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Rank the Skins' head coaches over the last 25 years


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27 minutes ago, Califan007 said:

Starting with Pettibone and ending with Gruden, rank the Redskins' head coaches from best to worst.

 

Then go grab a bottle of Jack cuz you're gonna need it afterwards lol...

 

 

Sounds like to me you got to the bottle of Jack first and laughed so hard and forgot to post your rankings.  lol

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37 minutes ago, zskins said:

 

Sounds like to me you got to the bottle of Jack first and laughed so hard and forgot to post your rankings.  lol

 

I'm at the airport actually traveling on business, and was just trying to rank them in my head...the last 5 or so just became a jumble of "jeebus" and I gave up lol...

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I'll try the exercise later, but off the top of my head think a ranking like this is tough because where people rank the respective coaches sometimes correlate to how soon they fell after the Gibbs 1 era.

 

For instance, Norv and Jay might be the closest comps, but Jay is probably given more slack due to being here after a 20 year period of crap while Norv came after the best 20 year run in franchise history.

 

Gibbs himself is tricky because no matter how people try, his first stint is always factored into the rankings, and he is either judged based on the high expectations from Gibbs 1 or given slack because of the accomplishments of Gibbs 1.

 

Shanny might be the most disappointing, due largely in part to his successful stint in Denver. I know he took over from the Zorn dumpster fire, but I personally expected more than 11-21 the first two years.

 

Zorn and Spurrier? Tough for me to like Spurrier mailing it in from the golf course....seems like Zorn's eff it came from management pressure. Does Spurrier's book from a couple years ago have any interesting nuggets on his Skins tenure.

 

Richie and Marty were only both here one year and it's tough to say how things would've turned out.

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Nice post...

 

I've said for a couple years now that Jay is most like Norv. And I mean it as a positive! That was the last time we truly tried to build a roster the right way with an up-and-coming head coach. Norv wasn't capable of getting us over that proverbial hump, but I think Jay has more of an alpha personality so I hope that's where they differ just a bit. 

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1. Gibbs (Two playoff appearances, one playoff win in four years. Whoop-dee-doo, but better than the guys that will follow)

2. Gruden (good offensive mind and not a complete lunatic) 

3. Marty (Tough to watch, but 0-5 to 8-8 is a good sign. See Gibbs I)

4. Petitbon (think he would've improved if given the opportunity. He gets the nod here for his defensive genius)

5. Shanahan (only here because of what he did with RG3)

6. Turner (will never forget when he got fired and a Cowboy fan wrote on a message board: "Norv, this is Jerry Jones. Operation Butt **** complete. Return to base.")

7. Spurrier (at least there were some laughs)

8. Robiskie (ya'll forgot him, didn't ya? "I'm goin' to Dallas.")

9. Zorn (kindly lunatic)

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1. Gruden

2. Gibbs (picked the wrong QB)

3. Shanahan (inherited you know who)

4. Schott (8-8 so he's halfway on this list)

5. Zorn (he at least tried)

6. Petitbon (just one year... who knows)

7. Spurrier (knew earlier he could care less)

8. Turner (yawn... boring... '90s version of Bill Austin)

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2 hours ago, sundancer91 said:

I would swap 3 & 5 Norv doesn't deserve that high and shoty was heading in the right direction just was not given enough time

 

it's hard to tell what direction you're heading in off one season

 

1 hour ago, TD_washingtonredskins said:

Here's my attempt: 

 

1. Joe Gibbs - I love the man, but this is more by default

2. Jay Gruden

3. Norv Turner

4. Marty Schottenheimer

5. Mike Shanahan 

6. Steve Spurrier

7. Richie Petibon

8. Jim Zorn 

 

Man, Spurrier didn't even want to put out the effort to be a real NFL coach and Zorn had a 500 season, how can you put Spurrier any place but last?

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17 minutes ago, carex said:

 

it's hard to tell what direction you're heading in off one season

 

 

Man, Spurrier didn't even want to put out the effort to be a real NFL coach and Zorn had a 500 season, how can you put Spurrier any place but last?

 

Just my take...I think he had the aptitude to be a head coach. I don't think Zorn did. I respect Zorn's work ethic more, for sure. But, properly motivated, I think Spurrier could have succeeded in the NFL. 

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Spurrier and Zorn both sucked, but Spurrier's two years seemed relatively drama-free. Zorn's tenure seemed fuil of drama, from the cluster of a process that led to him being selected to HC, to his tiff with Portis late in the '08 season, to the bingo-caller emasculation in '09.

 

Not to mention Snyder's drunken flight out to Denver to get Shanny after we lost to Detroit in '09...….say, was Crown Royal one of the symbols of the Snyder Reign of Error in the other thread?

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For all you assholes putting Petitbon below Zorn or Spurrier, let me point out something to you:

NOONE could have won anything with the roster Petitbon inherited. The Redskins pre-cap era 1992 salary level was 40% higher than the newly instituted salary cap, and JKC was the only owner who voted against it. Casserly had screwed the pooch in the draft after he took over, and by his own admission, he was completely unprepared for the salary cap, which kicked in in Petitbon's first and only year. He was left with a depleted aging roster that was crushed by injuries on top of that.

