dbair1967

Administrator
Messages
58,568
Reaction score
9,056
He used to do those laughable "roster comparisons" too (literally he'd go player by player), and even though the Skins were the doormats for years and always losing to the Cowboys, somehow every player on their roster was far superior to every play on the Dallas roster.

Could have probably been a quality CZ-er if he had been a Dallas fan.
 
Messages
46,859
Reaction score
5
The Washington Redskins hit a new low this week. And that’s saying something.

By Chris Cillizza

March 12 

If you want the short version of what the past seven days have looked like for the Washington Redskins, here it is:



Now, the longer version.

The Redskins began the week with lots — and lots — of uncertainties. They ended it with even more.

Start with Scot McCloughan. McCloughan was brought in two years ago as the Redskins general manager, a move widely touted by sharp NFL observers. McCloughan, after all, had been the personnel genius behind the construction of the Superbowl-winning Seattle Seahawks and the once-mighty San Francisco 49ers. He would be a much-needed professional hand at the tiller, a respite from the constant meddling of Skins owner Daniel Snyder. That McCloughan had been let go by the Seahawks because of issues with alcohol — and that he acknowledged he still drank — was seen as a minor risk worth incurring.

The Redskins fired McLoughan on Thursday night. And they did it — as they almost always do — in spectacular fashion. While Bruce Allen, Snyder's right-hand man, released only a brief statement wishing McCloughan well, a “team official with direct knowledge of the situation” was far more blunt. “He’s had multiple relapses due to alcohol,” the source said. “He showed up in the locker room drunk on multiple occasions … This has been a disaster for 18 months.”

The savaging of McCloughan on his way out the door reeked of score-settling and low-road-taking. Both of which this franchise has specialized in over the years. (Sidebar: The “disaster” of the past 18 months produced a 17-14-1 record and a division championship.)

Even as the Redskins were making sure to kick McLoughan on his way out the door, lots of others were following — or trying to follow — the deposed GM to the exits. On Thursday, DeSean Jackson and Pierre Garcon, the team's two starting wide receivers, left to sign as free agents in Tampa Bay and San Francisco, respectively. Defensive lineman Chris Baker headed out, too, joining Jackson in Tampa.

But the biggest potential loss came in the form of starting quarterback Kirk Cousins, who reportedly personally asked Snyder to trade him before the start of next season. (Snyder said a trade wasn't likely.) As it stands today, Cousins will make $24 million playing on the “franchise tag” for this upcoming season. If the Redskins can't sign him to a longer-term deal before the end of the season, Cousins would be a free agent — able to handpick his next team. And the Redskins would be left holding the bag — and a compensatory third-round pick.

All of the chaos surrounding the Redskins had some longtime fans insisting that this was it, that they would give up their season tickets and walk away from the team. But though they were vocal, they are almost certainly in the minority. Under Snyder's tenure, chaos has been the rule. Chaos and not winning all that much. And yet, the fans just keep going to games and buying merchandise.

The wheel turns on. And the Redskins rack up another Worst Week in Washington.
 
Messages
46,859
Reaction score
5
LOVERRO: Was backing Cousins over RGIII the real sin?

By Thom Loverro - - Sunday, March 12, 2017

ANALYSIS/OPINION

There has been much that has come out of Redskins Park in the midst of the disinformation campaign following the public execution of general manager Scot McCloughan that has been distasteful, despicable and likely deceitful.

If there is any truth hidden in any of it, that truth has been buried in a pile of garbage.There may not be enough soap in the state of Virginia to wash the stink away in Ashburn.



Part of that campaign has been to diminish the influence of McCloughan on the franchise since he was hired in January 2015 — and since the Redskins had had two winning seasons.

We hear things — anonymously, of course — that “it’s all Jay and Bruce,” referring to coach Jay Gruden and team president, Bruce Allen, the prince of darkness. All this so-called “success” — the measure for success for this franchise covered by the aura of self destruction is simply a season greater than .500 — can be attributed to the power and influence of Allen and Gruden.

We know that’s not true.

We may have forgotten the fact that Scot McCloughan was responsible for the most important decision at Redskins Park over the past two years, the decision that led to the limited success the team has enjoyed.

The story goes that Scot McCloughan, during Redskins training camp in 2015, met privately for five hours with owner Dan Snyder and convinced the meddlesome owner that Cousins — and not the owner’s buddy, Robert Griffin III — should be the starting quarterback for the Washington Redskins.

No other decision was greater at Redskins Park. No more act of influence was more important.

All Jay and Bruce, indeed.

