catch the ball makes him expendable at best, tender offer at worst.


On Joe Bugel retiring: Buges will always have a special place in my heart, unfortunately though he has lost his objectivity. Vinny Cerrato and Dan Snyder did not give him quality talent, to be sure, but he was so far set in his ways he was unable all season to separate a guy that can get coached up from a guy that is just not starter quality. As the team cycled through all the backups coach Bugel had unfailing praise for all of them and they all sucked. That tells me Buges cannot tell the difference anymore.


On players criticizing Jim Zorn with no repercussions: See Jim Zorn losing players above, coach Zorn may have had the failing of being a player's coach reluctant to attack grown men with jobs to do, the blame really falls on ownership for not selling out to the coach. If they hated Jim Zorn so much then why the hell didn't they fire him and have done with it? The long trudge with the awkward silences and belated and half assed votes of confidence was not good for the players, the coaches, the fans or the organization itself. Man how awful would it be to have Dan Snyder as a boss?


On players being on time for meetings and being all together: Albert Haynesworth was a big dumbass to show up late to practice on Christmas Day, I wish I could have seen the look on Albert's face when he realized after laughing at coach's first dismissal, dressing in for practice, taking the field, getting harrassed by coach again, then realizing, wait, he IS ACTUALLY GOING TO SEND ME HOME. Twelve games his first year with the Redskins, Albert missed one quarter of the team's games.


Reacting to Rick Maese's piece on Clinton Portis and the star treatment on Redskins Insider:

STFU Clinton. You believe you are above the team, that you deserve special treatment. You have cultivated a relationship with the owner not because you really want to be friends with him but because it maximizes your income while minimizing your workday. You can build yourself up at the expense of the team, you are the player version of Vinny Cerrato.

When you were tearing it up, no one cared, that is a rule in football. When you dislocated your shoulder in the 2006 preseason, you complained about Joe Gibbs playing you, said you were making a perfect form tackle at one hundred percent effort and if coach did not want you to get injured then he should not play you in preseason.

And what the fuck with attacking Jason Campbell? Clinton thinks that because Jason Campbell keeps it medium, never flies into a petulant Jay Cutler rage over route running or blocking that he is not a leader, that his unchanging demeanor is evidence he is incapable of leadership, that he has trouble getting the plays in and controlling the huddle, called Jason a poor captain.

I got news for Redskins fans, Jason Campbell was the best thing the Redskins had in 2009.

Clinton Portis is an example of why this Redskins team did not work out, no discipline, no class, no sense of commitment to anything but a paycheck.

He needs to be gone from this team.

Update 8:35pm: Jason Campbell has returned fire, shorter Jason: Clinton UR an idiot.

Bruce Allen: Getty Images from here.

GET ON WITH IT ALREADY

What is the hold up? We need to get moving!

Come on guys, Mike Shanahan has been in town since last night, he was courted at Redskins owner Dan Snyder's riverside manse with the conveniently unobstructed view of the Potomac River, there was even a report that Dan and Mike were heading out to a Reston restaurant, I have a feeling they were not headed to Champp's for a beer and a bowl game.

Move it people, the offseason is here and we need to get things done, lists have to be made, all the god is great stuff needs to come out of the head coach's office and those disloyal assistant coaches are not going to fire themselves!

The tailor is already scheduled to take Mike's measurements for his next awesome leather coach's jacket, I think I may have to get me one of them, and think of all that money the team will save on heating costs keeping the temperature in the 30s year round so Mike's icy heart does not melt, you don't think living in Colorado was an accident do you? Mike does not wake up on the couch in his office as much as he reanimates.

Seriously guys, if there is anything I can do help close this deal today, let me know.



Mike Shanahan: Uncredited image from here.

No Late Word on Shanahan But We Can Confirm He Is In Town

Maybe he's just here to visit Udvar-Hazy

The first time I read Dan Hellie's tweet today that Mike Shanahan was in town and spotted getting into Redskins owner Dan Snyder's Maybach I thought it was a joke, hyperbole at worst, as I troll teh internets looking for late night leaks that the deal is done, I came across this video, it appears to depict actual Mike Shanahan at an airport getting into an actual Maybach.

Let me tell Redskins fans that this is a done deal, Dan Snyder does not bring Mike Shanahan into town and be seen and risk the FAIL if the signature is not already on the paper.

Everyone get your welcome coach Shanahan posts, comments and tweets ready, we will need them tomorrow.



Embedded NBC video sourced from DC Sports Bog here.

Reports: Mike Shanahan Is In Washington

If this is the way it is going to be then let's get on with it

Throughout the day reports placed owner Dan Snyder's Redskins One jet in Colorado then back in Washington, multiple sources have reported that Mike Shanahan was on that plane and is now in town.

