Random Commanders Thoughts

Boone said:

Well, for one he's under contract

Manusky has been an NFL teams DC for 11 straight years. Not sure how you define ‘in high demand' but he's been deemed capable for more than a decade.


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What's he known for as a DC? Nothing I can think of. Not an innovator. Not a grand strategist. Certainly not success. He does appear to get fired with some regularity.

Hanging out isn't a superlative in this league - look at Hugh Carson and how coaches float around after being fired.

Brudan appear to think they have a play-off caliber roster that was snake bitten by injuries. I'm not seeing it. But I guess it has become tradition to absorb the mush that these businessmen offer the fans. Much easier to play on loyalties of the past and play pretend to really, really, really care than actually demonstrate real leadership and accountability.

Not blistering you Boone. Like many fans all I have to hang on to is a past the present will never, ever match. They don't have the skill relative to the other coaching staffs, FOs and owners in the league.

WRR

The thing that stymied to offense as much as the injuries did, is Gruden's constantly forcing pieces to strictly adhere to his system, and never making the system fit his players. It's why he's a failure as a head coach. He'll need blind luck to succeed next season. Cause that's his only hope.

So, the offense doesn't get a pass, in my book. If healthy next season, they better be top 5 in the league. Or all the injury excuses will be shown to be just that.
Excuses.

Knightingale said:

I suspect the feeling is that with the personnel that the D had, and with their relative health all season, this unit underperformed badly down the stretch. Which I guess points to coaching, and I'm not sure that they're wrong. And when players like DJ start stirring the pot, then you know something is wrong. I can't say I've been crazy impressed by Manusky and his D, and the uptick in Defense can probably be generally associated with a) an uptick in talent in the trenches and b) we really couldn't be worse than last year could we?

The coaches on O get a pass because they were basically breaking in a new QB, RB and WR combination early, and then fire fighting all the injuries late.

I think it was the decline in our Run D that shocked me the most as the season wore on. Pass D was always a problem (though that too got worse!)

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Credible thoughts. I give no pass on offense. The team, healthy or not, never had the players to succeed on offense. Throw in Ax's thoughts about coaching and there you have it.

Run D is the flip side of pass D. Weak in one is eventually going to impact the other.

I know I'll be laughing my rear quarter of f if the Iggles or Cowpeople continue to win. Another missed opportunity.

IMO, the run defense slumped because Payne and Allen hit the rookie wall at about that time in the season(Allen only played five games last season). It was even sped up by the foolish strategy of making those two play nearly 95 percent of the defensive snaps(earlier in the season) instead of having a rotation to keep guys fresh. The idea that just because your young, you don't need a break...you can play the whole game....is just stupidity at it's finest.

There are stories floating around saying that Bruce had told the staff he wanted his draft picks showcased and they needed to be on the field at all times,that there would be no rotation. If that's the case, that's pretty bad precedent and leads one to believe there's not much hope here for long term success...as if there was ever...

Knightingale said:

I suspect the feeling is that with the personnel that the D had, and with their relative health all season, this unit underperformed badly down the stretch. Which I guess points to coaching, and I'm not sure that they're wrong. And when players like DJ start stirring the pot, then you know something is wrong. I can't say I've been crazy impressed by Manusky and his D, and the uptick in Defense can probably be generally associated with a) an uptick in talent in the trenches and b) we really couldn't be worse than last year could we?

The coaches on O get a pass because they were basically breaking in a new QB, RB and WR combination early, and then fire fighting all the injuries late.

I think it was the decline in our Run D that shocked me the most as the season wore on. Pass D was always a problem (though that too got worse!)

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I respect your all's position. But in 2017, our defense looked like hell on wheels before the injuries started mounting. We looked pretty damn good, good enough to get this team to a 6-3 record (and remember, it was largely the defense carrying us in those wins). Despite everything, our D the past 2 seasons has looked better than it did previously. And sure, we can chalk up any positives to better talent, and any negatives to the coaching staff, but I think we all know that's not really accurate. You can't separate the two. Manusky has done a decent job the past 2 years. Not good enough, but at least the D has played well enough in most games to give us a fighting chance, even with one of the most anemic offenses in the league this year.

