Boswell:A $10 Million Mistake

[TK]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42926-2003Dec30.html

A $10 Million Mistake

By Thomas Boswell

Wednesday, December 31, 2003; Page D01

Nobody, except perhaps Michael Jordan, ever arrived in this town riding higher, or left with his hopes more completely dashed, than Steve Spurrier.

The day Spurrier came to Washington as Redskins coach, he was asked his favorite play. "Touchdown," he flashed back.

As soon as he landed, Spurrier promised to give owner Dan Snyder a game ball after the Redskins beat Dallas, compared his coaching style to Joe Gibbs ("somewhat similar") and talked about how he expected to "hang out at the top" of the NFL every year so he could please his boss. Spurrier was cornpone bravado squared.

"Hopefully, my departure will be like Joe Gibbs," Spurrier said that first day. "I admire coaches who walk out on their own terms."

Spurrier certainly walked out. And on his own terms, if you want to call it that. On Sunday, he discussed his plans for next season in detail. Two days later, he quit, delivering the news through his agent while he played golf. So long. Thanks for the $10 million for a 12-20 record. Takin' a sabbatical. Somebody else can clean up my mess.

That's not quite how Gibbs did it.

Actually, for a few bizarre minutes, Spurrier even tried to audible out of his own resignation. Reached on his cell phone by The Post's Mark Maske, Spurrier said he hadn't resigned. Later, Spurrier explained that the batteries to his cell phone had gone dead, so he didn't know whether his agent had actually delivered his "I quit" message yet. In other words, Spurrier was in the dark. What else is new?

When you're such a clueless rube that you want to phone in your resignation from a golf course, at least charge your batteries.

Spurrier arrived with critics. But he left surrounded mostly by pity, not animosity. Except Lou Holtz, perhaps no great college coach has looked so lost. He paid little or no attention to defense and special teams. On the sideline, he barely interacted with his players, except quarterbacks and wide receivers. His only rule was a small fine for cursing in practice. So his players didn't cuss. Instead, they didn't stay onsides, remember assignments, come to meetings on time or turn off their cell phones when coaches were talking to them. Nice tradeoff.

In the final analysis, Spurrier was a nice man with fascinating, idiosyncratic ideas about football who, after years of adulation, came to believe his own hype. He didn't know he was the king of the bush leagues. His open disrespect for the NFL was based in ignorance, not brilliance. That brashness helped land him a $5 million annual salary. But it didn't help him connect with the rich, sometimes spoiled or stubborn adults in his locker room. And his notions about "sandlot" ball translating to the NFL left him naked against the ruthless workaholic likes of Bill Parcells.

Who knew? Oh, many of us suspected from the first day that the NFL might have as much, or more, to teach Spurrier than he had to teach it. But whoever dreamed that a legend at one level of the game could be such a lightweight in the big leagues? Very few.

If, at some point in his career, Spurrier had just spent a few years as an NFL assistant, an offensive coordinator, it might have saved him. Maybe he could have attached his genuine innovations to a core understanding of the NFL game. For two years, Spurrier floated on top of his problems, never truly acknowledging or addressing them. A Redskins source predicted that, if Spurrier quit, he'd just drop the bomb by long-distance phone because "he doesn't like confrontation."

By the end, Spurrier seemed entirely stripped of his football self-confidence. On his first Redskins day, he said, "I need to learn a lot, but I did bring a playbook. We can run all day or we can scatter out and pitch it. We're very capable of having a big year next season." On his last day, he said, "There were some teams worse than us. I guess that's one positive way to look at it. We weren't the worst team in the league."

Maybe he feared that distinction next season. No team needs, or should want, a coach as beaten as Spurrier was when "not the worst team in the league" sounded like consolation to him. Still, it's rare to see any renowned coach ditch a job when the person who hired him still wants him to stay. Doesn't that $10 million in your pocket obligate you to stay if you're asked?

The Redskins are now a weird blend of NFL travesty and calamity. Any serious description of the Redskins fails to do justice to their entertainment value as a comedy of egos. However, anything that reduces them to caricature fails to account for all the true embarrassment, pain and damage done to Spurrier himself, as well as Snyder and his whole organization.

For the honor of giving Spurrier two years to experiment with his Fun 'n' Done offense, the Redskins paid a huge price. They fired a proven, dignified old pro, Marty Schottenheimer, who'd won eight of his last 11 games. When Marty was canned, he knew the NFL ropes, knew what constituted class in his profession. He squared his shoulders, answered every question and left the air clear behind him so Spurrier could start fresh. Give Spurrier the benefit of the doubt. He probably phoned it in from a golf course because in college ball that's good enough. In the NFL, it's bush.

With the glories of hindsight, the unthinkable is now the obvious: As an NFL coach, Spurrier couldn't hold Schottenheimer's clipboard. Kind of makes you faint, doesn't it?

Into the bargain, the Redskins sacrificed Stephen Davis, still only 29, who ran for 1,444 yards this year -- more than his best as a Redskin. And he had the two best Redskins' rushing totals ever. Even worse, Marvin Lewis passed through town like a rumor. In retrospect, the reason the Redskins went 7-9 in Spurrier's first season was that The Next Hot NFL Coach ran his defense for him.

What now for the Redskins?

Perhaps the perfect replacement for Spurrier would be someone with years of NFL experience as an assistant who's run the offense for a Super Bowl team but who has also has the motivational charisma and the organizational skills of a top college coach. It might help if he were already enormously popular in Washington.

In other words, the Redskins will be tempted to offer their coaching job to Ralph Friedgen -- even though Snyder would be raiding his former school of its best coach in eons.

After the Redskins' misery of the last few years, the bad karma of this idea should be obvious. Yet this notion will surely surface and find its backers. It's the glamour solution, the Snyder fix.

The Redskins shouldn't ask. But if they do, the Fridge, if he values his sanity, should say, "No."

[Andre The Giant]

Superb Article that blows Tony K. (me, me, me) away.

Way to go Tom for having the guts to say what everyone was thinking!

[luckydevil]

Good piece

[SS-Skin]

Hey Boz, while your shining Marty's knob, don't forget that Marty left with big $$$ vis-a-vis a forced buyout. Meanwhile, SOS, the "rube", had the class to leave his chips on the table after he knew the game was lost. And thus we close another sad chapter in the Snyder chronicles.

Hail