Tim Brant at ABC 7 reported that as we speak Dan and Mike are at Dan's palatial estate, the one with the unobstructed view of the Potomac River and that later they may make an appearance at a quote Reston restaurant unquote. Tim Brant reported that there may be an announcement in the morning if they can get the contract done. I fully believe the deal is already done and everyone is just in making sure this what everyone still wants mode.

Jason Reid at the Washington Post reports that Mike could be introduced as coach Shanahan tomorrow, offensive line coach Joe Bugel is expected to retire as soon as tomorrow and this announcement may delay the official announcement of Mike Shanahan as the 28th head coach of the Washington Redskins.

Looks like this is going to happen people.



Mike Shanahan: Getty Images from here.

Goodbye Jim Zorn

No longer your Redskins head coach

As we welcomed Jim Zorn on the day he was hired two years ago, so do we bid farewell to Jim Zorn on the day he was dismissed.

Coach Zorn's tenure as head coach of the Redskins was 694 days and a wake up, or rather a stay up as he was dismissed in the wee hours after a sleepless flight from California and a late night in Ashburn.

In those nearly seventeen thousand hours as head coach, the Redskins amassed twelve wins in 32 tries, here is a quick break down:

	2008	2009	Overall
Final	8-8	4-12	12-20
Division	3-3	0-6	3-9
Vs. NFC	7-5	2-10	9-15
At Home	4-4	3-5	7-9
Away	4-4	1-7	5-11
Vs. AFC	1-3	2-2	3-5

The team just showed no real progress in coach Zorn's two seasons, though this is not entirely attributable to Jim Zorn. Team owner Dan Snyder and former shadow general manager Vinny Cerrato hobbled Jim Zorn with a roster inadequate to the team's needs and a contract preventing coach Zorn from coaching the way he saw fit when the team needed it the most.

Sadly even with an inept and maniacal management team torturing him relentlessly, it became more and more apparent every day as things fell apart that Jim Zorn was not up for the job of head coach for this team, this year.

Thank you coach Zorn, there were some good times, some bad times and some really bad times, please know that the experience was not wasted, your misery helped remove the blinders covering Dan Snyder's eyes, you were not the problem, you were the byproduct of the problem.

Curly R will pay proper tribute to the Jim Zorn years with the appropriate multi part series. I'm just glad I did not have pay out on that bet.



Jim Zorn in his final game as head coach: AP Photo from here.

How To Kill the Rooney Rule - Part Three

Down the primrose path

In his zeal to reset the Washington Redskins for a productive 2010, team owner Dan Snyder found creative ways to satisfy the Rooney Rule on minority opportunity, ways that effectively render the Rule moot. And it may cost a football coach his career. Curly R's three part series on the death of the Rooney Rule at the hands of Dan Snyder concludes.

Part One: The General Manager
Part Two: The Head Coach
Part Three: The Collateral Damage

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Redskins secondary coach Jerry Gray is certainly qualified to be a head coach, he has been in the NFL business for more than twenty years as player and coach and was the Buffalo Bills' defensive coordinator for five seasons from 2001 to 2005. The Lions requested and received permission to interview Jerry for their open head coach position in the 2008 offseason, Detroit ultimately went with former Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, who happens to be white.

We know Jerry wants to be a head coach, as far back as October of this year there was talk that Jerry could replace Jim Zorn if coach Zorn was fired summarily, Jerry did little to cover for his boss, essentially saying at the time yeah it would be a bummer for Jim Zorn if I got the job that way but getting a head job is what is all about so there you go. In November Jerry interviewed for the head coach position at the University of Memphis, he did not get the job.

Jerry's name first appears as a serious candidate to replace Jim Zorn on 18 December, and by 23 December we learned that Jerry had interviewed for the position, it may have happened as far back as October.

When questions arose as to whether Jerry had interviewed, he first denied, then awkwardly changed his denial to no comment. He has at various times denied to those around him that he has interviewed, but the FPA has said that he did. Jerry himself scheduled a press availability following the game fifteen loss to the Cowboys to address questions about his interview and his shifting story, then canceled it.

From the beginning I did not like the cavalier attitude Jerry had toward the possiblility that he was undermining his coach, and to be fair, defensive coordinator Greg Blache and his staff are holdovers from Joe Gibbs and it is very likely that side of the house sees Dan Snyder as the boss, not Jim Zorn.

