Was 1993 the Year it All Went Wrong?

[Kurd Cudins]

May 25th, 1999

 

The day Snyder's bid was approved.

Edited August 31, 2020 by Kurd Cudins

[Darrell Green Fan]

8 hours ago, kleese said:

Totally disagree on the QBs. BJ was awesome the first half of 1999, then dropped off big time. He didn’t play well down the stretch in 99, especially against better teams. He was then absolutely awful in the playoff game at Tampa. Granted, the Bucs D was fantastic but we had a 13-0 lead late in third quarter. All we need was BJ to not screw up. Well, he did. He threw a terrible INT to John Lynch that totally shifted the momentum of that game. 
 

BJ was terrible to start 2000, picking up right where he left off in 1999. George was the superior QB at that point and probably should have been starter week one. 

 

This is a very accurate recount of Brad Johnson.  You are right, his magic wore off by the end of the 1999 season and was totally gone by 2000 but nobody seems to remember that.  

[LastMortal2]

The timing of the team's ownership transition in 98-99 was a huge contributor to our next 20 years of failure. We had 2 extra 1sts in 98 from the Shawn Gilbert trade and the whole "Cowboy's dynasty building" level trade with NO in 99 gave us their whole 99 draft plus a 1st in 2000. We should have been able to build our own dynasty from that. Instead, JKC dies and ownership is in flux, so we can't resign T. Green and start throwing away our early picks on...B. Johnson....

[TD_washingtonredskins]

On 8/29/2020 at 5:47 PM, Darth Tater said:

If I wanted to put a single year, I'd argue for 1992 as the beginning of our current down cycle. Last up cycle went from about 1971 to the SB after the 1991 season. We pretty much backed into the playoffs in 1992,

 

It's interesting, but I'd argue that 1989-1990 is what actually set us on that path. We went very short-term in our thinking and assembled quite an old team whose purpose was to win a title (or two). It worked, but as the OP mentioned, it left us with nothing but a cliff to fall off of once the dust settled. We were not prepared for FA and basically had to backfill our older players who were phasing out with poor-man versions of those players. 

 

Now, who's to say how much it ultimately impacted putting us where we are today. I'm guessing that maybe a Cooke keeps the team if we win another title or two, but given the way Jack Kent Cooke left it, we may have ended up in the hands of Snyder anyway. And all he'd be doing now is tarnishing a slightly more successful franchise than he is. 

[BringMetheHeadofBruceAllen]

As much as I'd like to agree with May 25th 1999 as the date everything started falling apart, I'm going to go with January 13th, 2002...the day Snyder fired Schottenheimer because he wouldn't let Little Danny play with his toy football team. This led to the disastrous hiring of Steve Spurrier, followed by an attempted return to glory with a worn-out Gibbs 2.0, the Zorn fiasco (which can't be blamed on Zorn), and everything else that followed.

 

'93 is certainly a valid date, though...but could anyone have predicted after that home loss to the Cardinals in Week 2 that it would start such a run of inter-generational ineptitude? The Skins had many chances to right the ship since then. Norv didn't exactly set the world on fire but the team improved in 96-97 before that 0-7 start in '98, which probably should have cost him his job. But in '99 they actually won the division, so who knows?

 

Sure, Dan was always breathing down Norv's neck starting in '99 and then finally canning him in '00, but if he had at least left Schottzy alone to coach for another year things would likely have been different. All of the decisions made since then have only piled more stock cars onto the trainwreck, because it showed how petty and meddling Snyder really was.

 

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

This is an interesting conversation.  But it's gone wrong a few times for a few reasons.

 

Plenty of other teams have been good, and then bad and then back to good in the amount of time we've been annually mediocre to awful since 1993.   The 90s Redskins are interesting for a lot of reasons that have been listed here...namely the roster quickly got old, we didn't approach free agency well, bad drafts, Norv, etc. 

 

For me, the real turning point under Snyder was firing Schottenheimer.  That team was coming around, we had a workhorse running back in Stephen Davis.  Schottenheimer never could win a Super Bowl but his teams always were built well and he was always winning games and making the playoffs, something no one's ever been able to do here since Snyder took over.

