We've been 'competitive' for years. Saying otherwise is an exaggeration. You guys talk as if we're winning 3-4 games a year. We've been in the mix for the NFC East title for years. We just haven't gotten it done. I'm not arguing your larger point. Organizations achieve their goals, or they don't. We haven't. And that all falls on organizational leadership. But let's please not act like we've not had any success at all. We have. We aren't 'a disaster' as so many fans like to frame us as. We have some major deficits in our approach and organization that need to be fixed if we are ever to turn the corner and take it to the next level, where we are a perennial playoff team that attracts the best talent in the NFL.
Respectfully disagree. This team hasn't been competitive for a long, long time. At best, it's been a mediocre team/franchise that without exception always loses to the better teams in the league. That is the measuring rod to me - can you beat the better teams (let's say top 10). See, that has been the story-line for this franchise, good enough in some aspects (i.e., not the dregs), but never, ever good enough as a complete team. We beat a weak Tampa team a couple years ago in a comeback and evryone thinks "magic." When the truth is a good team should never be in that position in the first place.
I recall the year we thought we had a good, competitive team. We travel up to New England and are annihilated. It's a chimera. We're never competitive in the sense of we routinely beat the weaker teams and can beat a top team now and then. We seem to have issues winning home games with regularity. The team culture of talking big but playing small seems deeply entrenched to me. And I don't see a FO or coaching staff that can or will change that. Think of it as a mapquest choice: we can take the shortest route by milage, quickest route by time or the longest route route with the greatest number of stop lights. We seem forever consigned to the last. Whatever the analogy, I think most of us will concede that win or lose, the football itself has been bad to boring. Yea, nice winning from time to time, but the quality of actual football has, in the mean, been boring. Year after year: too many penalties, bad line play on one or both sides of the ball, coaches out-maneuvered by opposing coaches, no long-term solution to QB issues, fix one problem but create others, idiotic coach selections, no return on FA signings, players with drug busts, continual drama.......we've had superbowl coaches come in who couldn't estbalish long-term consistency over 2-3 years.
One, big friggin strip tease where the clothes never really come off to reveal the full body of a good team - let alone a team that can compete with the best.
And so we return to off-season wondering who the coach and QB will be next season, whether we can draft in the first three rounds players to fill 15 rounds of need, whether injured players can recover to be injured again, watching the Eagles, Giants or Cowboys in the playoffs and/or Superbowl.
So, go wideout in the first round or offensive line?
addendum...still luv ya Boone. The Skins are nearing the edge where they risk losing a huge portion of their fanbase. A declining NFL product may push it over that edge.
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That might be a pretty intimidating duo for a couple of years.