DieselPwr44 said:

IMO, the run defense slumped because Payne and Allen hit the rookie wall at about that time in the season(Allen only played five games last season). It was even sped up by the foolish strategy of making those two play nearly 95 percent of the defensive snaps(earlier in the season) instead of having a rotation to keep guys fresh. The idea that just because your young, you don't need a break...you can play the whole game....is just stupidity at it's finest.

There are stories floating around saying that Bruce had told the staff he wanted his draft picks showcased and they needed to be on the field at all times,that there would be no rotation. If that's the case, that's pretty bad precedent and leads one to believe there's not much hope here for long term success...as if there was ever...

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I agree with all of that brother. Only caveat - the 'Bruce told the staff...' thing is total Twitter rumor and I just don't buy it. I struggle believing any NFL coach is going to accept that kind of mandate. Maybe I'm just not cynical enough to believe it - yet

As for there being 'no hope' - we were 6-3, two games up for the division when we lost both our QBs. Is it really that much of a stretch to believe had Alex remained healthy that we'd have won enough games to take the division or at least snag a wildcard spot? Not like that was an impossibility. We had something going with Alex under center. There is such a thing as bad luck, even for cursed teams with dysfunctional front offices.

One thing. The Redskins need to STOP trading on sentimentality and trying to sign or hire ex-Redskins as the solution.

It's understandable you want to go back and re-start a great history but that era is now just that, history.

The Packers did the same thing in the 1970's and 1980's - walking down nostalgia lane with ex-players hired as coaches, assistants and front office executives.

It wasn't until Ron Wolf came in with Mark Murphy that the Packers were able to build a new winning tradition with a new approach, respecting the past but not being held hostage to it.

We hired Manusky in no small part because he was a Gibbs Redskin. To replace him we immediately reached out to Todd Bowles, another ex-teammate.

We need to move on to new ideas.

There has to be a younger defensive assistant in the league that is worthy of a DC chance, and not someone first hired by his father in law to be DC on an 0-16 team like Joe Barry.

Ax said:

The thing that stymied to offense as much as the injuries did, is Gruden's constantly forcing pieces to strictly adhere to his system, and never making the system fit his players. It's why he's a failure as a head coach. He'll need blind luck to succeed next season. Cause that's his only hope.

So, the offense doesn't get a pass, in my book. If healthy next season, they better be top 5 in the league. Or all the injury excuses will be shown to be just that.
Excuses.

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So just going to ask a question regarding Gruden's refusal to 'adjust his system'. When it became clear we could win games using a ball control, run-heavy offense featuring Adrian Peterson, the formerly pass happy Gruden quickly embraced it. This year's offense looked nothing like previous ones. Why? Because Gruden realized Alex strengths (2017 aside) were the short passing game, ball control, and eliminating turnovers, and that Peterson was still a force to be recognized in the backfield.

Isn't that an example of him doing exactly what you and others say he is not capable of doing?

I know - some will chime in and say that Gruden had AP running the wrong plays, that he's a north-south between the tackles runner, blah, blah, blah... But the fact is, we shifted from a passing dominant to a run dominant team in 2018, exactly because of the talent on the roster.

Bulldog said:

One thing. The Redskins need to STOP trading on sentimentality and trying to sign or hire ex-Redskins as the solution.

It's understandable you want to go back and re-start a great history but that era is now just that, history.

The Packers did the same thing in the 1970's and 1980's - walking down nostalgia lane with ex-players hired as coaches, assistants and front office executives.

It wasn't until Ron Wolf came in with Mark Murphy that the Packers were able to build a new winning tradition with a new approach, respecting the past but not being held hostage to it.

We hired Manusky in no small part because he was a Gibbs Redskin. To replace him we immediately reached out to Todd Bowles, another ex-teammate.

We need to move on to new ideas.

