Burgold

Oh BS. Jay Gruden is the Head Coach. He takes the credit and the blame. From the beginning of organized sports that's the way it has been and it has often been unfair. Yes, we can give him asterisks for Bruce Allen, for injuries, for the NFL's nefarious scheduling ploys like giving us a week three bye or the timing of giving us team after team who play us after their break when we had a short week. All of that is true. It doesn't matter. He's had five years to get it right. Bruce Allen has had nine years to get it right. Neither has. It isn't really all that close. Hell, the offense has for the entire season looked terrible, worse than a rookie head coach with an expansion squad. On defense, one defensive back's injury and one offensive adjustment made the defense go from first to worst. I'm kind of done with excuses. Jay and Bruce have both failed. Hell, the team is barely even willing to practice for Jay. That's an incredible indictment of his leadership since his top quality is supposed to be he's a player's coach.

See, I don't give Jay a pass for the defense sucking. It's his defense. He sets the tone for the whole team. He's the Head Coach. If he's tired of the hyper passive defenses, then all he has to do is go over and swat the d coordinator in the head... or he gets to fire him and get someone who can install the defense the way he wants it. Jay isn't just the O coordinator. He's responsible for the success and failure of every part of this team. He's the guy who chose Haslett, Barry, Manusky (if he's not the guy he should have walked or made himself the guy.) The Redskins defense is as easy and affable as Jay. He kept Haslett for two years. He kept Barry for two years. He thought the league's worst defense merited a hire from within. At first, this season, I thought Manusky was doing great and he was. Credit went to Jay. Then, once it was exposed, there was no ability to address, change up, or mask the deficiency and they went from one of the best defenses in the NFL to one of the worst. That fall from grace falls on Manusky, but it also falls on Gruden who hired him despite his so-so history as a DC in SF.

I disagree. Gibbs made it to the playoffs twice. Gruden only did it once. Gibbs won a playoff game. Gruden never did. Gibbs had Cerrato while Gruden had Allen. Gibbs had a ten win season. Gruden topped out at 9-7. Gibbs, ten years removed from football, still outclassed Gruden by a far margin.

Except being out of position and taking bad angles could be a symptom of not knowing the scheme well enough of needing to think through steps and responsibilities instead of reacting. So, I still put Clinton-Dix's woes more on the trade and the wrongful choice to get him than on Ha Ha himself. Then again, I'm quibbling. It's probably both... and, in fairness, by now, I expect you are right, he should have had time to acclimate. We should have seen a large jump in efficiency.

I actually don't blame Ha Ha at all. I think that free safety is one of the more variable roles in the defense. You have to completely understand the scheme, every players' role, how the defense adjusts to any given call, etc. So, how does one do that midseason? It's more than knowing the call or the play. It's knowing everything and what every single player is doing. I suspect in some ways, it might even be harder than being an incoming QB because the role is so reactive. If I'm right about this, then the problem isn't Ha Ha. It's that it was a dumb trade. Sure, it's an upgrade in talent that would work in Madden, but Madden and reality just aren't the same.

The genius of Gibbs is he could adapt. He could take 48 scabs off the street and beat a Superbowl-contender like the Dallas Cowboys. Yeah, Gruden is playing a bad hand... again, but he ain't playing to his hand's strengths and his hand does have strengths. Every hand does, even if it's just the ability to bluff.

Entirely fair.

I don't know that I agree with that. The Vikings didn't really need a guy to play way over his head and at that much a higher level than last year. They are good enough, deep enough, and talented enough on both sides that they Kirk just had to be good. With that much talent, he didn't have to be a QB god for Minnesota to succeed. If the Vikings do not make it into the playoffs that team failed this year. They have become a worse team. We can argue about the degree to which Kirk is to blame for that decline, but just as the Ravens fell apart when they let Trent Dilfer leave... the Vikings, for this season, seem to have taken several steps back with the addition of Kirk Cousins.

I'd say when players on the brink of losing out on the playoffs resist their head coach asking for an additional practice, they have stopped listening and believing. Maybe we see one last hurrah of effort next week, but if there was a win one for the Gipper moment on offense, you would have thought that would have shown up last week. I do think the defense rallied at the top of the game, but their spirit broke after Sanchez threw that interception and once the dam let go... the whole thing fell down.

Fair. I also think it's because Allen has exhausted his benefit of the doubt. People want to be angry with him. So, even if he's right (and I actually think he was almost entirely wrong. He and Cousins made a wager after the first franchise tag. Cousins won and the 'skins should have paid up.) people want to see him hang.