 

But this franchise has shot itself in the foot numerous times over the past three decades.  I don't think any one particular moment, any one particular move is to blame.  Like I mentioned before, plenty of other teams have been able to build and then have to re-build again.  But over the past 20 years, there's only one person to blame here.  

[Spaceman Spiff]

6 minutes ago, BringMetheHeadofBruceAllen said:

As much as I'd like to agree with May 25th 1999 as the date everything started falling apart, I'm going to go with January 13th, 2002...the day Snyder fired Schottenheimer because he wouldn't let Little Danny play with his toy football team. This led to the disastrous hiring of Steve Spurrier, followed by an attempted return to glory with a worn-out Gibbs 2.0, the Zorn fiasco (which can't be blamed on Zorn), and everything else that followed.

 

'93 is certainly a valid date, though...but could anyone have predicted after that home loss to the Cardinals in Week 2 that it would start such a run of inter-generational ineptitude? The Skins had many chances to right the ship since then. Norv didn't exactly set the world on fire but the team improved in 96-97 before that 0-7 start in '98, which probably should have cost him his job. But in '99 they actually won the division, so who knows?

 

Sure, Dan was always breathing down Norv's neck starting in '99 and then finally canning him in '00, but if he had at least left Schottzy alone to coach for another year things would likely have been different. All of the decisions made since then have only piled more stock cars onto the trainwreck, because it showed how petty and meddling Snyder really was.

 

 

 

It's hard to think back to the early days of Snyder but...wasn't there a time when Snyder was actually liked?  For some strange reason I feel like the year where we got Bruce Smith, Deion Sanders, Mark Carrier, people were like...WHOA he's spending money!  This is great!!  And then he fires Norv, which everyone thought was a good move.  And then he hired Marty, which everyone thought was a good move, too.

 

But then he fired Schottenheimer after an 8-8 season where people could tell the team was coming around.  And then I think that's when people started to turn on Danny.  My memory probably isn't accurate though. 

[Smurf3]

The Heath Shuler draft and Norv Turner being hired to mold Shuler into another Troy Aikman definitely set the tone for the whole era. Never forget Shuler saying that the NFL balls were too slippery compared with the ones in college. Then Snyder came along and we all know the rest of the story.

[hail2skins]

1 hour ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

But then he fired Schottenheimer after an 8-8 season where people could tell the team was coming around.  And then I think that's when people started to turn on Danny.  My memory probably isn't accurate though. 

I think firing Marty surprised fans, but there was a realization that the offense led by Tony Banks had been pretty stagnant and that Spurrier at the very least would make the team exciting.

 

I think people were starting to get more discouraged by the end of 2003, but dont recall many calling for Spurrier to get fired. And then he resigned and the feeling was more of a "what are we going to do now" as names like Fassel, Green, and Rhodes were being floated.

 

And then the surprise hiring of Gibbs bought Smyder more time. But after Joe left again, the goofy coaching search, including the "revolt" against Fassel, made fans wonder if Snyder knew what he was doing. Then Zorn's quick start seemed to vindicate Snyder, but then the collapse that season really did it for me. Particularly a home loss to a good but vulnerable Giants team without Plax on the year anniversary of ST's death where the Skins just didnt show up.

 

I remember the start of the 2009 season when folks on here were talking about how we were going to go up to NY and dismantle the Giants and I wasnt having any of it. Also this was when the stories of Snyder suing folks for breaches of club level contracts were coming out, then the undermining of Zorn by hiring the bingo caller, the banning of signs at games, then the fan card revolt. That was when big time anger at Snyder started to happen, and I think after 2009 (or maybe 2010) was when they started to yank seats out of FedEx.

[TD_washingtonredskins]

45 minutes ago, Smurf3 said:

The Heath Shuler draft and Norv Turner being hired to mold Shuler into another Troy Aikman definitely set the tone for the whole era. Never forget Shuler saying that the NFL balls were too slippery compared with the ones in college. Then Snyder came along and we all know the rest of the story.

 

See I don't believe that specific events (bad draft picks, bad coaching hires, etc.) can "set the tone" for a team like that. I think bad ownership does. Plenty of well-run teams make very bad draft picks but it doesn't set them on a bad quarter-century course. Well-run teams can cut their losses and still make more good than bad decisions. 

