The Bruce Allen/GM Thread

[skins island connection]

13 hours ago, Dissident2 said:

 

I think it does - or CAN - because many more people now fully realize how futile ANYTHING we do is going to be until the current structure drastically changes. That should be the only focus. 

 

Again, it's like painting your house when it's crumbling at the foundation. FIX THE FOUNDATION FIRST, then we can feel comfortable enough to appreciate the paint job. 

 

People act like there's something "special" about this fan base and its current negativity, when it's just obvious human nature. Kick someone in the balls over and over and over and over again, and that person is going to eventually be full of understandable anger toward you. And they may not be in a mood to thank you when you randomly toss 'em a quarter for their troubles. In fact, they may still think you're a scumbag. 

 

 Dan and Allen want to call 'House Movers -R-Us' and take this ****ed foundation of a house to another piece of land.

Unfortunately I'm getting this horrible vibe that Bruce will be here for next season, and that will be another year of him 'digging in' even closer to Snyder; they may as well get married at this point because its not only Bruce's head that everyone is calling for, now Snyder's has been tossed into the mix, and understandably so.

 

Everyone knows that fans { most of them } don't have the inside info that FO personnel have and at times can blindly lash out at someone in the organization or team because of a situation that had happened. In this case, even if all of the information still is not available to the fans, they have it right regarding Bruce Allen.  All of the smoke surrounding this organization, there has to be a fire or 2, but Bruce is using this smoke to his advantage, blinding Snyder from the obvious, to the point that now the fans who support this broken franchise are now categorizing Snyder on the same level as Allen.

 

A crappy owner? I can live with it; I have to. But a crappy GM / VP / President / Whatever his title is this week / pitiful excuse for a FO person that Bruce Allen is, no. 

There is only 1 path, 1 path, that Snyder can take to save face, and that is removing Bruce Allen from this organization on every level; I don't want to see his ugly mug or name on toilet paper in the locker room, he has to be completely whitewashed, bleached, sterilized, and forgotten about regarding this organization.

Anything less is incompetence and a waste of time and a slap to the face of every single fan. We've been slapped enough. Its time to move on.

[Bang]

I don't think Bruce is going anywhere and I very much doubt Dan will ever sell. In fact, i much more think Dan is a dick and would keep the team just to spite everyone if it came right down to it.

I would be surprised if we saw much change to the coaching staff too.

I kind of want to let Gruden have next year, but i'd be happy to be wrong about Allen.

 

~Bang

[KDawg]

Forget the political stuff.

 

One of my biggest issues with Allen is the hill that the Skins FO has chosen to die on in the strategy department.

 

They value talent and cost over all else. Which I always believe both of those things need to be a focal point in any signing. But the problem is that in order to get that talent and the contract where they want it, they sign injury prone players to mostly fair contracts. The Skins have managed to stockpile a ton of talent that way. Which is great...

 

But when all of that injury prone talent is injured, and you have 24 guys on IR and you wind up with the 77th to 80th player on your roster being forced to play that top end talent is useless.

 

Best ability is... avail.

 

I actually don't think Allen/Gruden/whoever are bad talent evaluators, believe it or not. I mean... they miss at times but who doesn't? Aside from Bibbs I'm indifferent on a lot of the talent moves.

 

Signing injury prone players is a great strategy... if those players turn around and aren't injury prone. That is one hell of a gamble. And so far it hasn't worked. Even a little.

[Skinsinparadise]

 

I was guilty of liking what I saw from Richardson in Seattle in the FA thread but also said that dude has been injured his whole career (2 ACL tears plus) aside from one season so hopefully we get lucky on that count -- but alas we didn't get lucky.  The idea of bringing back Lauvao even though he hadn't made it through a season in years -- that one was easy to predict let alone not having much depth on the interior if it went down and the consequences from all of that.

 

The long article in the Athletic about the defense which is getting some play on twitter gets into players knowing the depth wasn't there in the secondary this year if a player got hurt.   Plenty including me talked about that in the FA thread -- and shocker one of the CB went down and the secondary struggled from it. 