There has to be a younger defensive assistant in the league that is worthy of a DC chance, and not someone first hired by his father in law to be DC on an 0-16 team like Joe Barry.

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I agree. On the other hand, 3 other NFL franchises hired Manusky for a total of 9 years before we did, including two 4 year stints.

I worry about this tendency in the draft too. I'll confess I haven't watched enough film on Brett Rypien to have an educated opinion on his NFL potential. Maybe he's the next Joe Montana and if we believe he is, I'll be fine with our drafting him, as long as it's not because of his last name.

And... just for the record, am I trying to provide a little balance here to the 'we are ****ed forever!' narrative that dominates all Redskins discussions nowadays?

Yep.

Good luck with that. The owner and team president make that a tough sell at present.

Bulldog said:

Good luck with that. The owner and team president make that a tough sell at present.

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I hear you. But on the other hand, there have been some positives the past couple of seasons. Skins fans don't want to hear it, but there have been. Performance aside, we have focused on drafting big uglies at the top of the draft and we've hit on them. Faced with injuries on an epic scale the past 2 seasons, Gruden has *mostly* kept the team in the mix for a playoff spot and hasn't lost the lockerroom. Every team has a couple of players that spout off at the mouth at the first sign of trouble. The Redskins are no exception but we hardly have a corner on the market there. I don't know if signing Alex Smith was a huge mistake - in retrospect with a horrific injury it doesn't appear it's going to work out well for us. But the move DID take us from an absolute disaster at QB in 2018 to having a solid performer there who made us competitive in 2018. And yes - I understand the FO certainly had a hand in creating that whole situation, but so did Kirk Cousins. Not looking like his issues were all Gruden and the team's fault at the moment.

I don't need anyone to tell me what's gone wrong here. I'm living it, every day, like you guys and gals are.

But it's not all been negative. I don't have any problem stating that. Folks don't want to hear it, but we need to have some balance in these discussions. If I have to put unpopular takes out there to have some balance, I'm fine with it.

fansince62 said:

Credible thoughts. I give no pass on offense. The team, healthy or not, never had the players to succeed on offense. Throw in Ax's thoughts about coaching and there you have it.

Run D is the flip side of pass D. Weak in one is eventually going to impact the other.

I know I'll be laughing my rear quarter of f if the Iggles or Cowpeople continue to win. Another missed opportunity.

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Oh I don't give them a pass on Offence either, I was simply stating what I imagine the in-house thinking is at Redskin park and why the moves are focused on that side of the ball.

I like Gruden for a coach that can return a team to some form of competitiveness, I feel he's done that here bar the injuries. But I haven't seen anything from him that tells me he can push this team to make a leap to the next level. Bar injuries I think we'd have been a 10-6 or 11-5 team, somewhere in that range. We'd likely have been bounced in the playoffs before reaching the Conf finals. I even think that with the right players he could win a superbowl... but as a coach he's not a 'difference maker'. He's not the kind of coach who will pull something out of his ass and get us the Lombardi without perfect conditions.

I think Ax is right, I don't think I've truly seen him flex the offense to the strengths of the team. I know we've had a huge swathe of injury, but I think if you're the kind of coach that can roll with your teams skills, then we should have seen that this season down the stretch where injuries should have forced the issue. However, to give a little benefit of the doubt, we really don't know what effect all those new players at QB and on the O-Line had on the playbook. I imagine it was more like a play-pamphlet by the time the end of season rolled around.

I also think DP44 is right. I think the rookie wall had a lot to do with the slump. But again, that points to the coaches on the Defensive side who should have planned for that. Late season there was a lot of smoke around the Defense too, and where there's smoke there's usually fire. It wouldn't surprise me if Manusky lost at least part of the Defense down the stretch.

Boone said:

So just going to ask a question regarding Gruden's refusal to 'adjust his system'. When it became clear we could win games using a ball control, run-heavy offense featuring Adrian Peterson, the formerly pass happy Gruden quickly embraced it. This year's offense looked nothing like previous ones. Why? Because Gruden realized Alex strengths (2017 aside) were the short passing game, ball control, and eliminating turnovers, and that Peterson was still a force to be recognized in the backfield.