[clskinsfan]

On 8/30/2020 at 6:28 AM, Darth Tater said:

The 1992 was the draft that confirmed my growing suspicion that Joe Gibbs was a targeter. Yes, a friend of mine who played for Gibbs (1986-1992) felt Gibbs retired because he did not want to go through another rebuild (1981, 1985, 1989) and the core those rebuilds centered around was now about to age out.

Agree completely. Plus with FA coming in it was going to have an impact on Gibbs coaching style. Gibbs believed in building a family atmosphere and keeping players that fostered that. They would stash numerous veterans on IR every year just to have them around the locker room. Gibbs and Cooke also used IR to hide young talent. Free Agency was going to change everything. And he knew it. 

[88Comrade2000]

After 2003 was the first fan revolt. He was starting to lose people and the anger after Spurrier was high. Dan knew he had to do something to quell that; which is why he went after Gibbs.

 

After 2009 the fan revolt was more intense. This time fans not only wanted the coach but Vinny.

 

I don’t think there were many that panned Bruce’s hiring. Shanny’s 2 Super Bowl tings made his hire palletable.

 

The current fan revolt is really ongoing. Fans drifted in droves in the Gruden/Allen era.

 

2019 was the low point that saw Gruden and Allen fired.  Dan did right with Rivera but then all hell breaks lose. More scandals from pre-Rivera come to light. The surprising name change.

Who knows what more dirt is out there and will it be able to be pinned on Dan himself? Now, there’s uncertainty to Rivera’s long term future due to his cancer diagnosis.

 

This is Dan’s final shot. There won’t be any fans left if the Rivera era fails.

 

[Darth Tater]

10 hours ago, TD_washingtonredskins said:

 

It's interesting, but I'd argue that 1989-1990 is what actually set us on that path. We went very short-term in our thinking and assembled quite an old team whose purpose was to win a title (or two). It worked, but as the OP mentioned, it left us with nothing but a cliff to fall off of once the dust settled. We were not prepared for FA and basically had to backfill our older players who were phasing out with poor-man versions of those players. 

 

Now, who's to say how much it ultimately impacted putting us where we are today. I'm guessing that maybe a Cooke keeps the team if we win another title or two, but given the way Jack Kent Cooke left it, we may have ended up in the hands of Snyder anyway. And all he'd be doing now is tarnishing a slightly more successful franchise than he is. 

Good point.  In 1989 or 1990, we really needed a 1981-type draft.  We were set up for one in 1992 but targeted Desmond instead. We needed a new offensive line cornerstone. While none in the top 15 (we had the 6) picked in 1992 were as good as Joe Jacoby, Bob Whitfield started 165 games for the team that drafted him and was around until 2006, Ray Roberts started 116 games and Searcy started 111.  We would then be able to get Pickens or Smith if we wanted a wr and possibly pair them with Mcardell.

[TD_washingtonredskins]

12 hours ago, Darth Tater said:

Good point.  In 1989 or 1990, we really needed a 1981-type draft.  We were set up for one in 1992 but targeted Desmond instead. We needed a new offensive line cornerstone. While none in the top 15 (we had the 6) picked in 1992 were as good as Joe Jacoby, Bob Whitfield started 165 games for the team that drafted him and was around until 2006, Ray Roberts started 116 games and Searcy started 111.  We would then be able to get Pickens or Smith if we wanted a wr and possibly pair them with Mcardell.

 

Yep, but what we'll never know is how much a little more success would have changed things post-Cooke. What I mean is, Snyder didn't have an opportunity to buy the team because we sucked from 1993-1998. That had nothing to do with the way Cooke left his affairs. So, even if my high school and college years had a little more winning, the past 21 years might be just like they are. Because, no matter what type of team Snyder inherited, I'm confident he'd have destroyed it given the culture he's created. 

[Smurf3]

23 hours ago, TD_washingtonredskins said:

 

See I don't believe that specific events (bad draft picks, bad coaching hires, etc.) can "set the tone" for a team like that. I think bad ownership does. Plenty of well-run teams make very bad draft picks but it doesn't set them on a bad quarter-century course. Well-run teams can cut their losses and still make more good than bad decisions. 