 

Durability and working the depth behind vulnerable players and units that are often ravaged by injuries isn't this team's forte.  I recall some arguing about how this season will be better than the previous one because of all the guys coming back from injury -- I said back then among others, how do we know that?  And injury prone players coming off of injury can get injured again.  Bruce in one of his rare public statements last off season talked about all the guys coming back from injury as if they have a new crop of FAs and fortifications to the roster.  That mindset needs to change IMO.

[OVCChairman]

6 minutes ago, KDawg said:

Forget the political stuff.

 

One of my biggest issues with Allen is the hill that the Skins FO has chosen to die on in the strategy department.

 

They value talent and cost over all else. Which I always believe both of those things need to be a focal point in any signing. But the problem is that in order to get that talent and the contract where they want it, they sign injury prone players to mostly fair contracts. The Skins have managed to stockpile a ton of talent that way. Which is great...

 

But when all of that injury prone talent is injured, and you have 24 guys on IR and you wind up with the 77th to 80th player on your roster being forced to play that top end talent is useless.

 

Best ability is... avail.

 

I actually don't think Allen/Gruden/whoever are bad talent evaluators, believe it or not. I mean... they miss at times but who doesn't? Aside from Bibbs I'm indifferent on a lot of the talent moves.

 

Signing injury prone players is a great strategy... if those players turn around and aren't injury prone. That is one hell of a gamble. And so far it hasn't worked. Even a little.

 

i have to agree with this.  I dont know if you're a Nats fan, but Anthony Rendon coming out of Rice was a player that fell into our laps because of some injury concern... and he's turned into a should-be All Star who's been in or near the top 10 in the MVP voting twice if my memory serves me correctly.  He's been an outlier, but a solid pick.  Whoever is doing final talent decisions appears to want to find that 'steal' with almost every transaction.  If someone falls inexplicably and the talent is just too much to pass up (See Jonathon Allen) so be it, but to live and die trying to fill a roster with those lucky breaks has doomed us to this type of thing.

[RonArtest15]

I saw someone float the idea around about Dan not wanting to fire Bruce because he feels like Bruce would submarine any potential stadium deal if he was canned.  Made me think, and it does kinda make sense...

[purbeast]

Al Ghaldi hit the nail on the head this morning about the whole Foster issue.

 

It wasn't claiming him off waivers that really was the big deal, it was the ineptitude of the Redskins afterwards that gave them the ****ty PR.

 

They came out and said they had talked to "a number of Alabama players" on the Redskins, and then the 2 or so players that were asked about it said they weren't asked about Foster.

 

Doug Williams came out and said that what Foster did was "small potatoes".

 

Bruce never once took the podium to explain their plans with Foster and instead threw Jay Gruden to the wolves in a press conference answering questions he never should have had to answer, in the middle of a game week while contending for a playoff spot.

 

I'm sure there is even more examples but that is all I can think of right now.  I'm also pretty confident that if Bruce Allen took the podium and said something along the lines of "If Foster is convicted of any legal issues we will part ways with him and he will never take part in any Redskins activities" that things would have been different after all of this.  But of course nothing like that ever happened because this FO is incompetent.

[Riggo#44]

1 hour ago, KDawg said:

I actually don't think Allen/Gruden/whoever are bad talent evaluators, believe it or not.

 

We have done well in the draft in the last couple of years--I believe this is more Kyle Smith. We are terrible at evaluating NFL talent--I believe this is more Allen at al.

[RWJ]

1 hour ago, RonArtest15 said:

I saw someone float the idea around about Dan not wanting to fire Bruce because he feels like Bruce would submarine any potential stadium deal if he was canned.  Made me think, and it does kinda make sense...

Snyder needs to think about filling his current stadium and winning back the fans before he even thinks about a new stadium.  

[Renegade7]

@Bang , you touched on two things in particular that I hope people listen to:

 

1.  There's less then 100k members on Extremeskins, only a fraction of them poster regularly.  On the street, the only time I've ever met someone who had even heard of extremeskins was the redskins store in Potomac Mills over a decade ago, which has since closed. 

 

Passing through Wheeling, WV, I ran into two Redskins fans without even trying. Don't like Bruce, tired of Snyder, but a million times more chill about this then some of y'all are.  None of this "hope they die" crap, and they are still gonna be fans in the way that works best for them.