We heard the story from Bleacher Report’s and veteran NFL reporter Jason Cole, who has a close relationship with McCloughan, about how the general manager was the one who convinced the owner to abandon his fixation with Griffin and support Gruden’s desire to start Cousins instead.

In an April 2016 interview on ESPN 980, Cole spoke of the meeting that took place between McCloughan and Snyder.

“He (McCloughan) basically stood on a table by going to Snyder and having that 5-hour conversation that they ended up having until the wee hours of the morning one time,” said Cole.

“And basically said, ‘Look Cousins is the guy’. And he ended up being right. Cousins ended up being that guy, and being better than RGIII. And the team rallied around Cousins and ended up making the playoffs.”

That was the difference maker. If Bruce Allen had been a Cousins backer, there would have been no need for such a meeting.

No, Gruden’s only ally in benching Griffin was McCloughan. And it is likely that the biggest roadblock to getting a long-term deal done with Cousins has been Allen.

Before McCloughan, Gruden was the lone voice fighting against playing Griffin.

Remember when, following the 2014 season, Gruden declared there would be an “open” competition for quarterback, only to reverse himself at the 2015 combine and, in the famous hostage video, announced that Griffin would go into the season as the team’s No. 1 quarterback — answering no questions following that statement.

It was McCloughan who changed that with his meeting with Snyder — an account that has never been disputed by anyone in the organization.

Among all the recent furor was a CSN Mid Atlantic report that Cousins, now under contract with the Redskins for a second season under the franchise tag with a $24 million payday, refuses to negotiate any long-term deal with Allen.

It’s not likely Cousins felt the same animosity toward McCloughan.

In an April 2016 interview with Cole, McCloughan described his meeting with Cousins after he signed the first franchise tag for $20 million.

“I told Kirk when he came in — and his wife must have hugged me for 10 minutes because he just went from making $600,000 to $19.9 million — I told him, “You take care of me and this organization, we’re going to take care of you,’” McCloughan said. “‘I promise. And we’re going to build this roster to where you can be average and still be good. I promise you.’

“Let me overpay him if he’s good,” McCloughan said. “If you have a productive guy, it helps everything, and it proves out. You look around this league and see the teams that are in the playoffs every year and look who the quarterbacks are. Look at the ones who win. It proves out. Don’t get me wrong, the O-line is huge. The running game is huge, which we had in Seattle. But when it’s all said and done and the quarterback can get the guys rallied around him, you have a chance.”

It turns out that Scot McCloughan never had a chance, though — not in the landfill that is Redskins Park.

It doesn’t appear as if anyone stood on a table for him. Instead, they hid under it.
 

ThoughtExperiment

Quality Starter
Messages
9,906
Reaction score
3
I get what that last article is saying, and that organization is definitely a disaster, but how long do you put up with a guy who can't stop drinking? At some point you just can't live with that anymore.
 
Messages
46,859
Reaction score
5
Valid question. Depends on how bad the drinking is. Is he a functional drunk or is it getting in the way of his performance? Seems like they gave up on him too soon to really find out.
 

LAZARUS_LOGAN

Pro Bowler
Messages
14,639
Reaction score
207


But the biggest potential loss came in the form of starting quarterback Kirk Cousins, who reportedly personally asked Snyder to trade him before the start of next season. (Snyder said a trade wasn't likely.) As it stands today, Cousins will make $24 million playing on the “franchise tag” for this upcoming season. If the Redskins can't sign him to a longer-term deal before the end of the season, Cousins would be a free agent — able to handpick his next team. And the Redskins would be left holding the bag — and a compensatory third-round pick.

.



Ok, just what I thought. I was trying to explain this to a Redskins' fan. He was pissed about Cousins seeking a trade. He suggested that the Redskins just keep on franchising him every year until he retires. I told him from what I understood that under the new CBA, that a team could only franchise the same player TWICE, and that's it.

That is the case correct?
 

SixisBetter

Anywhere on the line.
Messages
4,211
Reaction score
370
That is the case correct?