I think I finished my post with Snyder as the death knell that has lasted almost 2 decades. I mentioned Shuler and Turner to be consistent with the thread title. Maybe should have talked about Ferrote head butting the concrete barrier at the back of the end zone after running for a touchdown. I wonder if he qualified for one of the concussion payments. No question, the elephant in the room is Snyder but that was a few years later. The end of the Cook era wasn't great either and may have opened the door for Snyder to acquire the team.

[TD_washingtonredskins]

1 hour ago, Smurf3 said:

The end of the Cook era wasn't great either and may have opened the door for Snyder to acquire the team.

 

That's fair...we will never know. I just wanted to clarify that the recent 5-year slide had nothing to do with outside investors vying for the team. It's not like more success after Gibbs left would have made it any more likely that John Kent Cooke would have retained the team. The reasons that Milstein (I think that was his name) and ultimately Snyder had a shot at all had to do with Jack's will, not the on-field product. 

[Alexa]

1993....   Ritchie, Al Noga, Tim MaGee, Rich Gannon, Reggie Brooks and washed up Carl Banks..  The team got old and Gibbs knew it. His timing to leave was perfect, especially after swinging and missing badly on Howard.  Best coaching job was 1992 by Joe and Ritchie. To almost get that rag tag team to the NFC title game was almost a miracle. Could have very easily beat the 49ers in that mudfest at SF. At least there was one good night in 93, the opener against Dallas. After that, all downhill. 

 

I was at the last game of the season against the Vikings. i remember feeling that the run was over and there was a house cleaning coming. Dowhower and all his 3 yard passes to aging wr's - all year long. Just a poorly designed offense. 

 

We have had many years to get it right and just can't- for numerous reasons. Casserly was no good after winning the SB.

[Malapropismic Depository]

Is it any coincidence that 1993, the year things suddenly went downhill permanently for the Skins, was the year that @Cooleyfan1993 was born ?

 

Just messin with ya

[TD_washingtonredskins]

24 minutes ago, Alexa said:

We have had many years to get it right and just can't- for numerous reasons. Casserly was no good after winning the SB.

 

Casserly was no good...period. He rode the coattails of Beathard until 1989 and then really didn't do much that I can remember to build the 1991 team (those players were almost all in place before Beathard left). 

[Darth Tater]

7 hours ago, TD_washingtonredskins said:

 

Yep, but what we'll never know is how much a little more success would have changed things post-Cooke. What I mean is, Snyder didn't have an opportunity to buy the team because we sucked from 1993-1998. That had nothing to do with the way Cooke left his affairs. So, even if my high school and college years had a little more winning, the past 21 years might be just like they are. Because, no matter what type of team Snyder inherited, I'm confident he'd have destroyed it given the culture he's created. 

In a way, you could put an exact date, almost an exact time. November 10, 1996 in the 4th quarter of the Cards game, 1996.  Up to that game, it was looking like our rebuild was on schedule.  It kind of mirrored Dallas from 1988 (Landry's last year to 1991).

[The Consigliere]

On 8/29/2020 at 1:49 PM, thebluefood said:

While it's never particularly cut and dry, this franchise (like many others) seems to have fateful years that define particular eras of its history, especially if they've been around awhile. 

 

There's obvious choices like 1932 (founding), 1937 (first year in D.C.), 1962 (integration), 1971 (George Allen's first season), and 1981 (Joe Gibbs' first season) but I believe, at least for the franchise's current era, 1993 might be the most significant. It set the foundation for this team's improbable - like, statistically improbable - streak of mediocrity and it seems to be the year everything came to a head. Along with a pretty "meh" draft the year before and the year of, Joe Gibbs gets burnt out and retires, leaving Richie Pettibone with a badly aging team, setting the stage for their worst season in 30+ years. It was also the first year of Free Agency and a significant number of players who were part of the later Gibbs years (especially Wilber Marshall and Gary Clark) while none of their free agent signings really panned out. 

 

The next year was even worse as the franchise hired Norv Turner, lost Art Monk, had one of the most infamous drafts ever, went 3-13 (in which they did the impossible and went winless at RFK Stadium), and got further wrecked with the implementation of the salary cap. But it seemed like after 1993, the team never got its barrings and has been recovering ever since. Hubris and prejudice is what (largely) created the first "dark age" of the franchise's history but it seems this one was build on an incredibly poor ability to adapt to the modern NFL.

