Determining value (are the redskins capable of it?)

[Lanky Livingston]

LOL ffs Lanky, the point is that rather than being proactive and taking some risks, we are standing pat, thats fine if you are the patsies, not so much when you are a team overhauling EVERYTHING.

I don't know what LOL ffs means.

so? really? your point was that Hunt did nothing intially so its no big deal, my point is that many players have poor starts and then become better, LIKE SAY Cameron Wake who also played poorly in his first chance, went on to lead the CFL in sacks, then almost lead the nfl in sacks. Hunt ius undersized for a dt but should fit as an OLB or DE he is prototype size for an olb actually.

No, my point is that its ridiculous to criticize the FO for not picking up a guy, when nobody (including even you, with your limitless experience and knowledge of football) knows what he's going to do in the NFL.

But I guess we could just stand pat, seems to have worked really well, our I know better coach did a great job improving our defence.

Who said they should stand pat? You're getting all worked up for nothing.

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

Laugh out loud for eff sakes.

and my point is that its more than ridiculous to not be exploring EVERY AVENUE for talent when you have limited draft picks and free agents to fill out a roster.

You are implying that this strategy of doing nothing to bring in talent while making huge changes is working.

 

[Om]

Ryman, I take it you have a contact inside the Park who confirms for you what players the Redskins do and do not consider?

That could be useful.

Can ya introduce me?

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

Ryman, I take it you have a contact inside the Park who confirms for you what players the Redskins do and do not consider?

That could be useful.

Can ya introduce me?

Sadly Om, I am no longer in daily contact with Mike, I havent even spoken to him in about 9 months now and the last one was a 5 min convo about where a good place to shoot hoops would be if I was to visit the area to watch a redskins game next year, however I have access to a lot of sources who have been pretty accurate via the interweb, yourself included, and since nobody is talking about players we have brought in for workouts (aside from the aforementioned former Cleveland brown lineman) I have yet to read about anyone we brought in and took a serious look at. if you have information to contrary please feel free to post it.

I am not overly concerned with players we do or do not consider, I am far more concerned about players we make an actual effort to see.

 

[Om]

Ryman,

My point was that only a tiny handful of high-level Redskins employees---coaches and front office types---have access to the player personnel boards, or are in the know as to how or why any given player gets rated, considered, etc. I know I'm not one of them. I was also pretty sure, with all due respect, that you're not either, but I'm always more than happy to be proven wrong so I kinda threw that out there.

We don't know if the Redskins made "an actual effort" to see a guy. We don't know how "an actual effort" would be defined, anyway. Might be different for you and me. Do they have to squeeze a guys' biceps at Ashburn, or can they maybe make an initial determination on whether a guy is a realistic target based on film review, networking with other staffs, possible connections with a player from people on their own staff, etc? Do we even know for sure that Redskins scouts haven't been out in the field since the season ended looking at certain people?

Guess what I'm saying is we have no way to judge how effective or efficient the current Redskins' personnel brain trusts' methodology is on deciding who to physically bring in and who not to. They're one year in. Year one of any new regime, to me, is a mulligan year. You assess your roster, assess the organizational infrastructure (including scouting of course), and get ready for the draft and FA market. What you don't do, if you have any common sense, is broadcast to the mouth-breathers on the web like us and in the sports media about who you are and aren't interested in.

I know I'm singing the same refrain I've been singing for years, so sorry about that. It's just that I continue to be amazed and amused at the conclusions so many serious fans draw from what they either do or don't see out here in TV and internet land. And I include myself in that category. I've probably been guilty of it myself.

But in the end I always come back to old Coach Mora. "You think you know. But you don't know."

 

[Bulldog]

Well, Year 1 to me is NOT a mulligan year in this case.

It was well documented that Snyder had decided to jettison Zorn during the 2009 season and Shanahan had enough discussions with Snyder to know he would be offered the job. No doubt he started watching film of the team during that season. He could see the age and lack of talent at critical positions.

So, unlike an assistant that gets a head coaching gig after the Super Bowl as a result of a series of interviews, Mike was a little further ahead in getting to know his charges.

The other item here is that the team missed BADLY on McNabb. To trade high picks for a 34 year old veteran and then have it be known in the middle of the season that he and the OC have never been on the same page in re the offense is really damning.