Here's What Florio said a couple years ago:

6. No non-quarterback will be tagged more than twice.Former Seahawks tackle Walter Jones once spent three straight years under the franchise tag, pocketing a total of $20 million and then signing a long-term deal that paid him $20 million more guaranteed, back when $20 million was a very big deal for NFL purposes.
Jones rolled the dice on bearing the injury risk for the three franchise years, and he won. Most players prefer the certainty of a long-term deal.
That’s why the 2006 CBA changed the formula to pay a non-quarterback the quarterback franchise tender if he’s tagged a third time.
Quarterbacks are protected, too. In the third year of the franchise tag, they get at least a 44-percent raise over their cap number in the prior year.
7. Arguably, no player can be tagged more than three times.
Last year’s grievance filed by Saints quarterback Drew Brees established that, if a player is tagged once by two different teams, it counts as being tagged twice. Which would have entitled him to a 44-percent raise in 2013, if he had played under the franchise tag last year for the Saints. (He was tagged in 2005 by the Chargers.)
Based on the language of the CBA, there’s an argument to be made that no player may ever be tagged more than three times during the course of his career.
Of course, tagging a player a fourth time would entail paying out a second 44-percent raise one year after paying out an initial 44-percent raise. Which would make it highly unlikely that any team would ever want to use the tag more than three times.

Link to the whole article:10 things to know about the franchise tag | ProFootballTalk
 

LAZARUS_LOGAN

Pro Bowler
Messages
14,639
Reaction score
207
Here's What Florio said a couple years ago:

6. No non-quarterback will be tagged more than twice.Former Seahawks tackle Walter Jones once spent three straight years under the franchise tag, pocketing a total of $20 million and then signing a long-term deal that paid him $20 million more guaranteed, back when $20 million was a very big deal for NFL purposes.
Jones rolled the dice on bearing the injury risk for the three franchise years, and he won. Most players prefer the certainty of a long-term deal.
That’s why the 2006 CBA changed the formula to pay a non-quarterback the quarterback franchise tender if he’s tagged a third time.
Quarterbacks are protected, too. In the third year of the franchise tag, they get at least a 44-percent raise over their cap number in the prior year.
7. Arguably, no player can be tagged more than three times.
Last year’s grievance filed by Saints quarterback Drew Brees established that, if a player is tagged once by two different teams, it counts as being tagged twice. Which would have entitled him to a 44-percent raise in 2013, if he had played under the franchise tag last year for the Saints. (He was tagged in 2005 by the Chargers.)
Based on the language of the CBA, there’s an argument to be made that no player may ever be tagged more than three times during the course of his career.
Of course, tagging a player a fourth time would entail paying out a second 44-percent raise one year after paying out an initial 44-percent raise. Which would make it highly unlikely that any team would ever want to use the tag more than three times.

Link to the whole article:10 things to know about the franchise tag | ProFootballTalk


So the Redskins can tag him a third time? Then this means nothing: If the Redskins can't sign him to a longer-term deal before the end of the season, Cousins would be a free agent — able to handpick his next team. And the Redskins would be left holding the bag — and a compensatory third-round pick.
 
Messages
46,859
Reaction score
5
Tired of the Redskins dysfunction? There’s one person to blame.


By Sally Jenkins Columnist

March 11 


Dan Snyder doesn’t really want to win. He would rather be the controlling figure in a poisonous, culture-of-fear organization than a marginal figure in a successful and happy one. In the nearly two decades that Snyder has owned Washington’s football team, there has been just one constant — him. Apparently he much prefers firing people to winning with them.

Scot McCloughan is just the latest fly to have his wings pulled off and be pinned to Snyder’s bug collection. The cowardly smearing assertions that the general manager was fired for his drinking, the rumors about Bruce Allen’s back-hall jealousy of McCloughan’s popularity, are just sidelights and could have been quelled by the owner in an instant. Obviously, he preferred that it get ugly.

All of Snyder’s hires and fires are really just human shields for the owner’s behavior, they are there to absorb the public blame for his childish impulsivity and unpleasant little manipulations. He’s like the baby who keeps throwing his bottle on the floor, just so he can watch others pick it up. At this point, you begin to think the real game to Snyder is not football, it’s making other people feel his petty power, fostering tension and disorder for his personal entertainment.

The most telling number in Snyder’s tenure isn’t the won-loss record. It’s the hired-fired record. Colleague Rick Maese once uncovered this fascinating statistic: Between 2008 and 2013, 120 of its 143 employees in non-football operations left the club for various reasons. “I never worked in such a nervous building,” one said.

There have been eight head coaches, 16 starting quarterbacks and seven various people awarded supposed “roster control” in Washington since Snyder bought the club in 1999. Stability in the franchise is two years without a decapitation. At least under McCloughan there were a couple of winning seasons, and the hint of real architecture, with a terrific talent scout and solid roster-builder in the house, along with an interesting and still-improving coach in Jay Gruden, and a better-than-good quarterback in Kirk Cousins. But Snyder wasn’t happy with the way things were going. He’s the Dr. No of owners. He prefers radioactive chaos and dropping his employees through trap doors into bloodbaths.

