How big a factor in the 2 decades plus malaise do you attribute to bad drafting in the mid/late 80s?

[pjfootballer]

I don’t understand why our fans continue to obsess over not picking Leonard Williams over Scherff. He’s a stud RG that hardly misses a game and is just rounding into All-Pro form. 

 

Who cares what the so-called “draft experts” say about picking guards high. Scherff is going to have a Grimm/Hutchison Career. 

 

Williams has 12 sacks in 3 years (4 per year if you are counting at home). We’ve gotten that production from Ionnadis already. Williams has been nothing special and I wish our fans would stop obsessing over this average player. 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Getting back to the original topic, I don't think bad drafting in the mid to late 80s had much of an impact on the two decades.  Maybe into the early to mid 90s, but if you play your cards right in the NFL, you can turn your fortune around pretty quickly.  

[NickyJ]

3 hours ago, pjfootballer said:

I don’t understand why our fans continue to obsess over not picking Leonard Williams over Scherff. He’s a stud RG that hardly misses a game and is just rounding into All-Pro form. 

 

Who cares what the so-called “draft experts” say about picking guards high. Scherff is going to have a Grimm/Hutchison Career. 

 

Williams has 12 sacks in 3 years (4 per year if you are counting at home). We’ve gotten that production from Ionnadis already. Williams has been nothing special and I wish our fans would stop obsessing over this average player. 

Ah, the good old days, when we got to complain about how we hadn't drafted a lineman besides Trent Williams in the first round for over a decade. I wish we could go back to those simpler times.

 

Also, I blame us drafting Sammy Baugh as the reason we've sucked. I don't really know why, but if we're going to go back to old history for blaming stuff, might as well start at the beginning.

[skins island connection]

 I admit, I don't follow the draft, so its difficult for me [ and most likely many others ] to gauge which player to eye based on all of the 'perceptions' of other teams.

 Like coaching, many give their 'expert opinions' on what a coach is doing wrong or not doing at all, without having actual factual knowledge of whats going on behind the scenes, what coaches are seeing in their players, and adjusting to try and improve in areas.

 

 But one has to also keep in mind, and we see it every year, where analysts gather their information and make predictions on which player a team takes, then KABOOM!  they pick someone else and the entire draft changes for everyone else down the line; a trickle down effect if you will. Sometimes it gets back on course but the majority of times it doesn't, and teams settle for what they have and get the BPA then work on trades before the deadline.

 

Also keep in mind, regardless of which player ends up on whatever team, philosophy plays the biggest part in a player's success; he also needs to have the ability to learn, but if the coaching isn't absolutely dedicated and successful, its a burned draft pick.

Back in the 80's, Gibbs had by FAR the largest coaching staff in the league, and it wasn't always about being the biggest or strongest; the 91' " Hogs " were the 3rd LIGHTEST o-line in the league at that time. Intelligence is the bottom line.

[KevinthePRF]

The x factor of our downfall after '92 was not bad drafting, but a lack of figuring out how to function with a salary cap. There really was no cap in the 80s and IR rules were much more lax.  Beathard (and Cerrato in SF) had the luxury of covering his mistakes in free agency and the draft during his era.  The consistent winners of that era was the most extravgant spenders, and Cooke was top notch.  More than our bad picks prior and in the 90s, look at our free agency mistakes that wiped our cap to a bare minimum for a decade.  

[bobandweave]

How much do I think? None

 

1. Gibbs left, the record in the 90s would have been better had he stayed

 

2. They won three championships in the dynasty days. Look at the other dynasty’s of the past. The Steelers in the 70s won four then didn’t get back to the SB until 1995. The Cowboys dynasty won three in the 90s and haven’t been back since. Redskins no different. Dynasty teams are extremely rare and the leagues not one for repeated success decade over decade 

 

3. The fact they only used three first round picks during the dynasty isn’t an indication of anything to me other then the team using draft picks to better itself creatively. First round picks don’t work out all the time. Andre Collins was a first. Desmond Howard was a first. Heath Schuler was a first. They all sucked. What makes anyone think that not making those trades that got them Wilbur Marshall and instead using those picks would have been better knowing they got a title from him? Teams better themselves all the time in many ways. Fans make a huge deal about the draft teams know its a crap shoot

 

So nah I don’t think had they played it differently they would have had more success. I concede that drafting better wouldn’t have helped but free agency was beginning in the 90s so what’s to say they would have kept those guys they drafted if they were better? I’d take crappy drafting and four Super Bowls any day of the week

 

[hail2skins]

How did Bobby do drafting-wise with the Dolphins before he came to the Skins? Or in San Diego afterward?