In my mind you don't make that trade unless you are 'all in' and the entire staff on offense has signed off McNabb as a fit for this particular system.

There was a disconnect there and it was a pretty big one that cost this team plenty.

 

[Om]

Understand your position on the mulligan thing, BD, just not sure I agree. One thing to watch film from your living room--another entirely to spend a full year getting to know the lay of the land, and actually live, practice, work and play alongside flesh and blood people---from owner on down to ball boys---reacting to real input, in real time.

Maybe given Shanahan and Allen's resumes they don't get the same pass say a Zorn would, but surely they deserve a year in the trenches to assess/take control of an organization as adrift as this one was.

Maybe we can agree on "mulligan light?"

As to McNabb ... could write volumes about that. What I would like to ask Shanahan off the record after about six Tanqueray tonics one day is 1) exactly what he and Allen saw in DMac circa 2009 that first got them interested, 2) then, at what point did it become apparent to them that he wasn't that player--or at least wasn't going to become that player quickly enough to take control of their offense in 2009.

Don't suspect we'll ever really know what happened there. Which is too bad, because people are going to create their own answers, and some of those will become accepted by many fans and announcers as gospel.

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

Om, I completely agree that we don't know whats going on behind the doors, where I disagree is that in todays information age we are more informed than ever before and yet thus far we have seen nothing in the way of this team extending itself.

Last season we had a huge roster turnover, we installed new systems on both sides of the ball, Normally that would suggest a rebuild and yes a mulligan ,IF WE HAD ADDED A BUNCH OF YOUTH and then got them on the field, then I would totally agree that the the season should be a mulligan, but instead we traded our old aging players for other teams old aging players and didnt start playing our young guys until the last couple games of the season. we didnt bring young guys up from the PR , we didnt scour other teams Prs for young talent, we basically wasted an entire season convincing ourselves that we didnt need a rebuild only to admit at the end of the year that we did.

Shannahan has yet to display anything resembling the skill and talent to BUILD a team, he took a team built by someone else, got consistently worse on defence and eventually got fired because he had taken that team as far as he was going to.

here is what scares me the most, he doesnt seem to learn from his mistakes, in Denver he would stick his nose in on defence quite often, and they consistently had bad defences, they didnt draft defence very well there during his time (but admittedly he didnt have the carte blanche he has here). Rather than learn from that and get a DC who is beyond reproach (like Gibbs with Petitbon) to completely run the D, he gets haslett who is there as a yes man to run a scheme that HE picked before even looking hard at the roster. I respect Shanny as one of the great offencive minds in the NFL but his mishandling of defence has been epic.

then he handpicked a QB, gave up some great draft picks for a guy who any knowledgable fan could have told you was overrated and wouldnt fit what Shanny likes to do on offence. superficially he had some likeness to Elway but up close? not even remotely.

I wont even get into the AH situation, because that was so badly mishandled by both sides but he as the head coach bears the brunt of that even if he didnt sign the guy.

I guess what I am saying is simple, he won a superbowl, that doesnt buy him any collateral with me after this season, im struggling to find any real positives coming out of this debacle of a season and if I dont start seeing us digging up talent and finding it in unusual places, then I am going to have zero confidence in this teams ability to become decent. we dont have enough draft picks and im wary of how we will work in free agency.

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

is it just me or does it seem like we were "in" more games this year than last? also, with the way zorn ended we were just horrible but we won more games this year than last anyways.

its just you, we were in more close games 2 years ago and we were not allowing league records in yardage or points, the problem 2 years ago was that we literally had street free agents starting on Oline and we got no production from our offence.

this past season we got some turnovers from more aggresive play but we balanced it by not being able to stop any decent teams when it counted and by letting the better offences score at will on us.

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

one thing ive noticed is that I dont see and my friends up in edmonton, dont see the redskins scouts at CFL games anymore, we used to joke about it because there were always 3-4 NFL scouts at the games, maybe its the economy but we dont see them anymore.

this team has so many huge holes, that we wont be able to fill them through the draft, and perhaps not even through free agency. I was hoping we would be looking and finding players all over. and im disheartened that they just dont seem to be. Now maybe you are right, maybe they are digging and just havent been open about it. I guess by the time the next season rolls around we will know for sure.