Jerry has done little to take any kind of high road and may well pay a career price for his desire to be a head coach at any cost. He will not get the Redskins job, if I am, wrong and he does get the job I will issue a formal apology to Jerry and to the team. Jerry is small potatoes to Dan Snyder and the last time he went small was with Jim Zorn and he will not be making that mistake in this transition. If it is not Mike Shanahan it will be another name brand coach.

Besides, Redskins fans will not line up behind a coach that so shamelessly threw his old boss under the bus. Dan Snyder may have coerced Jerry to go along with some secret plan, may have even issued a threat, veiled or otherwise that if Jerry went to coach Zorn that he was out, whatever the situation I cannot believe the whole thing could have been conducted in a way that did not portray Jerry as such a climber that he would step on Jim Zorn even before the corpse was cold.

Mike Florio at Pro Football Talk wrote a scathing piece on Jerry Gray's future coaching prospects after the coaching community digests what happened in Washington, Mike is a bit animated, I generally agree though that Greg Blache and Jerry Gray devalued themselves in agreeing to the interviews when it is so clear across the football world that there will be a clean house next season (op. cit.).

Now that Jerry's time is nearing an end in Washington other coaches will have to consider whether they want a guy who will go behind their back and try and take their job. Mike indicates that Jerry was a solid head coaching candidate quote about five years ago... Then, he had to claw back to get into the discussion as a coordinator unquote.

So what happened? Five years ago Jerry was defensive coordinator in Buffalo under Dick Jauron, Jerry was a holdover from Gregg Williams' staff, Gregg having been fired as Bills head coach following the 2003 season. Jerry joined his old mentor in Washington before the 2006 season, which happened to see the Redskins top five defense from 2005 collapse to number 31 in most statistical areas.

Although I do not blame that fall on Jerry Gray per se, there was a Thanksgiving 2006 story by ESPN writer and former Washington Post sports writer Tom Friend about the Redskins 2006 dysfunction. A good part of this story was devoted to the disarray and hard feelings introduced when Gregg brought Jerry to Washington, Jerry was immediately in conflict with safeties coach Steven Jackson. The story goes on to describe petty bickering between coaches and indifference to the entire matter on the part of Gregg Williams.

The common thread here? Jerry may not have initiated the problems in 2006 and may not have approached Dan Snyder for an interview in 2009. In both cases though he appears to have demonstrated poor judgment in handling matters of football professionalism, and has shown a an inability to stand the heat in the kitchen, he has a tendency to put himself ahead of the team.

Maybe he thinks that is how you get ahead in this business. Maybe it is.



Dan Snyder: Uncredited image from here via here.

How To Kill the Rooney Rule - Part Two

If I interviewed this Cheeto could I count it?

No one was expecting the transition from Vinny Cerrato to Bruce Allen, it caught everyone by surprise. In the excited aftermath of the team hiring its first ever general manager under owner Dan Snyder details of how the team fulfilled the Rooney Rule were vague. Then we found out. The process is now repeating itself for the head coach, and the Rooney Rule is reduced to irrelevance. Curly R's two part series on the Rooney Rule's death at the hands of Dan Snyder continues.

Part One: The General Manager
Part Two: The Head Coach
Part Three: The Collateral Damage

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How is this for a headline, New York Times style:

DAN SNYDER DESTROYS ROONEY RULE
Rendered Moot
Pre-emptive interviews violate original intent

It seems a little over the top, but that is really what has happened here in a practical sense. Thanks to Dan Snyder we have an established precedent that pre emptive interviews for qualifying positions can be conducted prior to the position in question being open.

That these interviews can happen in secret or behind the scenes reduces the public pressure element of intent in the Rooney Rule; it was designed to force each and every team to include minorities in the staffing process so let me ask you this question:

If those minority candidates can be interviewed in secret before positions are open to ensure what some would call smooth transitions and others would call box checking and still others would call due diligence, if there is no public concurrent accounting of the candidates and interviews, does this push those candidates to the back of the bus?

I think it does. It has always been Curly R's position that the Rooney Rule has the potential to encourage a shameful brand of tokenism when teams in an otherwise free market know exactly what candidate they want to hire. I sympathize with Matt Millen, the original Rooney Rule violator in 2003 when he said he could not find a minority candidate to interview after asking five separate people. Reasonable people can disagree as to whether the Lions really tried to find someone, the fact is that they wanted Steve Mariucci whether Steve was white, black or purple.

That same offseason Cowboys owner Jerral W. Jones tried to reel in former Vikings coach Dennis Green for an interview that Dennis' friend and former Redskins offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye described as quote an act like [Jerral W. Jones] was in compliance [with the Rule] unquote.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If there are no mechanisms for waivers of the Rule or justification for variation, if there is just one rule and it will be applied no matter how ludicrous the interview, AND top shelf candidates like Dennis Green see right through the veil of tokenism and refuse to interview, then what is an owner to do?