[pjfootballer]

I may be mistaken, but I don’t think he was GM with the Dolphins. Maybe asst. GM or another position.

 

He built SD into a SB contender. 

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

On ‎4‎/‎13‎/‎2018 at 7:29 AM, SWFLSkins said:

 

You can certainly look at the Cowboys and state emphatically that Jones blew it when he fired Jimmy Johnson. Thankfully his ego got the better of him and he did so. Jimmy knew the college game and what transferred to the pro game....Their personnel and scheme fell apart after Jimmy even with the Triplets intact plus the linemen He had put together. You could of course during this time period look at Pittsburgh and SF as well. 

 

I think Jimmy Johnson's two advantages were largely timing.

 

1. He knew where the game was headed in terms of speed being the key at every position. 2/3 of the league seemed shocked by the transition that he spearheaded. Once every caught up, that advantage was gone. (Sort of like what happened with OPS in baseball. Once everyone started using it, no one had an advantage).

 

2. To go with #1, he had recruited or tried to recruit or coached or coached against everyone he drafted during his years with the Cowboys. And unlike someone like Spurrier, he knew which players could make it in the pros and which were strictly college guys. (Not that he was perfect, he did spend a #1 pick on Steve Walsh because he thought he would be better than Aikman).

 

Again, once he lost that knowledge of the players, he was just another coach. He certainly didn't reinvent football with the Dolphins.

[TD_washingtonredskins]

On 4/13/2018 at 12:07 PM, SkinsGuy said:

 

All that means even a wonderful, Hall-of-Fame GM like Beathard isn't perfect and can miss on drafts.

 

 

Of course - no GM (even the best ever) is going to hit on a high percentage of picks...

 

But look at some of the years you mention...

 

1985 - pretty uneventful early on but we added guys like Wilburn and Orr who started and then in the 11th add another starting OL. So, despite not hitting on high picks, we brought in 3 Super Bowl starters. 

 

1986 - Koch was a contributor and Walton, Rypien, and Gouveia were all starters as well. So far in two drafts you've added about 6-7 starters for the 1987 and/or 1991 Super Bowl teams. 

 

1987 - pretty bad, but getting another Hog (Ed Simmons) in the 6th round seems to make up for some of that. 

 

1988 - we "hit" on Humphries in the 6th even though he ultimately led a different team to the Super Bowl. 

 

1989 - Schlereth in the 10th! Rocker and Johnson also defensive starters...

 

I would contend that our drafting didn't start to struggle until AFTER Beathard left. 

[Darth Tater]

On 4/12/2018 at 7:15 PM, dyst said:

God if its not Snyder but moreso just the team itself, we’re in bigger trouble than I thought.

From 1932 to 1948, we had just two losing season and played in 5 championship games. From about 1949 to 1970 we only had two winning season and no playoff appearances. From 1971 to 1992, again just two losing seasons and 5 championship games. From 1993 to 2017, 8 winning seasons.  While the current malaise has been slightly longer than our last period of suck, we have had a lot more winning seasons.

 

Overall, the evidence seems to indicate more of a cyclical nature in the NFL.  Only one team in the NFL has managed to avoid multiple long periods of suck. Only 5 teams in the NFL have better than .550 over their history, two of which currently are going through suck periods, and 10 teams founded before 1970 that have losing records, only 3 of those have never been to a SB. Before the Belichick/Brady era starting about 2001, NE was smack dab at the lower end of the pack. The Steelers do kind of break this cycle as they sucked pretty much from founding to 1971 while with a couple of exceptions have been decent to great since then.  Cardinals may be another team as they've usually been mediocre to bad and don't have extended periods of decent to great years.

 

You can break out of those cycles pretty quickly. The 1972 Steelers were coming off a losing season where they were not very competitive.  Our own Redskins jumped from a 20+ year period of suck to miss wining the division probably when Charley Taylor broke his leg. No one outside of a few die-hard Redskins fans wearing Burgundy glasses as late as September 1982 thought we had any chance to become the juggernaut we were about to become.