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

from going 6-2 to 2-6 the skins went a total of 6-18.

last year we won that many games alone.

im not even going to beat the 3-4 defense drum..

we also got blown out more, a lot more. you said it seemed like we were in more games, I can see how it might feel that way when the defence was getting turnovers. I suppose my argument would be, we werent as devastated by injuries on the oline this year and yet we only won 2 more games. after a full offseason a team should be hugely improved especially one that made a much roster turnover as we did.

 

[Lanky Livingston]

we lost 6 games by 4 points or less.

in 09 we only had 4 games like that

I only see 2 losses that were "blowouts" and thats the philly game and the lions the week before. but the giants beat us by more in 09 than we lost to philly in 10 and we had a shutout loss to dallass in 09 as well.

And we were in the Lions game pretty much until the very end, when Grossman came in and fumbled the game away.

 

[Lanky Livingston]

one thing ive noticed is that I dont see and my friends up in edmonton, dont see the redskins scouts at CFL games anymore, we used to joke about it because there were always 3-4 NFL scouts at the games, maybe its the economy but we dont see them anymore.

this team has so many huge holes, that we wont be able to fill them through the draft, and perhaps not even through free agency. I was hoping we would be looking and finding players all over. and im disheartened that they just dont seem to be. Now maybe you are right, maybe they are digging and just havent been open about it. I guess by the time the next season rolls around we will know for sure.

Dude, no offense to you or your buddies, but its the CFL. Do players come from the CFL every once in awhile and do really well in the NFL? Sure. Does it happen frequently? No. The CFL is filled with guys who couldn't make it in the NFL...

 

[servumtuum]

Dude, no offense to you or your buddies, but its the CFL. Do players come from the CFL every once in awhile and do really well in the NFL? Sure. Does it happen frequently? No. The CFL is filled with guys who couldn't make it in the NFL...

Well, Lanky, I'll be keeping an interested eye on how, say, Philip Hunt, who the Eagles signed-former Winnepeg Blue Bomber and CFL sack leader and Andy Fanutz, WR from Saskatchewan who the Bears just signed-or Emmanuel Arceneaux a 6'2" WR from The B.C. Lions who signed with the Vikings in January among others.

I can see Ryman's point from the perspective of not overlooking options-there are talented players in the CFL, the pool might not be awesomely deep-but when you're needy, and let's face it, the Skins are needy, why overlook a possibility?

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

Well, Lanky, I'll be keeping an interested eye on how, say, Philip Hunt, who the Eagles signed-former Winnepeg Blue Bomber and CFL sack leader and Andy Fanutz, WR from Saskatchewan who the Bears just signed-or Emmanuel Arceneaux a 6'2" WR from The B.C. Lions who signed with the Vikings in January among others.

I can see Ryman's point from the perspective of not overlooking options-there are talented players in the CFL, the pool might not be awesomely deep-but when you're needy, and let's face it, the Skins are needy, why overlook a possibility?

exactly, I am not saying many guys could make the transition from the CFL, its a different game after all and many NFL players who did well in the nfl did terribly in the cfl and vice versa, however what I am saying is that certain types of athletes do well in both leagues, one thing about the CFL is that pass rushers develop because they get more opportunities, in 3 down ball teams pass a lot more often. Wake was a superlative pass rusher at the end of his CFL tenure and so is Hunt, we have a guy in Wilson who was decent but not anywhere near the level of Wake or hunt yet we overlooked both wake and hunt when looking for players.

Fantuz has great hands , he just needs some speed training I think, Israel Idonije played Canadian college ball and hes done pretty well for the bears.

I honestly think at this point with all of our holes, we will have to be creative to fill them. anyone can draft well , that takes solid scouting, its finding UDFA, and free agents who can actually play more than a fill in role that we need. We simply cannot afford to overlook talent.

I wish we would bring in that washington kid, he had a second round grade before all the hoopla about his rape/incest conviction, ffs we let murderers in the league and actual rapists, but this kid cant get a shot somewhere despite his pastor and other people vouching for him? again, we gotta take some shots to make some shots.

 

[Elephant]

Jesse Lumsford!

As far as the blown out inference you have made Ryman...again you are wrong! But we all know your perception is reality!

2010 season:

1.) Philly = Blowout
2.) Giants = Blowout

Now, let's go through the scores in the season that might/could/may be considered "blowouts".

