How much do you trust THIS..........

[kleese]

After the 1997 season, I asked a question of all Redskins fans on the message boards. I said,

"As true die-hard fans, you usually get gut feelings that you may choose to ignore, but you can't deny they are there. Now, honestly, deep down, can you ever see Norv Turner hoisting the Lombardi Trophy and bringing it back to DC?"

Deep down, I didn't. Somewhere I just knew that he would never win here-- I'd seen enough. Many fans just won't ever admit that a guy with their team is hopeless (as we are seeing with the Westbrook stuff )

Unfortunately, it took three more years for Norv to actually get the boot.

And, now I pose the same question.

Do you honestly see Marty ever winning a Super Bowl here?

Not does he DESERVE to be here or Can he get us to 9-7 next year. I mean, the longhaul.

Honestly, I just can't. I feel that Marty is a solid football guy who did an OK job this season and could very well get us to the 9-7, 10-6 level as early as next season.

But I also saw a team/coach that seems limited. Innovative we are not. I saw a team that made MENTAL errors in key games when they were in position to win.

The fact that Marty was 100% FOOLED by the fake FG of the Bears when the entire world knew it was coming, really irked me.

Marty is the stone ages, folks.

I grant you that he does not DESERVE to be fired. He deserves to come back and see where he can go with this.

But the Redskins need something special to get us back to where we were with Gibbs. "Steady" Marty can bring us. "Special" I'm not so sure about. Or maybe I am.

Spurrier has a "special" quality. If "what he does" works, then we'll be in the Super Bowl within 2-3 years.

I freely admit that there is HUGE bust potential with Spurrier. But what's worse, getting stuck in 8-8, 9-7 "steadiness" with Marty or taking a gamble and hitting the very bottom with Spurrier? Honestly, it's all the same to me.

I can't envision Marty hoisting that trophy, but I can see Steve doing just that.

Snyder is hated-- we all know that-- no matter what he does he's going to get blasted. We should not make this decision based on "well, the media will eat us up." They already are, so why not REALLY give them something to chew on?

I don't want to keep Marty and pass up on someone with huge upside "just because."

Yes, it would be odd. Yes, it would seem unprofessional. But in the end, it's all about trying to win championships. You have to weigh who gives you the best shot at that.

Now, deep down in your gut, who is that guy.

I must say, that deep down, I think Spurrier gives us a better shot.

[Art]

It's a compelling and difficult question Kleese. Marty has been very near a Super Bowl on three occasions, though, not really very recently. He has won big in this league and is among the fastest of all time to reach 150 wins. But, there is an undeniable quality to watching a Marty coached team.

It is self-limiting. His teams life on the finest performance edge I've ever witnessed. It's the only team I've seen that can play really good football and still drop a game because the margin for error is so slim here. Admittedly, I didn't expect quite this limited an offense and team when he signed on. I KNEW he was not genius coach, but I felt he had enough knowledge to lift a team a bit.

Here, this team has turned around and the future could be better than 10-6 very soon. But, it's self-limiting. It's a team that can compete every week and can beat anyone, but, when you live on THIS fine an edge to win, you are going to have it catch up to you when you play teams later in the year that have good talent and a slightly more forgiving system under which it functions.

I CAN see Marty winning a Super Bowl, but not Marty as he was this year, or Marty as he's EVER been. He has to be a new, improved version of the same. He has to have his team revolt on him, then get it back to him, as happened with Vermeil, and in the process he has to change who he is to become something he hadn't been, as with Vermeil.

Still, I don't know that he HAS to win a Super Bowl to succeed here. He really does not. He just has to get this team back to a high competitive edge and with the ability to contend and compete at a playoff level. So, I'm not making my judgements on him based upon whether he is or isn't a Super Bowl coach. I think he is still the right guy to get this team back to where it needs to be for us to be pleased. The next guy can take it the rest of the way and I won't be displeased.

But, again, I was quickly disillusioned by this offensive system and I realized very quickly the near perfect performance we have to play with every week in which to win, and finding players who can fit that mold by necessity takes some of the creativity away from those players, and it may be difficult to continue being competitive once Marty leaves.

I don't want Marty gone yet as I'd like to see how he adapts, if any, in his second season, knowing as he must where he failed and this team failed. But, I wouldn't shed any tears if he were to be replaced by Spurrier. .