Answer, lobby like hell and manage down to the barest legal compliance. Which is what Dan Snyder has done, and in so doing has destroyed the intent of the the Rule, rendering it moot. Which is a good thing, even if that destruction was executed in a terrible manner with the all the wrong motivations.

As far as the public record tells us, the team, the league and the Fritz Pollard Alliance, the body that regulates the implementation of the Rooney Rule, worked to approve the pre emptive interviews of current Redskins director of professional personnel Morocco Brown for the general manager position, and of defensive coordinator Greg Blache and secondary coach Jerry Gray for the head coach position.

The FPA approved of these interviews, believing the team's sincerity in offering these interviews. There appears to be plausible deniability all along the way. The team, whether Dan Snyder personally is irrelevant, spoke with the league, the league, in the form of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, asked FPA chairman John Wooten to look into Jerry Gray as a candidate, determine whether Jerry qualified in the eyes of the Rule, and whether the Redskins' process could be considered compliant.

Wooten validated it all.

Then the NFL, after ostensibly initiating the discussion with the FPA, beyond some hilarious double speak refused to comment further (op. cit.), the NFL's own story on Jerry Gray's interview confirmation is primarily made up of an Associated Press report, they refused to go on record with the internals of the story, even though the league itself was crucial to the process of validating a pre emptive interview.

For the team's part, Dan Snyder and his people have plausible deniability as well (ibid.), they never had direct contact and therefore influence over the FPA decision to validate the process, so Dan's hands are clean in all this.

And so that's it. Find a guy that meets the minimum requirement, give him a pre emptive interview in secret before the job is open, get it rubber stamped and you are done, fire your old guy and hire your new guy, stay on schedule with good PR and never be accountable in public for promoting minority hiring or for violating the Rule. The Fritz Pollard Alliance itself, whether intentionally or by accident, has just rendered the rule completely irrelevant.

Except that is not it, there is human toll in this: Redskins secondary coach Jerry Gray. Curly R's How To Kill the Rooney Rule concludes tomorrow with Part Three, The Collateral Damage.



Dan Snyder: Uncredited image from here via here.

How To Kill the Rooney Rule - Part One

"Hey Morocco can I talk to you for a minute?"

Although the 2009 season may not yet technically be over, change is already here for the Washington Redskins. In the past three weeks the team hired its first actual general manager in eleven years under owner Dan Snyder, head coach Jim Zorn is on the way out and every player is already under offseason scrutiny. But before any of this could be set into motion, the team had to satisfy the Rooney Rule, not once but twice. Today Curly R begins a three part series on the practical death of the Rooney Rule at the hands of Dan Snyder.

Part One: The General Manager
Part Two: The Head Coach
Part Three: The Collateral Damage

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In the fourth quarter of Sunday nights game fifteen futility versus the Cowboys, NBC's Andrea Kremer reported that the Redskins had hired new actual general manager Bruce Allen in compliance with the expanded Rooney Rule by first interviewing in house candidate director of professional personnel Morocco Brown for the position.

The Fritz Pollard Alliance, the organization charged with policing the application of the Rooney Rule in the NFL, approved of the Redskins' interview with Morocco. Thus, when Dan Snyder went ahead and hired the white guy he could do it with a clear conscience and with no fear of reprisal from the league in the form of fines, loss of draft picks or negative public relations.

But here is the thing, shadow general manager Vinny Cerrato's resignation was announced in the early morning of Thursday 17 December 2009, and Bruce Allen's hiring was announced barely two hours later.

That means unless Dan Snyder has a box flooded with argon stashed in a storage unit that he would not have been able to accept Vinny's resignation, interview both Morocco Brown and Bruce Allen, deliberate on the matter, decide to hire Bruce, negotiate a contract between the two parties then arrange a press conference to announce Bruce's hiring given the existing timeline.

Which means the interview with Morocco happened before the general manager position was open.

We also know the Fritz Pollard Alliance and the NFL consider the Bruce Allen hire compliant with the Rooney Rule.

Ipso facto a pre emptive interview for the general manager position can be considered compliant with the Rooney Rule.

Why does this matter? Because a secret pre emptive sham interview to satisfy the Rule would permit a marketing man like Dan Snyder to move smoothly through the fire and hire process without missing a beat and without having to withstand any public scrutiny or media pressure surrounding who the compliant minority candidate would be, whether he was qualified and whether the public pre judged the whole process a sham. Think days or weeks of headlines, even into the A section of the Washington Post.

