A Era of Redskins Football Comes to a End

Heath Shuler is the biggest bust ever (setting Rhonda aside) and I don't think it's close. 3rd pick in the draft. Could.Not.Play.The.Position. ESPN rated him the 4th worst NFL draft bust of all time, and NFL Network ranked him the 9th worst ever. He played for two other teams and was just as horrible there, finally (and mercifully) hanging it up after repeated foot injuries. We may hate other busts more, but hard to imagine a pick that was just a bigger total miss than that one.

Griffin should never be considered a 'bust' imho because he CAN play - he had a record-breaking year which really should exclude him from the convo automatically - but he is a gifted athlete and player. It just hasn't worked out in DC. I do think, some team, somewhere, under the right circumstances, could make him a serviceable QB. That was never the case with Shuler - he was a total bust. I think the only reason anyone might call Griffin a bust is because of the price we paid for him. If one were to anoint Griffin the most costly miscalculation by a front office in Redskins history, I think there's an argument to be made there. But it's more about what Griffin can and can't do and what we paid to get a guy with a very narrow skillset some believe is incompatible with a long-term successful NFL career vs. his inherent talent level.
 
Good call Boone, the circumstances surrounding Griff is the bust not the kid himself.

Om, 38HH?.... no pix it didn't happen :)
 
I cannot believe Jason Campbell is being over looked in the "Biggest Bust" commentary. I think he was a much bigger bust than Griffin in many respects.

I still maintain that Gibbs traded w/ Denver to get Aaron Rodgers believing the Packers would never draft him since they had Favre. Then Jason Campbell was the contingency plan.
 
Campbell was Joe Montana compare to Shuler... I would love to know the answer to your question though...

And yes Fear, I want to say we got a 3rd and maybe a 5th for Shuler, pretty incredible given his resume. My biggest beef with how the Griffin situation was handled is that we destroyed his rep (he helped too) and totally gutted his trade value in the process. They should have traded him after the 2013 season and they could've been sly about it being because he didn't fit the Gruden offense.


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Or hire a coach willing to take the time to work with the kid.

But it appears that ship has sailed.
 
Yeah I wouldn't call Campbell a bust. He was just an average QB on a lousy team who moved on when we switched coaches.

Not what I'd call a bust so much as a guy who just didn't work out. Kinda like Patrick Ramsey.
 
You forgot to mention, Brad Johnson won a ring with Tampa after we decide he wasn't the guy...that was a tough one, because the other qb Rich Gannon was on the opposing Superbowl team the Raiders. Ironic thing we let Gannon go as well...
Henry said:
Biggest bust in Redskin history? Take your pick. Desmond Howard, Heath Shuler, Andre Johnson, Sean Gilbert, Dan Wilkinson and Dana Stubblefied, Deion Sanders, Taylor Jacobs, Brandon Lloyd, Adam Archuletta, Laron Landry, Donovan McNabb, Jason Taylor, the aforementioned Albert Haynesworth ... thats just off the top of my head.

Hell, how about Brad Johnson? We gave up, what, a 1st, 2nd and 3rd for the guy and he didn't even last two seasons here.

The list is long. Griffin is just a cog in a very big machine.
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Fear The Spear said:
Andre Johnson is the man you're looking for.
Tory Nixon also gets honorable mention.
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Exactly, we overpaid, vastly for RG3 but he gave us a superlative season a decent season and was injured, thats not a bust, a bust isnt just a guy you overpay for, if it was the haynesworth was the biggest bust. but even AH gave us some solid football before shamahan screwed us and him.

Drafting anyone in the top 10 who doesnt even play a down or who plays so poorly that even journeymen are a better option, are real busts, Desmond howard was a total bust for us, we were desperate for a wr and he was a good returner. lol Johnson was supposed to be a stud OT and never played, those are busts.
 
I think the clear lesson coming out of the Griffin episode is that in a 53 man team sport you simply cannot afford to take the kind of riverboat gamblers' bets that Dan Snyder consistently made in hopes of jump starting the team to glory without putting in the time of building an organization through time and patience.

Teams like Green Bay won Super Bowls with HOF quarterbacks Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. But Green Bay didn't break the bank to acquire either one of them. They simply waited for opportune moments to use reasonable resources to acquire what they thought were value talents.

The Packers didn't make a trade of multiple #1 picks to move up and draft Alex Smith or Aaron Rodgers.

We don't even know if they were going to take Rodgers at all.

But when the opportunity came to them to grab him as the #24 pick overall, they made the most of it.