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Doom is in the box.

[KevinthePRF]

kleese, your opinion is apreciated, but it is just that. And I can envision Schottenheimer raising the Lombardi hand in hand with Dan Snyder as easily as I could Steve Spurrier.

What I can't see is Schottenheimer doing it with the exact players he put on the field this past year. That he had exactly one offseason to put together. He couldn't plug every hole, nor could Spurrier if he was our coach under the same circumstances. And as far as I know Schottenheimer was on the sidelines and not in at corner playing contain for the Bears play. You or I have no idea if Schottenheimer was thinking or saying, "watch for the fake" as much as anyone else.

[Mickalino]

The words 'Marty' and 'Lombardi' may rhyme very nicely, and form a nice little rap tune, but thats about it. Other than that, the 2 words just don't jibe

[TennesseeCarl]

I suppose if the Ravens can win a Super Bowl, it's possible for Marty to win one. But I've got to admit, his style doesn't offer much room for error. It requires that a team play error-free ball all the time and that all opportunities are converted. We aren't doing that now, and we're 7-8. We are getting better, though, and that's what makes the whole thing difficult.

Our 0-5 start marked some of the worst professional football I think I've seen. The team we fielded had no clue. But, like you, Ed, I recall the years of torture under Turner. I knew we'd never win anything with that man at the helm. We absolutely needed a guy like Marty to instill some discipline. He pretty much let the players know that they had a choice - do it his way and maybe win or do it theirs and surely lose.

It will be sort of interesting on Tuesday to see what shakes out. If Marty's canned and Spurrier's hiring is announced, what will the players' reactions be? I'm pretty sure Darrell Green and Bruce Smith will be pleased. But there are some Marty guys on the squad now. Will they have to be replaced? Do we dump all the Kansas City Hawaii '5-0' guys? Will we miss any of them?

[ by TennesseeCarl on January 05, 2002.]

[MikeB]

Unfortunately, the odds are that Spurrier isn't coming here. There are positions open in better geographic locations, with higher draft picks and better suited current personnel on staff, than here. So, that leaves us with a potentially annoyed coach and staff, and another black mark for Snyder in terms of luring a quality coach here.

As for your point, and post, I tend to agree that Spurrier is awefully tantilizing. If he could coach in the NFL at only 70% of his college efficiency, he would be amazing. He is the type of guy who could take the NFL by storm, and be mimicked by coaching staff for years to come. He is also the type of guy who could come in here, drop an egg, and leave this organization in shambles for years, in particular considering Marty had us on the right track at the time.

Just sit back and enjoy the show, that's all we can do...

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"I'm MikeB and I get respect, your cash and your jewelry are what I expect..."

[redman]

I'm not convinced that we can't win a championship with Marty. And I sure as heck don't at this point understand what the substantive reasons are for thinking that Spurrier could.

Marty's done everything that we could realistically have wanted him to do with this team, this year. He's cut a lot of fat off of the roster, and with a win on Sunday he'll have finished the season 8-3 with a journeyman QB he picked up in August. The team is only around 3-4 players (QB, WR, DE, DT) away from being very solid and competitive with any team in the NFL.

Moreover, while you're condemning mental mistakes which most assuredly occurred, I'd assert that there are far fewer of them than occurred under Norv. Our team plays grittier football than it did with Norv. Our talent is used correctly and emphasized when it wasn't under Norv (Arrington is a classic example of this.) Our special teams went from being our Achilles heal and a joke to being one of the best overall units in the league. And all of that occurred from one season to the next.

You're asking us to ignore that, and for what? What has college coach Steve Spurrier done that means we should supplant a respected and consistently successful NFL head coach who has managed to turn around our team in one year?

I hear/read the word "innovative" around Spurrier. What has he innovated? Anyone? Is is that his team passes a lot? So what. Pick any Mouse Davis run-and-shoot team and tell me that that's a less "innovative" offensive team than Spurrier's. Isn't Norv still considered "innovative"?

Spurrier coached successfully at a major football college in the state of Florida, a high school football hot bed which is matched in the talent it produces only by States like PA, OH, TX and CA. He was at a state school, meaning it's inexpensive to attend even without a scholarship. In terms of recruiting, he held all the cards. As a good coach, he got a lot out of his players and was of course successful. But when it comes to coaching the Redskins, so what?

