Eric Bieniemy- OC

Lord...
 
Things came together quickly on the EB hire.

Reid reached out to Rivera and then Rivera reached out to EB and this came together after EB had failed to get an interview for HC.

So, the planning was not necessarily there the way you usually see a good football team plan for a major change.

EB was in no position given his lack of ability to get an offer anywhere else in the NFL to make any demands as if he were Kyle Shanahan on the market.

At the same time what did the team do? It signed Andrew Wylie, the starting RT on the Super Bowl Champion Chiefs, EB's old team.

So, perhaps EB did request such a move and Rivera signed off on Wylie and that showed he was a poor GM.

Wylie is a guard playing tackle. In his defense, he had a GREAT run in the playoffs last year and had a superb game in the Super Bowl and I think Washington made a decision on him based upon those 3-4 performances at age 28.

I don't think they did the type of top-down, full career review that a top level GM and front office would have done.

It was like the Raiders signing Larry Brown of the Cowboys after he had 2 interceptions in the Super Bowl in against the Steelers.

He had one great game. Those of us following teams in the NFC East and seeing Dallas twice a year KNEW that Larry Brown was NOT a franchise cornerback and lockdown cover corner and was not worth the type of long-term deal he received.

But the Raiders were suffering from Super Bowl blindness just like Washington.
 
You *may* be right on him not having the juice in that moment to make demands, but you also have to remember that Rivera was desperate to upgrade Scott Turner at OC, and whether or not he was a viable HC candidate, EB was one of (if not the top) hot OC candidate available. I think he would've been able to assert some greater influence than it seems he did? A key moment was that 2nd pick of the draft where, having made an extremely questionable selection in Forbes (and it was questionable in the moment, not just in light of his 2023 performance), not successfully standing on the table for a top TE to serve as a safety valve for Howell, or the best OL player available, represents failure.

If acquiring guys like Gates and Wylie were blessed by (or worst case scenario, advocated by) Bienemy as a legit OL overhaul, well, that's even worse than his inability to protect Rivera from himself on the offensive side of the ball.
 
No, I think Wylie was EB's only real input to Rivera on personnel coming in.

The 2023 offseason is showing itself to be a complete disaster:

Free agents - Nick Gates, Cody Barton, Andrew Wylie. All busts.

Draft - top 2 picks look like busts and #3/#4 picks on IR having not played much if at all for the club during the season.

This is even worse than the Norv years.
 
EB probably pushed for Pringle and Kemp, as well.
 
Well, I didn't have much in terms of expectations for a street free agent like Prlngle who's 28 and coming in as perhaps the #5 receiver.

If EB wanted Pringle to help tutor the younger players in the offense, that's fine.

Rivera's real failures were on defense, his area of specialty, where the top two draft picks in addition to the $90M for Payne and free agent trade of Barton for Holcomb backfired.
 
I remember Mike Shanahan saying he only liked watching a player's highlight reel because he wanted to see them at their best. He said he was convinced he get them to rise to that level. Maybe that's what they thought about Wylie or maybe they thought the light bulb had gone off and this was his new normal.
 
Michael Strahan said earlier in the season that Washington appeared to be playing with 4 guards on the offensive line (crediting Leno as a OT).

In retrospect he was correct. Wylie can't hold his position at the point of attack against the rush, Gates is too tall and doesn't get good leverage low against DTs, he gets stood up. The team saw early on that the Saadiq Charles experiment needs to end in Washington after 4 years of injuries and mostly disappointing play. Chris Paul is a raw #7 pick who is being thrown out there to learn by making mistakes. Not the best way to acclimate to the NFL.

Sam Cosmi is running out of positions to play. He came in and was given a test at LT in camp, was moved to RT where he played for a year plus and then was moved inside to guard where he has been a replacement level player.

That's not good value/return on investment in a player taken in Round 2.

Even the post-Gibbs regime of Casserly and Norv were able to find Tre Johnson in Round 3 and Jon Jansen in Round 2.
 
Yeah, this team has not drafted well at the top of the draft in years.

I'll be generous and say that the verdict is still out on the 2023 Draft and so won't include it in this analysis, although I think we all agree that both Forbes and Martin were picked too high (ignoring the positions of the two guys drafted).

2022 - (1)Dotson, (2)Mathis, (3)Robinson
2021 - (1)Davis, (2)Cosmi, (3)BSJ, (3)Brown
2020 - (1)Young, (3)Gibson
2019 - (1)Haskins, (1)Sweat, (3)McLaurin
2018 - (1)Payne, (2)Guice, (3)Christian
2017 - (1)Allen, (2)Anderson, (3)Moreau
2016 - (1)Doctson, (2)Cravens, (3)Fuller
2015 - (1)Scherff, (2)Smith, (3)Jones
2014 - (2)Murphy, (3)Moses, (3)Long

I bolded the hits, italicized the guys currently playing somewhere else, underlined the guys who are still unknowns, and struck through the guys who are out of the League.

Things that interest me greatly and speak directly to Bulldog's points above:
1. We have not selected a pure Interior Lineman in the first 3 rounds since Spencer Long in 2014. (Scherff was drafted as a RT)
2. We have selected 2 OTs that are currently playing well for other teams - Geron Christian (LT) in 2018 (Cleveland) and Morgan Moses (RT) in 2014 (Baltimore)

Positional Breakdown
4 - WR
4 - RB
4- LB
4 - OT
3 - DT
3 - CB
3 - DE
1- QB
1 - IL
 
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I think most NFL folks would call Daron Payne a 'hit'. He's a top 15 DT in the league. Maybe not performing like you'd hope for a '13th' pick in the draft and he's having a down year (but who isn't on this team?).
 
Fair. I'll change him to "hit" but on the whole, he is a disappointment. He is paid like a Top 5 DT in the league but he has only had 1 season I'd call Top 15.

Maybe a new DC gets more out of him next year but right now I consider him a guy with the talent to be nearly Aaron Donald but too lazy to get there. He got his money, now he is going through the motions.
 
The FA moves are 100 percent on Ron. He is not a good personal man and it has shown in every draft and every FA period. Wylie was prob presented by Eric and Ron did nothing but rubber stamp it. Wylie was rated around the 14-17 best FA tackle out there last year. So I had no real expectations of massive improvement from him. None of the Oline moves the last 4 seasons have been positive moves with this team. This Oline failure is 100 percent on Ron. As for Eric at OC - I have seen a lot of good and a lot of bad. The offense from how it looks as a fan who followed the team for almost 50 years cannot function due to two issues - poor OLINE play that is a no show on about 20 percent of the plays, a young QB who no matter what they say is rattled by the pressure and holds the ball a bit too long about 1/3 of the times he drops back to pass and a group of Wide Receivers that struggle to get open and get any YAC. Terry #39 Curtis #45 Josh #48 Jamison #111 and Pringle #129 . Terry is 16th over his career. So this year is really bad, I don't know if this is a symptom of EB pushing a scheme his players can't do and not scheming up what works for the players or if it is due to poor play from the players
 
That's fair as well (although I don't think what we're paying him is relevant in terms of value of the pick - that's just dumb front office management).

I mean, our biggest problem in the first several rounds has been that we should be getting bonafide solid starters in those rounds - without exception - and we haven't even managed to do that in a lot of cases. But Payne is a solid player.
 
I think the Payne criticism is pretty unwarranted. Did he get paid? Sure. Did he point a gun to the team’s head to get that contract?

Every player on defense has been a disappointment. Every single player. He has been as impactful as any defensive player has since he’s been on the team. There is a bigger problem at hand outside of individual player effort. How come Allen, Curl, BSJ, etc are not being labeled as lazy?
 
Why do I call Payne lazy?
Payne-2.PNG

Spot the year he was playing for a contract and then compare to every other year.

Then go look at Jon Allen who got extended after his 4th season. He had 2 sacks in that 4th season. He had 9 in the year following the extension, then 7.5 the next year playing next to a motivated Payne. Even in a down year this year, he has 5.5 sacks through 13 games. For his career, Allen has averaged 1 Sack every 2.5 games. This year, a supposedly down year, he is averaging a sack every 2.3 games. While that isn't much, it is better than his career number.

BSJ may be having a bad year but he is also leading the league in forced incompletions with 12.

With 4 games left to play, Curl is 2 Tackles short of his best season ever and has his best numbers ever in several other columns. Honestly not sure how to feel about this though. His having these numbers feels more like an indictment of the guys playing ahead of him.

Am I carrying a bias against Payne because of the "pay me" attitude from last year? Yeah, I am. Is it fair? Oh yeah, totally. Last year he showed us what he can do when he really wants to. This year he is showing us how much "want to" he really has.
 
So I guess Payne was lazy every year of his career sans one. Doesn’t sound like a Payne problem to me. Sounds like an organizational one.

It pains me when someone assassinates a players character based solely on numbers on a chart. Every player on the defenses has regressed this season except for maybe Jamin Davis and he had a lot of room for improvement.
 
The Bienemy Chicago link makes a Howell trade on draft day for a possible swap of picks interesting. What if the new GM wants Caleb and EB wants Howell and Fashanu? The new GM could literally change the entire roster
 
Whatever happens happens. But I think, in light of how Howell has performed in his first full season, it would be something close to misconduct to trade him for the sake of grabbing 'the next great QB', especially considering the bust rate at that position. Caleb Williams SCREAMS bust to me.
 
I'm kind of hoping this rumor is true. It would solve a lot of problems with Harris moving on from this whole staff.

 
Daron Payne was not a bust. He is a solid DT.

The problem is he outperformed his career trajectory in a contract year and Washington got trapped into thinking that an 11.5 sack season and team leading tackles for loss was going to be Payne GOING FORWARD for the next 4-5 years.

This is on Ron and the front office.

These guys panicked a bit because Young had been injured and was not playing up to the standards of a #2 overall pick when he came back and Sweat was going to be a pending free agent and a similar question there was whether Sweat deserved a $90-100M deal based on his numbers so far.

So, Ron took the bird in hand and gambled that Payne was the one who emerged in 2022 and produced the numbers they were looking for so Washington was going to pay him and let the Young and Sweat situations work themselves out during 2023.
 
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