 

2.  Working IT, we do this thing Incident Response.  It's not called Incident Reaction, its called Incident Response.  To keep from making the situation worse, you absolutely whenever possible have to not overreact to what you see.  Something can be obvious,  but you have to make sure what you are looking at so you can Respond properly. 

 

If someone tells me theres malware on one of websevers that anyone visiting can see (and I've been through this before), I can't just unplug the server while people are using it.  I'm going to turn around say it was a Virtual Machine, but I hope y'all get my point by now, I told my manager about the ticket immediately and that I would try to find it, when I did (and it was literally injected into the HTML code of the page and could be seen in source via any web browser), we went from there.

[Dissident2]

16 minutes ago, RWJ said:

Snyder needs to think about filling his current stadium and winning back the fans before he even thinks about a new stadium.  

 

OR ... maybe he should just forget the stadium altogether and build a theater/pavilion for the remaining 500 fans next season. He could do that anywhere. He could even get local sponsorship and work that into a 4-figure deal. 

 

"Harry's Hoagies Pavilion, Home of the Washington Redskins. Just take a right at the 7-Eleven on Fourth and look for the dirt road on the right. If you pass Paulie's Liquors, you've gone too far." 

 

 

[BatteredFanSyndrome]

11 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

Passing through Wheeling, WV, I ran into two Redskins fans without even trying. Don't like Bruce, tired of Snyder, but a million times more chill about this then some of y'all are.  None of this "hope they due" crap, and they are still gonna be fans in the way that works best for them.

We must remember that this is an Internet forum.  Rarely if ever do conversations take place in real life as they do on the internet, thankfully.  Most everyone in my neighborhood or that sees me drive by would have no idea the disdain that I have for Dan and Bruce.  When I run into Skins fans at the grocery store, I’m not going into great detail about the inner workings of the FO.  I doubt anyone is.  These forums are for folks that care about this stuff way too much, for better or worse.  ExtremeSkins is very fitting for that very reason.

[FrFan]

 

[Fletch1]

Dan going in open-mouthed, aint he?

[Skinarchy]

18 minutes ago, FrFan said:

 

 

 

18 minutes ago, FrFan said:

 

 

 

[Renegade7]

42 minutes ago, BatteredFanSyndrome said:

 ExtremeSkins is very fitting for that very reason.

 

Absolutely.  It's not like we haven't met people as crazy as we are on the street, but we should all try to keep this in context best we can.  

[Bang]

1 hour ago, Renegade7 said:

@Bang , you touched on two things in particular that I hope people listen to:

 

1.  There's less then 100k members on Extremeskins, only a fraction of them poster regularly.  On the street, the only time I've ever met someone who had even heard of extremeskins was the redskins store in Potomac Mills over a decade ago, which has since closed. 

 

Passing through Wheeling, WV, I ran into two Redskins fans without even trying. Don't like Bruce, tired of Snyder, but a million times more chill about this then some of y'all are.  None of this "hope they due" crap, and they are still gonna be fans in the way that works best for them.

 

2.  Working IT, we do this thing Incident Response.  It's not called Incident Reaction, its called Incident Response.  To keep from making the situation worse, you absolutely whenever possible have to not overreact to what you see.  Something can be obvious,  but you have to make sure what you are looking at so you can Respond properly. 

 

If someone tells me theres malware on one of websevers that anyone visiting can see (and I've been through this before), I can't just unplug the server while people are using it.  I'm going to turn around say it was a Virtual Machine, but I hope y'all get my point by now, I told my manager about the ticket immediately and that I would try to find it, when I did (and it was literally injected into the HTML code of the page and could be seen in source via any web browser), we went from there.

 

Personally, i have always been mildly surprised that in 15 years i have never run into anyone from this site other than tailgates. You'd think maybe once..  and i hope i am not malware 🕷️
Most of my interaction with the fan base outside of this group is in either casual conversation with people out in the real world, and various social media outlets.
This summer i got so tired of the politics all over facebook that i just signed on to a ton of redskins and NFL boards ..  it did drown out the politics, but i found a lot of it isn't much different in the eternal entrenchments, fly by posts, and just general flaming out hysterically over every single little thing there is. Most simply react, and very predictably. (I'm only on two of them anymore. Redskins Rally, and HAIL. Not bad pages for discussion.)