Spurrier is the flavor of the day. He may end up being successful. He may end up being average. He may end up being a flop. Other than seeing him as being more colorful than Marty, I just don't see how he'll be any better at leading our team to a championship.

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<IMG SRC="http://www.thelocker-room.com/images/RedskinLogo.jpg" border=0> "Loosen up, Sandy baby. You're just too damn tight!" - John Riggins to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

[Art]

Kevin, if they were told to watch for the fake, they would have been prepared for the fake. They weren't because they weren't. When you are told to play for the fake, it means you play for it. You don't rush the kicker. You go man or zone and you cover against the fake. We didn't. We weren't in a fake coverage. We weren't expecting it, and, you know what, it's not the end of the world. It was a slick play by the Bears and we probably should have been more prepared, but, we weren't. That didn't upset me. What upset me was NOT running Stephen Davis as the game was winding down and we had one yard to go for a first down. THAT upset me.

Coaching matters in football. It's the only game in which a coach is as important as any player. And on game days, this is particularly relevant when teams adjust and change and tweak and focus and attack. As for the offseason, Marty did a very fine job of patching the holes we had.

We've gone over this before. For every guy we lost, we replaced with a quality guy. EXCEPT Stubby, which we back filled. We lost Centers. Well, we got Bennett. We lost Thrash. Well, we got Gardner. We lost Connell. Well, we got Lockett. We lost Sanders. Well, we got Smoot. We lost Carrier. Well, we got Lyle (who didn't even start). Marty improved our special teams with Bates. He later did the same with Metcalf. We lost Sims. Well, we got Szott. We lost Tre. Well, we got Campbell or Coleman. We got Westbrook back. We got Raymer back. We lost Smith. We got Jones. We lost Murrell. Well, we got Carter.

Everything we lost, we got back, and we got with a pretty nice return. We didn't directly replace Brad, though, that was more design than lack of want. It was a failed design, but, nonetheless, we could have done something at that spot but we elected not to. Marty did fill all the spots, and, remarkably, he did so while also spending $27 million less than he was told to spend, clearing us for the future and more runs.

Again, the job Marty did as the GM was nothing short of genius given what he spent and how he went about compensating for loss. He put together a team that was stronger than the team that we watched much of the previous year, due to the injury. This team also was very healthy much of the year.

The fact is, this team wasn't ready to play football at the start of the year because the coaching staff failed to prepare it. When the staff started getting in a groove, teams started adjusting. Do you know how much it stings to hear players on your team say, against your arch rivals, "They were doing things we'd never been shown on film." We said that after the second Dallas game. Even after the first, we had guys quoted as saying, "Every time we thought we put out a fire, they came back with something else." That was a team that out thought us and out smarted us and this is ON Marty.

And it's not the first time it happened this year. But, Marty isn't the guy that's going to outsmart many other guys. He's not there big braining things. He's a simple man. And it's good enough to compete. But, if you are honest with yourself, you have to see that it might not be good enough.

And, remember, I was a huge Marty booster. So, saying that isn't easy. It's just true.

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Doom is in the box.

[Mickalino]

redman, who will be tomorrow's flavor of the day ?

[redman]

By the way, every Marty basher and Spurrier supporter needs to concede one thing: every shortcoming that exists on our team in terms of its performance can be explained with the poor or developing personnel at the relevant positions.

We have a bad passing game, but we have Tony Banks at QB.

We have no pass rush, but we have no defensive line depth and we have two 32 year-old plus vets playing DE.

Our WR's don't get open and aren't thrown to, but Westbrook is an undisciplined route runner ill-suited for the offense and has dropped passes even when wide open; Gardner's a promising rookie, but a rookie nontheless. Everyone else is either a #3 WR, or is a prospect.

This Spurrier talk is very premature until we can see what Marty does about these personnel problems.

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<IMG SRC="http://www.thelocker-room.com/images/RedskinLogo.jpg" border=0> "Loosen up, Sandy baby. You're just too damn tight!" - John Riggins to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

[Mickalino]

Originally posted by redman:

We have a bad passing game, but we have Tony Banks at QB.

umm, who hired tony banks ?