Now here we are post judging it a virtual sham but what is done is done, the pressure Dan will face now that the deal is done pales in comparison to anything he would have faced as he slowly plodded his way over days or weeks from a Vinny Cerrato resignation to a public accounting of candidates to interviews to media speculation and rumors of backroom deals to final announcements and aftermath. This way there was barely a headline and it was over in one day.

In any event, this was a pretty big reveal. And it was not the only one Andrea Kremer brought to us Sunday night. The other was about the head coach position.

How To Kill the Rooney Rule continues tomorrow with Part Two, The Head Coach.



Dan Snyder: Uncredited image from here via here.

Guest Post: The Case Against Mike Shanahan

We post good takes

With all the hubbub swirling around Redskins coaching and management, how much power will Bruce Allen actually have, was Bruce Allen picked by Dan Snyder or Mike Shanahan, did secondary coach Jerry Gray interview for Jim Zorn's job before it was vacant, etc. etc., Redskins fans are beginning to consider seriously what will happen in this offseason.

Below is what DC Greg, one of Curly R's most loyal readers and commenters had to say about it all.

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The Case Against Mike Shanahan


Take a look at the following list of names:

Mike Ditka
Bill Parcells
Mike Holmgren
Jimmy Johnson
Vince Lombardi
Hank Stram
Don McCafferty
Tom Flores
George Seifert
Dick Vermeil

What do they have in common? They are all coaches that have won Super Bowls…with one team and one team only. The sad fact is that none of these men have been able to duplicate their earlier success at subsequent stops in their careers, with only Parcells and Holmgren able to even make a Super Bowl appearance on the losing side.

In fact, only one coach in NFL history has been able to win championships with two different teams and that was Weeb Ewbank, who won two pre-modern NFL titles with the Colts (1958 & 1959) before capturing Super Bowl III with the Jets.

And Parcells, Holmgren, and Dan Reeves are the only coaches to even make Super Bowl APPEARANCES with different teams; Reeves lost three with Denver and one with Atlanta

Bottom line: no head coach has ever won a Super Bowl with two different teams. NFL History, it seems, isn’t kind to retreads, at least not at the championship level.

I bring this up to make an argument against the hiring of a coach like Mike Shanahan, Bill Cowher, Jon Gruden, Tony Dungy, or even Brian Billick; All Super Bowl-winning coaches.

As a quick aside, I realize that it may be unfair to include Vince Lombardi on this list, as he only had one season with the Redskins. His untimely death denied us the chance to see if his plan would have come to fruition, but I included his name anyway for posterity. You could make an argument that Joe Gibbs belongs on this list, but I didn't include him because he didn't attempt his comeback with a different team. But I digress...

Oddly enough, it IS possible for a Super Bowl-LOSING coach to come to a different team and have greater success. Don Shula and Dick Vermeil both lost their initial appearance in the big game, only to find Super Bowl glory elsewhere. This would suggest that the Redskins’ best bet might be to consider coaches such as Jeff Fisher, Bill Callahan, Ken Whisenhunt, Jim Fassel, Mike Martz, and John Fox. All of these men, like Shula and Vermeil, lost their first appearance in the Super Bowl. I’m not too keen on Martz or Callahan, although the latter is a WCO disciple, for what that’s worth. Fassel is interesting because I was dead set against his hiring in the ’08 offseason. I may have to reconsider that position. I would be good with Fisher, Fox, or Whisenhunt, if the Redskins went in that direction.

What this means for the Redskins is that if Mike Shanahan is named head coach, the odds of winning the Super Bowl don’t really change that much, if history is any indication. Oh sure, Shanny will make them respectable, maybe even contenders. They’ll always be in the conversation and will be enjoyable to watch. In the ways that matter most, however, Shanahan’s tenure would likely be a repeat of the George Allen years; Almost…but not quite.

The most ideal scenario involving the 57-year-old Shanahan is a repeat of the best aspects of Gibbs 2.0. He spends a few seasons righting the ship, all the while grooming a successor, and then turns things over to that successor when he retires.

Whether Snyder can keep from screwing up the full cupboard Shanahan leaves him remains to be seen. Let’s not forget that Gibbs left him a playoff team and a hand picked successor and we all know how that went.

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While Redskins fans have no way of knowing whether this is a done deal or will happen at all, Sport Illustrated's Peter King wondered in a Monday night interview if Mike Shanahan is not punking Dan Snyder for a better deal with the shovel ready Cowboys, we should not necessarily annoint Mike the savior of the team, there will be other qualified coaches out there, there always are, and maybe for once the Redskins could do without so much drama.

Thanks DC Greg, keep em coming.



Kansas fencepost: Don Palmer