Update 1/3/2007: complete take on the first piece belowWe're going to keep bumping this for a while. The final piece is out. Anyone interested in a closer look at what happened to the 2006 Redskins must read this series:
Part 1. Jason La Canfora: Problems at the Core. Teaser. Story.
In this story we learn more about something serious Redskins fans already knew, that the so-called braintrust responsible for evaluating and signing players is simply not working, and the story gets worse because there are players that believe the Redskins have a 'throw-away' policy when it comes to retaining talent. Kind of like how Dean Smith was never sad to see top Tarheels go into the NBA draft because that gave him the chance to go out and recruit, the Redskins look at players like Antonio Pierce and Ryan Clark with the contempt of familiarity and say, 'we can do better on the market.' As a result, the feeling as I read it is that you're here until you're not. In the mercenary world of NFL rosters, this is somewhat heartening and I hope the Redskins front office is reading it.
The process for evaluating talent appears to be one of groupthink with the coaches looking at the upside (ie, on-field potential) of a player but no one to evaluate whether the player is a good fit physically or character-wise. Two examples: Brandon Lloyd, an acrobat in the field, but has the exact same skills profile as Santana Moss, and is a headcase. He defaulted to the '#1' position of available receivers simply because the other options had been taken. Despite Joe Gibbs wanting another Santana, which was a mistake, Brandon never was a match for the team, skills-wise or emotionally. Adam Archuleta is the other example. Big, physical with one career interception he was never a coverage safety even in St. Louis and when the Redskins decided to let Ryan Clark go, the 'top guy available' was Adam even though his skills profile was more like Sean Taylor's and did not fit the team's immediate needs.
The piece does not cast Vinny Cerrato's abilities as a pseudo-GM in a positive light, something seious Redskins fans have known since he was holed up in a hotel watching purloined game film before the Dan Snyder purchase of the team was final, because with no final sale, John Kent Cooke and Charley Casserly would not let Vinny onto Redskins property. Ask 49ers fans how the 1997 draft went. That was the only one Vinny was fully in charge of.
However, the piece also does nothing for the player-evaluation credentials of the coaches themselves. In a classic coach-GM relationship, there is back and forth with the head coach representing the coaching staff/philosophy and the roster of players with the GM representing the owner's wishes and the financial arm of the team. Through that proxt relationship needs are communicated back and forth, players and picks are bandied about and a compromise is reached on a given player or pick. In this relationship though, the coaches are making ill-advised recommendations which are in turn translating into top recommendations to the team's money people. Even without a 'football person' in between Joe Gibbs and Dan Snyder/Vinny Cerrato, Joe and his staff should have known Brandon Lloyd, forget the headcase even, was the exact same skills profile as Santana and therefore they would be doubling at the stretcher WR position at the expense of the possession WR position (see also, Terry Glenn and Terrell Owens -- he may be a jerk but they make a great tandem). Same with Adam Arculeta. The coaches should have known they were getting a free safety in a strong safety's uniform, and therefore that adding Adam was subtraction from the safety position's coverage capabilities.
So suddenly, Adam is not a coverage safety and Brandon is a discipline problem and the coaching staff is like, whaaa...? It would appear any NFL personnel professional and many serious NFL fans could have told the Redskins about both these guys, but they went ahead anyway, assuming that whatever shortcomings the players had could be 'coached out.'
The piece ends with a dissection of the TJ Duckett disaster. As I've written before, it would appear as though the Redskins managed to keep this productive backup in Ladell Betts going into five seasons and had no idea what they had. After spending all of training camp with Nehemiah Broughton and Jesse Lumsden on the roster, suddenly those guys are gone and Rock Cartwright and Mike Sellers are staring at the back of TJ Duckett's jersey on the depth chart. We can have a discussion about whether Rock or Mike is really the answer to the Redskins backup ground game, but I think the point was that after evaluating numerically a bunch of ball carriers, the team still went out and spent a draft pick to bring in someone new that was immediately behind the curve on the offensive system. It really shook Rock and Mike, at least at the beginning.
As a final note, the piece discussed the team's propensity to deal away draft picks. As I read it, I am drawn back to the philosophy of the late, great George Allen (not Senator Race-baiter Secret Stock Options, his father), who traded seven Redskins draft picks in 1971 in order to acquire the Jack Pardee and the other members of the Over the Hill Gang that lost to the undeafeated Dolphins in Super Bowl 7.
It is almost as though George Allen started a game of 'Operator' in 1971, with a story about how a team can get good quickly with veteran players in exchange for the uncertainty of draft picks. Thirty-five years later that story comes around to Joe Gibbs and the current Redskins as DRAFT PICKS DON'T MATTER. Well they do and the Redskins need to stop dealing them away for players that don't last more than three seasons.
The killer soundbite from this piece:
"Do we need a system of checks and balances" in the personnel department? one coach said. "I think that's a fair question."Present the Football Person.
Part 2. Howard Bryant: Of Two Minds on Offense. Teaser. Story. Complementary graphic: running the ball and winning.
It turns out the Redskins coaching staff was having the same argument about whether to swap out Mark Brunell, for whom and what it meant, that the Redskins bloggers were at the same time. Al Saunders wanted to switch to Todd Collins (aka, 'His Guy') because Todd knew the offense and gave the team the best shot at getting back into the playoff race. Joe Gibbs settled on Jason Campbell (his guy) and hoped for the best. I sit by my opinion that making that switch was giving up on the season, but then again all alternatives at that point looked like giving up.
Part 3. Les Carpenter: Coordinator Assumes Old Defensive Crouch. Teaser. Story.
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