Same thing with the Steelers and Ben Roethlisberger. They took him at #11 where they were slotted to pick and used their other picks to continue to build a team around him.

That's how you build Super Bowl winners.

This isn't the NBA where you deal your future for ONE player and have it pay off because that one player has such an outsized difference on what happens on the court.

The Chargers have had Philip Rivers for 12 years and he has been one of the top qbs in the NFL, but they have failed to advance to even one Super Bowl during that time because the front office there was unable to keep valuable performers from leaving in free agency and replacing them with quality performers.

Where teams have rolled the dice and gambled big time, ie the Saints with Drew Brees and the Broncos with Peyton Manning, both organizations gambles were based on money only and did not involve draft pick or other compensation.

Both players were coming off major injuries and were released by their previous teams.
 
Eli Manning cost the Giants an arm and a leg in draft picks.

If Griffin wasnt snapped in two, physically and mentally, he may well have beem worth the price.

We'll never know now.
 
Henry said:
Eli Manning cost the Giants an arm and a leg in draft picks.

If Griffin wasnt snapped in two, physically and mentally, he may well have beem worth the price.

We'll never know now.
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No excuses, he wasn't worth it. You can play the "what if" game all you want, but the story has been told. He was definitely not worth the price paid.
 
Elephant said:
No excuses, he wasn't worth it. You can play the "what if" game all you want, but the story has been told. He was definitely not worth the price paid.
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Good Lord, I'm not making excuses for anyone on this team.

No, that wasn't my point. My point was trading picks and moving up and getting a centerpiece for the offense isn't a failed strategy. It is possible to do that and win. It's been done before.

In our case the problem was something else. It was the team's complete mishandling of yet another high-profile player. It was also probably Mara and Goodell hitting us with the cap hammer the day before Free Agency without warning. A free agency period we were, I'm guessing, expecting to use to mitigate the loss of the picks we spent on Griffin. It was a combination of things.

These are not so much excuses for the team or for Griffin, but rather points to note when considering trading up for a quarterback. While I think three firsts and a second is a huge price to pay for any player. I don't think that in and of itself did the 2012-2014 Redskins in.
 
The lesson in the RG3 situation is that picking the right players is what matters. If you pick the wrong player from your original spot, you still failed. Giving up a boat load to get the wrong player does magnify the failure, but it's still a failure.

Picking the right player, whether you trade up like the Giants, sit still like the Steelers, or find that guy in 6th that nobody wanted like the Patriots, is how you build the franchise. The Redskins have been awful at finding the right QB (and a lot of other positions too) for most of their history. The Snyderatto era was notorious for that. RG3 is the latest example and one of the biggest gambles. I seriously hope they have found one now, since we are closing the chapter on the latest failure.


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Truth is, with rare exception, the overwhelming majority of Redskins fans wanted the team to do whatever it took to get Griffin at the time. Had he proved to be the guy we thought he was on the eve of the draft, and even after year 1, it would've been worth the cost. He wasn't, and therefore, it wasn't.

I don't think it's that complicated.
 
As Joe Gibbs' tenure showed here, perhaps the greatest 'ability' for a football player is 'durability' :)

The number of players Bobby Beathard and Joe Gibbs brought in here that played 10-15 years in the NFL as productive starters is truly remarkable.

High picks like Art Monk, Darrell Green, Russ Grimm, Charles Mann, etc. not only went on to become productive players but they all went on to play a long time in the NFL. Ditto for other regulars like Joe Jacoby, Monte Coleman, Don Warren, Jeff Bostic, Raleigh McKenzie, etc.

Griffin was not ready to play in the NFL based on the system he played in college and had already suffered one ACL injury in college at Baylor. At 6'2 and 215 he was a lanky kid without the frame to add much punch in terms of weight and strength.

Running backs that go 230 often have a difficult time making it 5-6 years in the NFL with all the pounding they suffer.

There was a reason the Redskins and the Browns (two teams with recent losing histories) were the two teams most heavily invested in moving up to #2 and giving up a good portion of their future for Griffin, plain and simple desperation.

Now, imagine the number of good NFL front offices that at the time would have been interested in moving up to #1 to take Andrew Luck.

There would have been a lot more suitors. Why? Because there was little doubt Luck was going to be a successful NFL quarterback having run a pro style offense in college.

In that case, you are trading away a lot of potential help in future picks for someone who is better than a 50/50 bet to help your team for the next decade.

Again, the best teams and GMs may swing at the plate sometimes to make the 'big' play on draft day or through trades, but rarely is it for a guy they are less than certain is a bona fide NFLer.
 
Aw hell. Nevermind.
 
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