Isn't that an example of him doing exactly what you and others say he is not capable of doing?

I know - some will chime in and say that Gruden had AP running the wrong plays, that he's a north-south between the tackles runner, blah, blah, blah... But the fact is, we shifted from a passing dominant to a run dominant team in 2018, exactly because of the talent on the roster.

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Don't disagree with this...

Gruden has shown that he will flex his offense to play to strengths... if given time to do so.

But what I think we've not seen from him is the ability to flex quickly. We've seen this in the Skins traditional now inability to make decent half time adjustments when their game plan is done, and I think we see it to a degree when the offense has tried to adjust to injuries at key spots.

It was clear late season that our O-Line couldn't run block for toffee. Occasionally we'd get a lucky break, but we couldn't consistently open up holes. At that point (and without deep threats) I figured our best option was quick dink and dunk passing. Especially since our more experienced QB's were also down for the count.

Of course... any well prepped team we played would be prepared for that and take that away from us. So I'm not sure where our options were at that point. I imagine a lot of Gruden's game planning meetings during the week were slow shakes of the head and wondering exactly what to do on offense that could take an opposing defence by surprise somehow.

All that said...

While I hated the losing streak to finish the season, I didn't hate the fact that I never really felt this team just gave up. They looked like a team that fought to the end when it would have been easy to fold.
Sanchez was a mistake, but the team showed fight with Johnson at QB on very little prep time.

LOL See this is why I think in Redskin park the O gets a pass, simply because it's almost impossible to see what this team could have achieved if healthy.

Boone said:

And... just for the record, am I trying to provide a little balance here to the 'we are ****ed forever!' narrative that dominates all Redskins discussions nowadays?

Yep.

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I'm with ya!

Sorry if it seems like I'm not. LOL

I really think this year we'd have gone maybe 11-5 if Alex hadn't gone down and our O-Line had stayed healthy.
I don't think we could have competed with the elite teams yet, but I truly thought this would be a decent stepping stone to 2019.

I still do. I think the Redskins have a much brighter outlook that they did a couple of years ago, and I think Gruden has been instrumental in righting the ship.

It wouldn't surprise me to see a shake up of the defensive staff, simply because I think internally the Redskins believe that the D underperformed, even if it improved from year to year under Manusky. I suspect they look at those early games and wonder why we didn't maintain that level of D. I think they expect that a change in coaching staff may energize this D with it's talent base and push them to be an elite unit next year (whether that thinking is right or wrong, I suspect that's where the Front Office's head is at).

I think the big worry here is... .what about Alex?

Will he be back? If so will he be the same Alex? If not what do we do? And even if he is, is he the right QB to take us forward in a league where scoring is climbing?

QB really is our biggest concern - not only because Alex may possibly never play again, but also because we have a lot of other question marks at all of our offensive skill positions.

1) TEs - Vernon Davis makes a lot of mental mistakes. Sorry - when he's on, he's great, but his lack of in-game focus cost us numerous times this season. He's getting old and it's time to move on. Reed? Again, imho it's time to move on from him. You know why. Sprinkle showed some promise but going forward he's really the only young promising TE we have unless you think one of the subs can step up.

2) WR - We're in a bind here. Doctson was *improved* in 2018, but lets be honest, any kind of consistent production was going to be an improvement. For a guy who is supposed to be a #1 or at least #2 WR, 44 catches, 500+ yds, and 2 TDs is pretty pathetic. Do we cut bait or double down on his 'potential'? Jamison Crowder had similar #'s but didn't look like the same guy and had by far his worst year as a Redskin, mostly because he was only available for 9 games. What do you do there? Bank that with another offseason of recovery he's once again a difference maker? We literally have major questions with every WR. When your most promising options may be two undrafted free agents (Sims and Quinn), you know you are in trouble - even before asking who's going to be tossing the pigskin for us next season.