[redman]

Originally posted by Mick:

redman, who will be tomorrow's flavor of the day ?

Rick Neuheisal.

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<IMG SRC="http://www.thelocker-room.com/images/RedskinLogo.jpg" border=0> "Loosen up, Sandy baby. You're just too damn tight!" - John Riggins to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

[Art]

Redman, actually, we play with more errors than under Norv. Perhaps that's where I've soured the most on Marty. We lead the league in pre-snap penalties. We've gotten more personal fouls this year than any I recall under Norv. We play with MORE mistakes than we did with Norv. But a long stretch. And, that angers me greatly because Norv didn't hold you accountable for mistakes and Marty does. Yet, they keep coming. If Marty got that corrected, the grit would really be meaningful. I think he can, but, it's frustrating because THAT is what he brings to a team, but here, he hasn't. He hasn't limited the mistakes this team makes. That's his failure.

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Doom is in the box.

[redman]

Originally posted by Mick:

umm, who hired tony banks ?

Marty of course.

OK, Mick, fair is fair. Who would you have picked up on August 18 when Banks was signed who was superior at QB?

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<IMG SRC="http://www.thelocker-room.com/images/RedskinLogo.jpg" border=0> "Loosen up, Sandy baby. You're just too damn tight!" - John Riggins to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

[Mickalino]

For one thing, I wouldn't have waited until August 18th to find a backup QB. That was the first of many mistakes made by Marty.

[redman]

Show me a post of yours that complained about that wait that pre-dates August then. It's easy to second guess after the fact.

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<IMG SRC="http://www.thelocker-room.com/images/RedskinLogo.jpg" border=0> "Loosen up, Sandy baby. You're just too damn tight!" - John Riggins to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

[Mickalino]

I'm sure such a post exists, but to expect me to find it, or remember it's date, is quite the outrageous request, considering I have close to 2000 posts, and it would be equivalent to finding a needle in the haystack. How about a gazillion posts of mine complaining about the hiring of Marty, since the day he was brought here ? Maybe a lot of people dont agree with a lot of things I say, but the bottom line is, virtually all my predictions have come true.

[ by Mick on January 05, 2002.]

[Darth Tater]

Fire Marty and hire Spurrier. Reminds me of firing Pettibon and hiring Turner but even worse.

[redman]

Originally posted by Mick:

I'm sure such a post exists, but to expect me to find it, or remember it's date, is quite the outrageous request, considering I have close to 2000 posts, and it would be equivalent to finding a needle in the haystack. How about a gazillion posts of mine complaining about the hiring of Marty, since the day he was brought here ? Maybe a lot of people dont agree with a lot of things I say, but the bottom line is, virtually all my predictions have come true.

Gimme a break. You were hardly clamoring for a new QB signing before the season:

Mick: "reaper, I think you're right that Schotty is using the "QB shopping story" as a way of motivating George. Because now that I think of it, there isnt a single Free Agent QB avaiable out there, that's good enough to supplant George, even with all his flaws. And even if there was such a QB out there, there's no way we could afford him."

Mick supporting Husak, of all people.

Mick defending Husak over Sage.

Mick criticizing selection of QB in the draft

Another criticism of drafting Sage.

Mick defending Husak again: ". . . I along with a few others here, have said, that we're not going to be that good this year, no matter who we drafted, so looking ahead a year isn't going to hurt us much in our rebuilding efforts. I mean, let's face it, we're trying to put quick-fix band-aids on KEY positions such as Guard, by going after veterans that no-one else wants, and using others that have virtually NO NFL experience. So give us at least another year before we can be competitive. And maybe by then, we'll have a replacement for Jeff George as well, that was born out of this year's camp competition."

Mick doesn't comment on the report that the 'Skins won't sign Dilfer, and instead comments on a punter.

Mick bashing Dallas for signing Tony Banks - meaning, that would have been a bad FA QB signing.

The first time that there was serious commotion about failing to sign a veteran FA QB in the offseason was in early August, when George was injured and couldn't play, like in this thread , for example. The commotion grew for a FA QB signing when we saw Husak failing to get it done in the preseason.