 

He did screw up royally by making Rod Dowhower the offensive coordinator, and with that trying to remake the Skins offense into a WCO...but he still won one more game than Norvo the Clown won the next year. They should have fired Casserly and given Petitbon another year.

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56 minutes ago, hail2skins said:

Spurrier and Zorn both sucked, but Spurrier's two years seemed relatively drama-free. Zorn's tenure seemed fuil of drama, from the cluster of a process that led to him being selected to HC, to his tiff with Portis late in the '08 season, to the bingo-caller emasculation in '09.

 

Not to mention Snyder's drunken flight out to Denver to get Shanny after we lost to Detroit in '09...….say, was Crown Royal one of the symbols of the Snyder Reign of Error in the other thread?

 

Well, Spurrier did want to start Shane Matthews or Danney Wuerrful when we'd spent a first round pick on Patrick Ramsey.  He put his entire playbook in on a preseason opener, he replaced Stephen Davis with Trung Candidate, he never did anything to improve the OL, I think our Gs were absolute no ones and when teams dealt with his Fun and Gun offense by rushing more defenders than there were blockers he said that the team needed to coach them up instead of adjusting to deal with it.  And this was all stuff that he was called on

 

48 minutes ago, Riggo-toni said:

For all you assholes putting Petitbon below Zorn or Spurrier, let me point out something to you:

NOONE could have won anything with the roster Petitbon inherited. The Redskins pre-cap era 1992 salary level was 40% higher than the newly instituted salary cap, and JKC was the only owner who voted against it. Casserly had screwed the pooch in the draft after he took over, and by his own admission, he was completely unprepared for the salary cap, which kicked in in Petitbon's first and only year. He was left with a depleted aging roster that was crushed by injuries on top of that.

 

He did screw up royally by making Rod Dowhower the offensive coordinator, and with that trying to remake the Skins offense into a WCO...but he still won one more game than Norvo the Clown won the next year. They should have fired Casserly and given Petitbon another year.

 

our 93 team was blown out numerous times, but it also blew out the Cowboys in the opener and seven of it's losses were by one score, and the draft that year was solid with Tom Carter, Reggie Brooks, Sterling Palmer and Frank Wycheck

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I'd actually forgotten about Schottenheimer.  IMO, he was getting it together here and got the rawest deal of the bunch.  That was peak Snyder meddling, firing a guy who turned a team around after a bad start so he could bring in Spurrier.  If you had to pick one Snyder move that you could say defines him, that might be the one.

 

Honestly, I think if Schottenheimer was left to his devices and if Snyder keeps his hands off we'd have had a much better start to the 00s.  He turned that team around and looking at the roster now, it pretty much sucked.  That team got blown the hell out the first four games of the season.  I remember they'd lost their first 5 but didn't remember them getting decimated like they did.  Gets it back to 5-5, wins 8 out of his last 11 and Snyder doesn't bring him back?  Ridiculous.  Went on to coach some really good Chargers teams.  I think that guy really knew what he was doing.

 

 

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It’s 1) Jay Gruden and 2) Joe Gibbs for me. I think that’s the most interesting part of this discussion, which one of those guys did better (no offense to @Califan007, very neat, albeit a bit depressing, thread idea in general). And it’s really more 1a and 1b to me. 

 

It’s very hard to remove coaches from their environment. Gibbs was also Team President, so he gets a share in the roster issues while Jay is just the HC and can/has been overridden a significant amount of the time. 

 

Everyone else was whatever and I don’t think they were set up for any semblance of success anyway by the FO structure. It’s all varying degrees of disastrous organizational issues affecting them while they failed to overcome. That goes for the two above, as well, but they managed to overcome it better to some degree (and again, Gibbs had more control but also had a very involved Snyder as well as the brilliant Vinny to share thoughts with, lol). 

 

The reason why I give Jay the nod is because of the development of younger players under him, which is harder to do. Gibbs, on the other hand, had a roster of mostly veterans they overspent in FA or traded draft picks to acquire, generally going for more of the quick fix. 

 

Outside of that, I think an argument can be made either way. Gibbs had two playoff runs and one playoff win in four years, so that’s better than Jay. Gruden developed a legit franchise QB, so that’s better than Joe. Jay’s offense has been infinitely better and more creative than anything we had under Joe, while Joe’s defense under Gregg Williams was excellent at times (we’ll just ignore 2006 here) and far better than anything under Jay. 

 

I could be swayed either way, really. But, yeah, when it comes to coaching, I place more emphasis on their ability to teach than to scheme. And when you’ve got as many young guys developing as we’ve had under Jay, I’ve got to lean that way. Doesn’t mean Joe wouldn’t have won out there had he been operating within a more traditional structure and had a personnel guy running that side of things, but alas, we didn’t see that. 

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