I am not advocating that the owner or GM go to the locker room and tell the players to lay down and not compete.
But as we all know there are moves you can make and others you can refrain from making that affect the outcome of the season and future of the franchise.
If the Redskins were smart they should have put DJ Swearinger on the suspended list for the last 2 weeks of the season and traded him for a pick in the offseason. There was no reason to give him away for nothing after putting up with his mouth for 12 plus weeks.
We probably could have recouped a
#5 or
#6 pick for Swearinger and that would have gone some way in recompensing us for having to carry his dead cap hit in 2019.
We also could as an organization decide to be PATIENT and stay where we are in the draft and get better by selecting better players and trading/signing others.
In my mind acquiring Alex Smith at 34 was simply a panic move by Bruce Allen to fill the hole created by Cousins' departure and meant to paper over the fact the Redskins mishandled the Cousins negotiations from start to finish.
But in the overall 'long' game of team/organization development and improvement the 34 year old Smith was not going to take us very far. Perhaps a wildcard spot at 9-7 or if everything fell the right way winning the division at 10-6.
His age almost guaranteed that he would be gone by the time the rest of the roster was assembled to be a true contender.
And we had no younger quarterback in the system to develop behind Smith while we gave Alex 2018 and perhaps 2019.
That was one of the big mistakes the Redskins made in 2017. If the team was not going to trade Kirk Cousins for a high pick, the team should have at least covered themselves by taking a quarterback in a good draft for the position and start to groom that player for Cousins' potential departure after the following season.
That's what Andy Reid did. He had Smith and drafted Mahomes to take over. He gave Smith that one final season and when he saw how Mahomes was coming along he decided he could trade Smith to another team for decent compensation because of Smith's outlier 2017 season and unload the $18M cap hit that was pending for 2018 for KC.
So, he played the Redskins like a violin. Reid was able to get rid of a player that while competent was on the back nine of his career and allow himself to free up $18M against the cap. He was then able to get not only a
#3 pick but a 24 year old starting caliber cornerback from Washington.
It's funny in a way when you think about what the Broncos were offering. They were offering a
#4 or
#5 pick and Aqib Talib, who was 31 years old and carried a big cap number that Elway couldn't wait to get out from under.
And up steps Washington to give KC not only the cap relief but a better draft choice AND a younger cornerback KC could build with.