In those arenas, i've watched a much larger group than our little crew here... and it's nearly impossible to carry on any discussions about anything football without it indstantly being "Fire this, and Fire that!... which, while agreeable, isn't really part of the discussion when trying to talk about what to do at QB, for example. "Kill Dan or nothing changes!" doesn't discuss the topic, and it's all many are capable of anymore.
I have long felt that the talk media in this town has gained too much joy out of over-reacting to everything.  I think this is where I am getting my opinion that the fan base as an amorphous whole has become completely reactionary, and always carries the incident out to the worst that it could possibly be.

I know some folks are put off by my stance on these things, but i watch football to watch football. And part of that is good and bad, and gassing with each other on all those things.. but for me it's about football. It's not that I don't care if a player is a criminal, it's more along the lines of waiting to see what's what before condemning everything, and assigning maybe some degree to the incident's levels of anger. I am not telling anyone not to be angry at the state of the team. But nobody is firing Dan, so to me that becomes a question of either staying or leaving, and if 'fire dan' is all a person can think, maybe leaving is best, because it's a pointless point in most discussions. Nothing any of us or anyone else can do will force him out. We can hope the NFL does, but don't hold your breath.

 

~Bang

 

[kleese]

2 minutes ago, Bang said:

 

Personally, i have always been mildly surprised that in 15 years i have never run into anyone from this site other than tailgates. You'd think maybe once..  and i hope i am not malware 🕷️
Most of my interaction with the fan base outside of this group is in either casual conversation with people out in the real world, and various social media outlets.
This summer i got so tired of the politics all over facebook that i just signed on to a ton of redskins and NFL boards ..  it did drown out the politics, but i found a lot of it isn't much different in the eternal entrenchments, fly by posts, and just general flaming out hysterically over every single little thing there is. Most simply react, and very predictably. (I'm only on two of them anymore. Redskins Rally, and HAIL. Not bad pages for discussion.)

In those arenas, i've watched a much larger group than our little crew here... and I have long felt that the talk media in this town has long since gained too much joy out of over-reacting to everything.  I think this is where I am getting my opinion that the fan base as an amorphous whole has become completely reactionary, and always carries the incident out to the worst that it could possibly be.

I know some folks are put off by my stance on these things, but i watch this to watch football. And part of that is good and bad, and gassing with each other on all those things.. but for me it's about football. It's not that I don't care if a player is a criminal, it's more along the lines of waiting to see what's what before condemning everything, and assigning maybe some degree to the incident's levels of anger.

 

~Bang

 

 

I'll take it a step further and more or less admit, that no, I don't care about the off-field stuff. I really don't. Yes, there could be extreme examples where I'd draw a line... I wouldn't want Jerry Sandusky on my staff or Aaron Hernandez or Rae Carruth on my team. Of course, there are certain heinous off-field acts where i would't want someone on my team regardless of what they could do on the sidelines/field. But in 95% of these cases, I really don't care. Can they play? Will they disrupt team chemistry? Those are really the only questions that matter to me. Now, someone might turn around and say, "Oh you don't care about domestic violence??" And that's a very dramatic response. Yes, personally I care, but I am not choosing a life partner or best friend here-- this is just a football team I follow. I don't know ANY of these dudes, so I'll just keep it arms length and let the authorities or whatever higher being you do or don't believe in let sort it all out. For me, I just don't like moving the moral goal posts-- it's a slippery slope. Sure, if you come from a home that experienced domestic violence, it's probably a real personal issue for you. I understand that. But that might be a big issue for you whereas drug abuse isn't. But what if someone else lost a loved one to drug violence or an overdose? What if they don't want a guy who has ever had a DUI or marijuana charge? You may say "well, that's not as bad as X, Y, Z..." but now you are projecting your own moral compass to others. 

 

I would absolutely investigate signing Kareem Hunt this off-season. I'm not saying I wouldn't do it without some investigation. I'd dig a little and see if there are other skeletons in closet or if there is any sort of pattern. The dude is a very explosive player and he's young. He can help almost any team. And because of this incident his price tag has been drastically reduced compared to if he was just a FA without any baggage. Now, for the Redskins in particular knowing how they mismanage basically every situation, I understand fans wanted them to tread more lightly, but in general, I want football players that can play. And if their off-field mistakes create an opportunity for us to sign them when otherwise we wouldn't get the chance, well I say that sounds like a pretty good deal. 

