First-year Redskins General Manager Scot McCloughan has been in Washington all of seven months, after spending the bulk of his professional career on the West Coast. But McCloughan seems to have a keen sense of what to say to a fan base that has been treated to mediocrity and hype for the past two decades, and that desperately wants something different.
The new GM continues to pound all the right keys in interviews, promising a patient rebuild, an embrace of the draft, a move away from free agency, a de-emphasis on the quarterback position, and a memorable style of football. Witness, for example, this unusually realistic statement to SiriusXM NFL Radio on Monday.
“You know what, we’re not gonna be the best team out there this year,” McCloughan told Jim Miller and Pat Kirwan. “But the one thing that I emphasized — and I told them in the opening meeting — was listen, I want us to compete every day: on the field and off the field. Find a way to make yourself a better player, and a better person. And I think we’ve done that so far. We’ve got a ways to go, but we’re going in the right direction. We’re taking small steps; we’re going in the right direction.”
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