[Stefanskins]

On 4/12/2018 at 5:58 PM, Darth Tater said:

No, it makes the point that our draft fails have very little to do with any issues.  From 1969 to 1992, we had a total of three losing seasons, only 1 which saw 10+ losses, only two more non winning ones and were either in the playoffs or in sniffing distance every other year.  We went to 4 SBs in that period, twice beating a division opponents in the NFCC game.  In 1983, we went 14-2 but did not clinch the division until our last game! We did not do this because we were good drafters.

great points....5 super bowls though...played Miami twiced, Raiders, Denver and Buffalo...

[Darth Tater]

50 minutes ago, Stefanskins said:

great points....5 super bowls though...played Miami twiced, Raiders, Denver and Buffalo...

Raiders one is not one I like to remember

[Darth Tater]

 

@Voice_of_Reason

 

Knowing what I know now, I would take Scherff over Williams every time. Especially since if we took Williams, Morse would have been our 2 pick.  I cannot understand why anyone would prefer Williams(1 pro bowl, 12 sacks)/Morse(solid but not great C now) over Scherff(2 pro bowls)/Smith(20.5 sacks).

[NoCalMike]

The 'Skins were due for a few rebuilding seasons '92.  That 'last Gibbs superbowl was really like a last hurrah, the team was stacked but a lot of guys didn't have much left in the tank after that.  Looking at the playoffs the following season, they should have beat the 49ers and ended up in the NFC Championship where they likely would have lost to Dallas anyway.  

 

Really there is no good excuse as to why two decades of mediocrity followed the Gibba 1.0 era.  It's painful because it happened during our lives, some of us in the prime viewing/rooting years,but it isn't unheard of from other winning franchises.  How relevant were the Packers after winning the first two super bowls all the way until Brett Favre became a superstar? 

 

I don't think it can be overlooked at how the Redskins won in unconventional ways during their glory years and how big Joe Gibbs was a part of that. None of the 3 Superbowls happened with an established can't-miss QB. I suppose Theismann was the closest to that, but Gibbs never had the benefit of a Montana or Elway or Brady.  If he had that caliber of QB on the roster at any point during his run, can you imagine?

[Darth Tater]

On 4/15/2018 at 12:20 PM, hail2skins said:

How did Bobby do drafting-wise with the Dolphins before he came to the Skins? Or in San Diego afterward?

From a pure resume standpoint, 1978 Bobby was pretty much what a 1989 Casserley was but had never been a major player in building a winner (from a personnel stand point, CC was the main person responsible for the replacement players).  Beathard joined the Dolphins as Director of Player Personnel in 1972.  While the Phins did win the next two SB, the team that did so pretty much had the players in place and at most only needed the seasoning that would have been the responsibility of Shula and his staff. He never really had good drafts there though interestingly he did make his first Redskins pick while there (Karl Lorch) and the great backup QB, Don Strock.

 

[Darth Tater]

21 hours ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

I think Jimmy Johnson's two advantages were largely timing.

 

1. He knew where the game was headed in terms of speed being the key at every position. 2/3 of the league seemed shocked by the transition that he spearheaded. Once every caught up, that advantage was gone. (Sort of like what happened with OPS in baseball. Once everyone started using it, no one had an advantage).

 

2. To go with #1, he had recruited or tried to recruit or coached or coached against everyone he drafted during his years with the Cowboys. And unlike someone like Spurrier, he knew which players could make it in the pros and which were strictly college guys. (Not that he was perfect, he did spend a #1 pick on Steve Walsh because he thought he would be better than Aikman).

 

Again, once he lost that knowledge of the players, he was just another coach. He certainly didn't reinvent football with the Dolphins.

You could also argue that the Redskins, Giants and Eagles all pretty much were starting to go down hill.  There was also Walker trade. Since 1996, with a few exceptions, Dallas has pretty much only been high-end mediocre since then and suffered their worst period of suck (the Campo era) since they were a new franchise.

[Stefanskins]

19 hours ago, Darth Tater said:

Raiders one is not one I like to remember

lol true...still breaks my heart every time i see that allen run...HTTR!!!