Scroll back over the past few years, and the pattern is distinct: No sooner is someone hired than the sabotaging and hatchet games begin. He gave Marty Schottenheimer roster control and then whacked him after one season, because, as one employee told the The Washington Post, Snyder “wasn’t having any fun.”

Oh, every now and then Snyder makes a show of ceding control to an adult professional. But it never lasts long, and he always keeps an enabler by his side, a henchman or spy who reports to the owner’s box and sows internal mischief. He and Vinny Cerrato conspired to undermine every coach with “roster control” who came through the building, while making a series of laughably amateur decisions. Remember drafting Devin Thomas while passing on Jordy Nelson? Bringing in Donovan McNabb to play quarterback for Mike Shanahan?

Three ex-coaches have described to me how Snyder works: He claims publicly to cede authority to the professionals and pretends to be hands off, to avoid the heat and put it on others. But behind the scenes, he names a draft pick, or a high-priced free agent, and asks the coach whether they should go get him. Do you want Albert Haynesworth? We can get Haynesworth. Let’s go to get Haynesworth. Do you want McNabb? We can get McNabb. Let’s go get McNabb. Why wouldn’t you want McNabb?

So now the coach starts sweating. What if he refuses the owner, and doesn’t go after Haynesworth? What if Haynesworth winds up on another team and makes a big play against Washington? Now he’s the guy who passed on Haynesworth. So the coach goes and gets him, and tries to make it work. And that’s how it starts. Then, when it turns out it was a bad choice in the first place and it throws off the locker room and the scheme and the salary structure, the coach starts sweating again. Because now it looks like his fault. Pretty soon the locker room starts to question his judgment and authority, and wonder who’s really the shot-caller around here, anyway?

You know what happens next because you’ve seen it 70 zillion times. Pretty soon there are divisions in the building, and then comes the pattern of harassment to try to force a resignation. The small public humiliations. The weird managerial duplications and alignments: “Advisers” are brought in to be over-the-shoulder watchers. Then come the explosive shouts behind closed doors, and reports that the owner has berated someone.

Of course, even the enablers get it in the end when their human-shield usefulness wears out and Snyder decides to blame-shift. Or becomes bored, or wants fresh playthings. Cerrato got fired because, as the owner had the nerve to tell author Gary Myers, “The general manager needs to prevent the owner from hiring someone who’s not qualified. And that’s why Vinny is no longer here, to be truthful. He’s not here because his job was to prevent the owner from hiring a not-qualified coach.”

It’s obvious that Gruden and Allen will eventually get dropped into the acid pool like all the others. They’ll be lucky if they’re just offed — as opposed to slurred and slimed and damaged, like McCloughan. And a whole new cast will come in, and the cycle will start all over again. But with each go-round, everyone becomes a little wiser to the pattern, and fewer good people and great players want to come to, or stay, in Washington. The franchise has become exactly what the owner has treated it as: a garbage can for his disposables.
 

icup

Super Moderator
Messages
10,304
Reaction score
6,452
i'm so happy dan snyder is young too. lots of piss and vinegar in him still for years to come!
 

ThoughtExperiment

Quality Starter
Messages
9,906
Reaction score
3
But Snyder wasn’t happy with the way things were going. He’s the Dr. No of owners. He prefers radioactive chaos and dropping his employees through trap doors into bloodbaths.
:lol

He gave Marty Schottenheimer roster control and then whacked him after one season, because, as one employee told the The Washington Post, Snyder “wasn’t having any fun.”
Funny, those are the exact words many different media people used about Jerry with Parcells.
 

yimyammer

Pro Bowler
Messages
10,172
Reaction score
4,040
All of Snyder’s hires and fires are really just human shields for the owner’s behavior, they are there to absorb the public blame for his childish impulsivity and unpleasant little manipulations. He’s like the baby who keeps throwing his bottle on the floor, just so he can watch others pick it up. At this point, you begin to think the real game to Snyder is not football, it’s making other people feel his petty power, fostering tension and disorder for his personal entertainment.

Didn't think anyone could be worse than jeri but congrats Snyder, I think you've done it
 

yimyammer

Pro Bowler
Messages
10,172
Reaction score
4,040
I wish the cowboys would grab scott as an extra FU to the skins but you know it will never happen because they are more concerned with being comfortable than bringing in someone that could potentially threaten anyone's job despite helping the team identify and acquire more talent

You'd think jeri being a functioning alcoholic could work with a guy like Scott
 
Top Bottom