[HardcoreZorn]

4 hours ago, FrFan said:

You lost me right there.

 

The only toxicity comes from Snyder and his minion BA, the fans abide by Newton's third law and we can't blame them imo.

Bruce is that you ?

What you and others can't seem to wrap your mind around is the two are not mutually exclusive.

[BatteredFanSyndrome]

An argument I’ve seen more than a few times is “Dan isn’t leaving, so you might as well leave”.  On its face, I get it.  But it’s deeper than that.  I think anyone who is still here giving enough of a crap to post regularly and watch the games every weekend is more than aware that Dan is going to outlive them and most likely own the team for the rest of our entire lives.  I don’t think any of us are under the illusion that he’s going to become self aware and competent overnight.  The hope is that eventually he may “luck out” on a Team President/GM capable of keeping him at bay and building a winning organization and culture.  It’s honestly too late to for most of us to ever root for Dan Snyder.  I don’t think there is anything he can do short of apologize profusely, acknowledge his hand in why fans feel the way they do, and show it’s authentic in the actions he takes from that point forward.  That’s asking a lot and I never see that happening.  But what we can hope for is that he eventually gets lucky on choosing a right hand man with the talent and experience required for building a strong organization that starts with him and trickles down through everything else.  

[kleese]

4 minutes ago, BatteredFanSyndrome said:

An argument I’ve seen more than a few times is “Dan isn’t leaving, so you might as well leave”.  On its face, I get it.  But it’s deeper than that.  I think anyone who is still here giving enough of a crap to post regularly and watch the games every weekend is more than aware that Dan is going to outlive them and most likely own the team for the rest of our entire lives.  I don’t think any of are under the illusion that he’s going to become self aware and competent overnight.  The hope is that eventually he may “luck out” on a Team President/GM capable of keeping him at bay and building a winning organization and culture.  It’s honestly too late to for most of us to ever root for Dan Snyder.  I don’t think there is anything he can do short of apologize profusely, acknowledge his hand in why fans feel the way they do, and show it’s authentic in the actions he takes from that point forward.  That’s asking a lot and I never see that happening.  But what we can hope for is that he eventually gets lucky on choosing a right hand man with the talent and experience required for building a strong organization that starts with him and trickles down through everything else.  

 

This is exactly how I feel. I don't hate Dan though. I have no venom towards him. I don't know him. At all. I save any venom I have in life for people who have earned it from me personally. I don't REALLY know if he's a good guy, bad guy, in-between guy, evil guy, etc.. Where there is smoke there is fire, so I'd say he probably leans to the "bad" side, but again, I don't know. What I DO know is that he isn't good at this. That is clear. I think he started off as way too hands on, then went hands more off, but still wanted to be pals with players, and now has basically gone into hiding and isn't much of a presence at all.... in the end they've all led to failures in different ways. I think he's tried, I really do. I also think he is incredibly insecure and uncomfortable in front of fans/media. I do believe he wants to win-- and I don't think it's all about the bottom line for him. I think if you told him right now the Redskins would win the next Three SB's but he'd lose money each year, it's a trade he'd gladly take. Gladly. But I don't think he has ANY management or leadership skills. He also appears to be terrible at judging people and knowing how to manage their roles In other words, he is just a really, really bad sports owner-- even if his intentions aren't necessarily evil or self-serving.

 

But yes, like you said, anyone can get lucky. I think we need to get lucky on one of three fronts: GM, Head Coach, or QB. We need at least ONE of those guys to come along and be special-- a Hall of Fame type of guy. We probably won't identify them on purpose-- more just luck and chance. I do think if you get a guy like that in place that is basically a no-doubter that Dan would be smart enough not to mess it up-- at least for awhile. 

[Califan007 The Constipated]

18 hours ago, Bang said:

Whether or not it lands us on the cover of Squeaky Clean magazine is none of my concern.

 

 

Wait..they have that?

[Skinsinparadise]

 

 

[hailmary]

7 minutes ago, Skinsinparadise said:

 

 

Louis Riddick?

[OVCChairman]

17 minutes ago, hailmary said:

Louis Riddick?

 

 

As happy as this would make me, i highly doubt he is given what he needs in order to be successful...