1.) St.Louis - although they beat us by 14 points, we had plenty of chances to get that game under control. At the end of 3 quarters, they only had a 4 point lead. They scored 3 field goals in the 4th Quarter on their 3 possessions in the 4th quarter while we did nothing. They never really pulled away. We had a chance all the way through that game.
2.) Detroit - Lanky pointed out we had a chance late in the game to win that game, but Suh blasted Rex at the end of the game for the win.

http://www.nfl.com/teams/washingtonredskins/schedule?team=WAS

2009 Season:

1.) Dallas = Blowout - I know the score was 17-0 but we were blown out on the field that night. I was there and we never got anything going.
2.) Giants = Blowout
3.) Atlanta = Blowout
4.) Philly = Blowout - That game was over by the 3rd quarter. Again, I was there. I remember the stands almost emptied by the middle of the 3 quarter. I know this because I was able to get into the Dream Seats (1st 5 rows in the perimeter in the stadium) to take pictures. Seats emptied usually means Blowout.

http://www.nfl.com/teams/schedule?team=WAS&season=2009&seasonType=REG

So, once again you take the time to make a false statement, "we also got blown out more, a lot more."

First off, there were not as many blowouts in 2010 as there were in 2009. Look at the stats!
Secondly, if you even consider the Detroit or St.Louis games blowouts, it still does not mean there were more as you say. That would make it 4 each year! That is the same, not "...more" much less, "a lot more".

Will you admit you are wrong?

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

Jesse Lumsford!

As far as the blown out inference you have made Ryman...again you are wrong! But we all know your perception is reality!

2010 season:

1.) Philly = Blowout
2.) Giants = Blowout

Now, let's go through the scores in the season that might/could/may be considered "blowouts".

1.) St.Louis - although they beat us by 14 points, we had plenty of chances to get that game under control. At the end of 3 quarters, they only had a 4 point lead. They scored 3 field goals in the 4th Quarter on their 3 possessions in the 4th quarter while we did nothing. They never really pulled away. We had a chance all the way through that game.
2.) Detroit - Lanky pointed out we had a chance late in the game to win that game, but Suh blasted Rex at the end of the game for the win.

http://www.nfl.com/teams/washingtonredskins/schedule?team=WAS

2009 Season:

1.) Dallas = Blowout - I know the score was 17-0 but we were blown out on the field that night. I was there and we never got anything going.
2.) Giants = Blowout
3.) Atlanta = Blowout
4.) Philly = Blowout - That game was over by the 3rd quarter. Again, I was there. I remember the stands almost emptied by the middle of the 3 quarter. I know this because I was able to get into the Dream Seats (1st 5 rows in the perimeter in the stadium) to take pictures. Seats emptied usually means Blowout.

http://www.nfl.com/teams/schedule?team=WAS&season=2009&seasonType=REG

So, once again you take the time to make a false statement, "we also got blown out more, a lot more."

First off, there were not as many blowouts in 2010 as there were in 2009. Look at the stats!
Secondly, if you even consider the Detroit or St.Louis games blowouts, it still does not mean there were more as you say. That would make it 4 each year! That is the same, not "...more" much less, "a lot more".

Will you admit you are wrong?

No, because I am not wrong, you accuse me of my perception being reality then go on to make a statement that a 17 point loss is a blowout, while a 14 point loss in a game that we were never in was not "because I was there"

Losing a game to the patriots because they were a superbowl quality team is not the same being absolutely asshanded by the fecals (who we had beaten decisively in the first game). and losing tight games where the team pulled away in the end because we had no Oline and no deep passing game again wouldnt be considered blowouts by most whereas games where teams never had any worry about us even being in the game would by most people be considered to be blowouts.

Hate to break it to you little buddy but I wasnt wrong, this time you tried to look like johhny genius and failed. I counted 2 games that could be considered blowouts the giants and the falcons are a stretch.

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

Im ok with someone calling me out when actually am wrong, but this was a stretch El, even for you.

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

where did you post this break down of the stats? and one could argue that a 14 point loss to a team thats been as bad as the rams with them starting a rookie QB in one of his first few starts, is also a blowout, however that was not my point. my point was simple, This team hasnt shown itself capable of determining value.

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

"from going 6-2 to 2-6 the skins went a total of 6-18.

last year we won that many games alone.

"

is not breaking down the stats.