Mick, I'm not trying to beat up on you here. My point here is simple: people all too easily forget how difficult a job our offseason/preseason roster management was given our needs. Our entire interior o-line was either gone or coming off of an injury. All of our RB's, with the exception of Davis, were gone (yes, Marty contributed to that problem by cutting Centers, but Johnson and Carter have ended up being good players). At WR, Westbrook was rehabbing a knee, Connell was gone, and there was absolutely no other proven depth on our roster. Special teams were a shambles, and our kicker was gone. On defense, Stubblefield was gone, Bruce and Marco were a year older, and Lang is undersized at DT. Derek Smith was gone at LB, Darrell Green was another year older, and Carrier had to be cut on the basis of his age and his impending suspension. And then there was the whole Deion fiasco.

Marty got us through all of that with a young, competitive team, and was still able to put us in excellent cap shape this offseasion. Simply put, there was no room to complain about our QB situation, and no one here was seriously doing it until George was injured in training camp. Believe me, I'm no Jeff George fan and was always cool to him. But like everyone else I thought that he was worth the risk for a team like ours that had so many other personnel issues to address, had limited cap room, and had already committed big bucks to George at QB.

Enough with crucifying Marty on the personnel decisions cross. He's done well. That doesn't form the basis for canning him.

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<IMG SRC="http://www.thelocker-room.com/images/RedskinLogo.jpg" border=0> "Loosen up, Sandy baby. You're just too damn tight!" - John Riggins to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

[kleese]

I think some of you are missing the point. For me, this isn't about FIRING MARTY, it's about HIRING SPURRIER. Marty's grade right now is incomplete IMO.

Think about it like this:

Stephen Davis is a very good RB-- he's a pro bowl caliber player and he is a guy who can at times take over a game. By no means should we be looking to get rid of him. But what if Marshall Faulk (or whoever you consider to be the best RB in the NFL) was a FA and wanted to sign with the skins? Would you keep Davis just because he doesn't DESERVE to be let go?

Granted, Spurrier is 100% unproven at the NFL level. But I think most everyone would agree that he does bring an aura of something special with him-- the possibility to have Jimmy Johnson type sucsess.

Don't forget, we're talking about a guy who won AT DUKE!!

This isn't about what Marty hasn't done-- it's about what Spurrier could do.

You just get the feeling that we've pretty much seen what Marty is and probably will be down the road. Spurrier brings the element of the unknown to the table-- something I think the Redskins desperately need.

[Mickalino]

hey redman buddy, ya know what's funny is that, of all the time you spent scouring my thousands of posts, you actually come up mostly with stuff (i.e. "Mick bashing Dallas for signing Tony Banks - meaning, that would have been a bad FA QB signing") that supports my original point, which was to criticize the poor acquisition of Banks, and how I correctly predicted that he would fail, whether in a Dallas uniform or in a Skins uniform

[ by Mick on January 06, 2002.]

[BogeyMan]

I think Marty takes a little too much blame for the offensive system we played this year. I would call his offensive philosophy "mistake free" as opposed to "conservative". Let's face it - this offense could not commit 3-4 turnovers in a game and have a chance at winning.

The Rams have the offensive personnel to get away with that - the Redskins do not. Throwing the ball all over the field would have been more fun to watch, but probably would have resulted in lots of turnovers with Banks at QB and a rookie WR as the primary reciever.

Art makes a good point about all the penalties the offense committed this year - especially the false starts. There were many promising drives that could have points on the board this year that were stopped by holding calls or false starts. Not many QBs can pull their teams out of the fire on 3rd and 15 - expecting Tony Banks to do it is a little too much.

I think with a decent QB like Dilfer, with a dramatic reduction in dumb penalties, could result in an above average offense next year that can put points on the board and not turn the ball over. That's Marty Ball.

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If you can't be good, be good at it.

[redman]

Mick, the point is that NO free agent QB seemed good enough for you to supplant George. I think we were all in agreement that signed-in-August Tony Banks was hardly a savior.

And you avoided commenting on the first link I put up there, which had you endorsing George over any other FA QB out there . . .

Let's not play revisionist history with Jeff George and Marty's personnel decisions.

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<IMG SRC="http://www.thelocker-room.com/images/RedskinLogo.jpg" border=0> "Loosen up, Sandy baby. You're just too damn tight!" - John Riggins to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor