Maybe Papa Shannahan Really Is The Problem

Goaldeje said:

Houw 'bout "Bruce", McD? I'm hoping he has a fair amount of input, if not the final say.

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I would love that. I hope he has the entire say, but from what I have read, I don't believe that is the case at all.

I would prefer that he makes the call. Heck, I would be more comfortable with many of the members here making the call instead of either Shanahan.

McD5 said:

I'm concerned about the ability of either Shanahan to judge talent. The list of questionable decisions is just too long, and it's depressing. And I just don't feel comfortable with Mike picking the right QB in next year's draft. I wish someone not named Dan, Vinny, Mike or Kyle would do it.

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Shanahan's list of 'hits' is nearly as long (if not longer) as his list of 'misses.' No talent evaluator hits on more than around 60-70% of their picks, and that is the high end. Its a tough business, finding talent, and Shanahan is as good a guy to be doing it as any.

Lanky Livingston said:

Shanahan's list of 'hits' is nearly as long (if not longer) as his list of 'misses.' No talent evaluator hits on more than around 60-70% of their picks, and that is the high end. Its a tough business, finding talent, and Shanahan is as good a guy to be doing it as any.

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I call BS. Do you have any evidence of this claim? I only ask because his list of hits through free agency is short, and through the draft is nearly non existent. I'd be willing to wager that hit ratio of misses to hits is probably around 4 to 1, if not worse.

Edit: Just for quick reference, I checked his acquisitions for his first year in Denver. His list of hits and misses is as follows....for fairness, I put all good players and borderline players under hits.

Hits
Terrell Davis
Ed McCaffrey
Michael Dean Perry
Mark Schlereth
Rod Smith
Lionel Washington

Misses
Jamie Brown
Ken Brown
Glenn Cadrez
Byron Chamberlain
Aaron Craver
Gary Downs
Dave Garnett
Britt Hager
Tim Hauck
Clifford Hicks
James Jones
Mike Lodish
Reggie McElroy
Bill Musgrave
Bill Schultz
Ralph Tamm
Maa Tanuvasa
Eric Thomas
Broderick Thompson
Troy Wilson

As I count it, that makes 6 hits and 20 misses just in that year. If that's any indication, he only hits 23% of the time. It would be hard to get more horrible than that.

Lanky Livingston said:

Shanahan's list of 'hits' is nearly as long (if not longer) as his list of 'misses.' No talent evaluator hits on more than around 60-70% of their picks, and that is the high end. Its a tough business, finding talent, and Shanahan is as good a guy to be doing it as any.

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I politely disagree with this my friend. I don't see anything in his past that leads me to believe that he is a QB expert, or strong talent evaluator. And I will add to that--even a great coach, with a .500 lifetime record.

Even in his short stint here, I have just seen way too many things that scream "senile" or "game is passing him by very quickly." I'll list a few things that are huge red flags from both of the Shanahans:

Casey Rabach being named the offensive player of the year.

"I like what I see. I'm not concerned at all." Kyle on our o-line.

Slow Willie Parker. Larry Johnson. Joey Galloway. Maybe some of these were just camp fodder.....but if he honestly believed that any of them had a chance, that's a huge problem.

John Beck.

Kyle nearly jumping out of his seat, wanting to draft John Beck. Please keep Kyle as far away from QB evaluation as humanly possible. Maybe send him on a vacation out of the country before the next draft.

Mike staking his reputation on Beck and Grossman. Senility? Or desperation?

I don't see anything impressive. And I really hope he doesn't pick some QB that damages us for multiple years after.

McD, I am playing devil's advocate here. Please understand, I am not a huge Shanahan fan at the moment, though I do think he needs more time.

Just about all those things you cited were what was pronounced in public. Are you expecting either of the Shanahans to go to reporters and say, "Beck and Grossman are both complete trash. Waste of players, really. We are hoping that either they will suck hard enough for us to get a high draft pick with which we can finally get a franchise QB, or to be decent enough to surprise us all and win some games".

Or... "The OLine is garbage. Why are we even having this discussion? You guys have watched the games, right? Totally sucks, and I have no faith in any of them. Can't wait to replace the whole lot of them next off season."

I think he went a bit far with the "stake his reputation" thing, but whatever. He has to defend his guys in public, that's what he's doing.

Goal, I think the point is he didn't have to blow smoke up our arses. He could have played it down, but he makes statements like, "I stake my reputation on it"?

Elephant said:

Goal, I think the point is he didn't have to blow smoke up our arses. He could have played it down, but he makes statements like, "I stake my reputation on it"?

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Yep, like I said, I'm not thrilled with that one either. I think he went a little too far there too. My point was simply that while he may have gone too far, going in the opposite direction just wasn't practical either.

What happened to leaving certain things unsaid? He could have went that route too and didn't. I'm just scared that the Shannahans have gone completely bat**** crazy, and they might really believe these two guys are it.

I hope I'm wrong. I reeeeeeally hope I'm wrong. I couldn't handle another year of the dumb and dumber show.

I would argue that we brought in Shannahan not so much to rebuild a team as to win with what we had, my reasoning was simple, almost every move he made early on including the switch to a 3-4 is a " win now" type move.

Bring in aging vets, make the swap to the flavour of the month defence that several teams successfully trasitioned to recently, trading draft picks, blowing smoke at the fans about how this team just needed a few changes, all of those smacked of ego, ie " the redskins just need me to be better".

I absolutely agree with you on your last paragraph and thats partly why I disliked not only the hire but why I have so little faith in him.

We passed up free agents who could contribute, and signed guys who didnt do anything, we depended on Kemo, he was useless. we depended on free agent receivers who were brutal, we missed on free agent Olinemen like Evan mathis, we have a DC who is not a guy who wins.

Guys like Mike think im beating a dead horse? I am not impressed with our defence, yeah we have more sacks, but our rankings seem to me like they are about what they were with inferior players 2 seasons ago lol what pissed me off was wasting resources when they were at a premium. what pissed me off was the pattern of flat out misses on personelle, Can you honestly say we have had more hits than misses? Shanny thought we would win right away with the 3-4, how did that work out? The Carriker move and drafting Kerrigan were the only 2 things weve done that I liked. AH and his non performance cant be factored because frankly he was playing pretty good until the whole gong show, I think that took whatever motivation he did have out of him. but we will never know, who caares, hes tampas problem now.Shanny thought Mcnabb was a probowler, he thought a lot of things that have ben wrong. Like I said I am willing to give him one more offseason. But a spade is a spade, the transition was a flop, on top of it we spent a pile of resources and even now we are middle of the pack, you dont take a year, commit a pile of resources and.... tread water. someone else said we should bite the bullet take the 1 win season and build slowly, we are past that point now.