I think it's patently obvious that it was. It's a perfect year for me to identify because it was the year I graduated High School. Joe Gibbs was hired the year I started 1st grade and he retired during the winter/spring of my Senior year, and the collapse started immediately afterwards in terms of performance and never recovered. I was 18 when that season started and I'm 45 now and the Redskins have been irrelevant since that moment. Yes in a handful of seasons they've made periodic playoff runs, but never left another imprint on any season since (In '92 they won a playoff game, and for a while, scared the bejeebus of the niners on a rain spattered January day as I finished work on a project with classmates 20 miles South of San Francisco in San Mateo (grew up in the bay area). After that? Nada. Totally irrelevant.

 

That being said, I've often pointed to the collapse owing it's origins to the drafts the teams executed essentially from 1984-1992. Those were, for the most part, 9 consecutive crummy to sub-par drafts, offset by a handful of fantastic trades, and some great USFL acquisitions (Gary Clark, Ricky Sanders, Kelvin Bryant, not so much Max Zendejas, who ruined my 12th birthday w/his tour de horror performance against Denver). When you combined a largely ineffectual series of drafts under Beathard leading to a decade long series of horror show drafts lead by Casserly you see exactly why the team failed. The '84-'92 draft failures laid the ground work for the early mid-nineties diaster years, but that trend might have been turned around if we'd drafted well in the post Gibbs years, but we didn't, from '93-'98 we acquired virtually nothing of long term significance from the draft, and as a result, what was a multi-year swoon post Gibbs, became a total collapse and failure every bit on the scale of that of the Aint's era, the Bucs, the Bengals, the Cardinals and the Lions. These notorious doormats of my childhood in the eighties and early nineties? the Redskins of 1993-2020 are every bit their equal if not better when it comes to losing and irrelevance. 

 

The media and some fans pinpoint Snyder as the problem, but the truth is worse, the Redskins were already irrelevant before Snyder arrived, he just made a current issue a permanent problem. Until he dies or sells I see no chance we can even reset to zero, let alone have a chance of competing. At least there's some hope now that he might eventually be pressured into selling, but it still seems like a pipe dream. One can dream. 

[TD_washingtonredskins]

Some great points in here...

 

In many ways, we were one of those old-school franchises who owed much of our success to the market we played in. The NFL pre-1993 was very much a Haves vs. Have-Nots league. We weren't quite equipped or forward-thinking enough to not just outspend other teams. 

[Darth Tater]

I'd also argue for about mid February of 1993.  Sometimes I think that was the day I died and went to hell.  I was driving into work when I passed an ambulance and some other emergency vehicles around a wrecked car and a body bag.  My car at the time was the same make, model and color as the wrecked car.  Got to work and a lot of people were angry at me for not showing up but also seemed to ignore me.

[Riggo-toni]

On 8/31/2020 at 8:32 AM, LastMortal2 said:

The timing of the team's ownership transition in 98-99 was a huge contributor to our next 20 years of failure. We had 2 extra 1sts in 98 from the Shawn Gilbert trade and the whole "Cowboy's dynasty building" level trade with NO in 99 gave us their whole 99 draft plus a 1st in 2000. We should have been able to build our own dynasty from that. Instead, JKC dies and ownership is in flux, so we can't resign T. Green and start throwing away our early picks on...B. Johnson....

We had 5 first rounders in two years.

We blew a 1, 2, 3 to trade for Brad Johnson. The Vikings used our first to draft Culpepper.

Champ Bailey and Chris Samuels, great.

We traded 2 firsts to move up to get the most overrated Redskin of all time - Arrington.

 

[thebluefood]

I appreciate the feedback on this thread. I was still a toddler when Gibbs announced his retirement and by the time I actually started watching football, we were well into the team's current "dark age." As I said in the OP, for a team to be this consistently mediocre for this long shouldn't be possible in the current NFL. This franchise hasn't had a win total over 10 since the Super Bowl season nearly 30 years ago. Every other franchise - including the Lions, Bengals, and Browns (pre-1995) - have managed to have at least one season over that mark. 

 

That shouldn't be possible and yet they've done it.