I've been thinking a lot about the Bryce Harper situation when it comes to Kirk Cousins in recent weeks. It's really interesting to me. For years, the Nationals have said that they are going to try to keep him and Bryce mostly kept his mouth shut, but when really pressed said how much he liked playing in Washington, but no one ever really expected him to sign. Just before the baseball signing period, the Nationals "lowballed" Harper with a 300 million dollar/ 30m per year contract (why couldn't I have become a major leaguer!!!) Neither side expected the other to sign it. Harper's agent never even presented a counter offer as far as I know. Come the signing period, the Nats sign Suzuki, Corbin, and a bunch of other players who are not Bryce Harper and pretty much admit that they have spent so much money on these other free agents that they couldn't sign Bryce to the 300m deal the offered him even if Harper changed his mind. So, the Bryce Harper era ends in DC. Sounds a lot like the Kirk Cousins situation to me. The big difference is how the city and MLB fans seem to take the departure. Most are praising the Nats while lauding Harper. No one is really complaining how the Nats got nothing in return for Harper and how they should have traded him two years ago or last year if they knew they couldn't re-sign him. No one's griping about not getting compensation despite MLB being a much more trade-based sport than the NFL. So, while I hear and agree with the complaint that we should have traded Cousins and got something for him I am left wondering why this is not the prevalent thought when it comes to Bryce? Maybe it's because the Nats while underachieving have also been winning? Maybe it's because everyone thinks that the Nats have an A+ Front Office and that they did everything with a plan? Maybe it's just cause Redskins fans and NFL fans are used to jeering the Redskins for being stupid and so look at everything the team does through an unflattering lens. Personally, once that insanely offensive and stupid letter from Bruce Allen was released throwing Kirk and his agent under the bus for not negotiating and trying to make them look like villains, I would have done everything in my power to trade Cousins because at that point Allen burned a bridge. He was monumentally stupid in trying save face. That said, it is different how caught up we are on the idea of compensation and how differently we view the Bryce Harper and Kirk Cousins situation. (I've been debating whether this ought to be its own thread, but I'll leave it here.) Decided to put a cleaned up version on my blog https://andrewhiller.net/2018/12/11/fan-reaction-bryce-harper-vs-kirk-cousins/

Yeah, it felt like the refs were piling on. The flags probably mostly deserved to be thrown, but there were some where the infraction clearly didn't impact the play and the Redskins were so bad yesterday that you'd think a modicum of mercy would have been warranted. Instead, the refs eagerly heaped salt all over the open wounds. If Doctson's catch rate is 59.1%, he may be ahead of the game. After all, he's our 50/50 ball catcher. That means he's plus nine.

I think the solution might be kale. Kale, Broccoli, fish... anything with calcium in it. I think the Redskins are vitamin deficient. I'm kidding. I'm not sure I'm kidding. I do think the problem is multiple. I think endurance based. I think people get hurt more when they get tired. I think we focus too much on weight training and not on agility training and quickness. I suspect nutrition plays a part too. I also think I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but there's enough of a consistent problem that it's more than just blind bad luck.

I still think we were a Marty Schottenheimer team. If everything went perfectly and we made no mistakes, we had a shot to win at the end of the game. If we made any mistakes at all, we were ****ed. Problem was, we started not only making mistakes on the offensive end, but then the wheels fell off the defense. For a team built to win razor tight games and out tough the opponent, we didn't have a chance once the discipline fell apart and the mistakes started getting made (and not fixed or even addressed)

Here we agree. The moment I saw that CYA letter I thought, That bridge is blown. How in the world can that relationship ever be repaired. And clearly, it never was. It's just a stupid move. The NFL is a small world. Reputations and relationships matter. Bruce Allen tried to win a skirmish and not only wound up losing the battle, but in all liklihood the war. You, or someone else, mentioned how disliked Bruce Allen is around the league: Agents, other GMs, etc. Well, acts like that either cause that hate or go along way towards reinforcing it. You can occassionally go to the Woe is me! I've been wronged! well, but it's really best if people come to that conclusion. After all, no one likes whiners. More, no one likes people who complain that the world is out to get them when clearly everything happening to them is 75% their own fault. But aside from all the bad moves, this reputation thing (if true) really does matter because it means that unless Bruce is willing to overpay no one wants to deal with him or work with him. I suspect that the bad rep thing is somewhat exaggerated, but I also think there is way more than an ounce of truth to it. And if it's at all true, it's a very strong reason to excise him from the organization. Edit: The irony of this chain of thinking is one of the big pluses of Allen was that he was supposed to have mended fences between our vets and players of the past. He was bringing the alienated Gibbs and Allen players back into the fold after years of alienation. His strength was supposed to be his PR skills and his diplomatic prowess.