3) At RB, we may be better off but still mostly have questions. Is AP's 'gratitude' at being given a chance to start with the Skins going to be enough to get him to resign? Color me skeptical. His agent is going to push for a max money contract. Even if he does sign a contract with us, what are the odds he can repeat the amazing effort we saw this year? Can he hold up physically? I know it's AP, and he doesn't subscribe to the same human frailties that limit most of us, but he is going to be another year older and there's no guarantee he stays healthy. When it comes to Guice, will he be the same electric guy he was before the ACL tear? Can he stay healthy? We hope so, but this is the Redskins we're talking about here. And then there's Chris Thompson, like Crowder, a guy who has previously been a difference maker but who, coming off an injury year, didn't look like the same guy.

QB? Not even going to go there although this is obviously the most glaring question mark of them all. One has to believe that if Alex ever plays again, it almost certainly won't happen early in 2019. Unless the Skins truly do something dramatic, we're probably looking at Colt McCoy, which given his lack of durability probably means whoever his backup is by game 4 or 5. We are in the most trouble at QB we've been in in a long, long time, maybe as bad as when we were debating whether Danny Wuerfel or Shane Matthews should start

So - in terms of offensive skill positions, we have nothing but question marks nearly across the board. Good luck to us with that.

Bulldog said:

The Packers did the same thing in the 1970's and 1980's - walking down nostalgia lane with ex-players hired as coaches, assistants and front office executives.

It wasn't until Ron Wolf came in with Mark Murphy that the Packers were able to build a new winning tradition with a new approach, respecting the past but not being held hostage to it.

We hired Manusky in no small part because he was a Gibbs Redskin. To replace him we immediately reached out to Todd Bowles, another ex-teammate.

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Is Mark Murphy available? He's an ex-redskins, right?

Boone said:

So just going to ask a question regarding Gruden's refusal to 'adjust his system'. When it became clear we could win games using a ball control, run-heavy offense featuring Adrian Peterson, the formerly pass happy Gruden quickly embraced it. This year's offense looked nothing like previous ones. Why? Because Gruden realized Alex strengths (2017 aside) were the short passing game, ball control, and eliminating turnovers, and that Peterson was still a force to be recognized in the backfield.

Isn't that an example of him doing exactly what you and others say he is not capable of doing?

I know - some will chime in and say that Gruden had AP running the wrong plays, that he's a north-south between the tackles runner, blah, blah, blah... But the fact is, we shifted from a passing dominant to a run dominant team in 2018, exactly because of the talent on the roster.

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I don't think reducing the number of pass plays, and increasing the number of run plays, is changing the system. Most all the plays already existed. They are part of the system. He adjusted his play calling, by force. Not by choice. Kinda like a crackhead doing court ordered rehab vs going voluntarily.

And you can poo poo it all you want, but AP is going to the HOF because of spending almost his entire career running behind a fullback. Of course, Gruden is part of the NFL crowd who thinks the fullback position is useless. Also, Gruden's penchant for passing is a big reason we haven't gotten squat for blocking from the TE position. He prefers pass catchers over blocking. He will mouth the wish to have someone who can do both. Duh!!!

You know I'm on record hoping he'd be fired. I think he's earned that. But, I'm not in charge. So, I will still hope, pray, and cheer for him to win a Super Bowl, here, with our team. I just don't see any good reason to bet on it. He's good enough, if we catch enough breaks. As I, and others have repeatedly said, he barely gets average performance out of players. Great coaches can get blood out of a turnip. Gruden struggles to get turnips, out of turnips.

And, as I said in the other thread, I think since Gruden kept his job, then Manusky should keep his job too.

Kitchens was just named HC of the Browns. That likely puts Gregg Williams in play. Personally, although they've supposedly 'mended fences', I don't see Gregg ever forgiving Snyder for dissing him in favor of Jim effing Zorn. I see little chance we could lure him back to the DC role here. And I don't blame Williams at all for that.