Is owner Daniel Snyder doing the best he can with a bad situation or is he messing up?
Dan Snyder is the bad situation, IMnshO.
They also don’t have the talent. Jason Campbell isn’t good enough to carry a team in the pros. Hell, I am not even sure if he is good enough to be a long term starter. Clinton Portis is nearing the end of his useful lifespan. The O line is a complete disaster zone.
Now a lot of this is the fault of management, going out and spending huge sums on marquee players rather than spreading that money over multiple less prominent free agents. But right now, they such because they don’t have any talent.
The Redskins haven’t had any kind of stability in their coaching staff. And no matter who holds the title of head coach or General Manager, it’s all too obvious that he’s not really in charge of anything.
Jason Campbell may or may not be the answer at quarterback, but the guy has had a new offensive corrdinator practically every season, and has never gotten the chance to get comfortabe with any offense.
Daniel Snyder is not a fool, but he’s not an kind of football expert. He just THINKS he is, as every fan does. He’s dangerous the same way I would be if I owned a team.
Dan Snyder is doing the worst anyone could with a tremendous situation. The Redskins have the strongest fanbase of any NFL team (though not necessarily the best fans). He has a shit ton of money anyway, but they also have Dallas-type revenues. By rights, they should be the Yankees of the NFL, or at least the Red Sox to Dallas’ Yanks.
Instead, they’re the Cubs- huge payroll, nothing to show for it.
The reason is simple: the team is never designed to win games. They draft and sign free agents with “putting butts in seats” over “winning football games”. Obviously, they’re not entirely stupid- they didn’t sign TO this offseason, although the ridiculous contract they gave Antwaan Randle El and the two second-round picks they just spent on wideouts might have had something to do with that.
A team with an already stout defense shouldn’t be spending $100 million on Albert Haynesworth. Actually, nobody should be spending $100 million on a two-down player. They should have been spending it on an offensive tackle.
Jason Campbell would be the ideal starting quarterback on some teams. He doesn’t turn the ball over, can pick up yards with his feet, and is great on deep patterns. You saw that last year when Clinton Portis was squeezing out the last great half season from his tired body. He’s basically Jake Delhomme pre-'08, a guy who can complement a great running game. He’s the quarterback you’d want in Pittsburgh (well, not right now, obviously).
One of Campbell’s problems is that all that money they’ve spend on receivers has truly been wasted. Neither of their '08 second rounders looks to be any good, Antwaan Randle El is the league’s highest-paid fourth receiver, and Santana Moss is the league’s best #2 wideout on a team with no #1. Unfortunately, because there is some talent there, it just makes Campbell look worse- but in truth, Chris Cooley is the only top-10 guy on that offense (especially now that Chris Samuels is falling apart).
Now, it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen in the offseason - Snyder will give ShanahanGrudenDungyHolmgrenCowher a huge contract and complete control over the franchise (because Vinny Cerrato is useless too). This will be a disaster. No head coach-general manager (or head coach with the GM in his pocket) has ever had success in the NFL. The rosters are too big for anyone to do both jobs.
Holmgren sucked in Seattle until they hired a real GM. Shanahan started sucking in Denver once they made him the coach-GM. Gruden sucked in Tampa once they hired Bruce Allen to be his ventriloquist’s dummy.
What the Redskins need more than anything is a general manager who can keep Snyder from meddling, and cow the head coach. Rich McKay would be ideal - he’s basically a figurehead at the Falcons now, so he’d probably be up for it.
The Redskins seem to have more in common with the Toronto Maple Leafs than anyone in the NFL.
The belief that the Washington Redskins should be doing perennially well is not supported by any of their history. They are a franchise that has consistently been mediocre, with flashes of greatness. They were good during the late 30s and war years, they were good during the early 70s, and they were good for a 10 year period during the 80s creeping into the 90s. Other than that, they have generally sucked mid-table results down.
To assert that they have the best fan base in the NFL is to be smoking something highly hallucinatory. :rolleyes:
And it should be noted that their revenue stream and fan base was cut into significantly twice: with the creation of the Carolina Panthers, and with the move of the Ravens to Baltimore.
Dude, I’m, like, totally high on facts!
There’s certainly something in your contention that the Redskins have always sucked, but that’s irrelevant. There is no reason why a team that was poor in the 1940s should be poor today. You can argue that a team that was poor in 1999 might still feel the effects today, of course.
ETA: The second to last number in that table is annual revenue. The rankings before the team names are their positions according to the actual value of the franchises.
Spluh? Haynesworth is one of the best pass-rushing DTs in the league.
Bill Belichick has always been de facto GM of the Patriots. Andy Reid’s Eagles have been consistently good (and sometimes excellent) for a decade now. I’d wager there are other examples. TMQ has a tendency to ignore data points which don’t fit his hypothesis. That doesn’t mean that it might not tend to be a bad idea, but let’s not act like it can’t possibly be done. A Cowher or Shanahan regime would almost have to be an improvement over what the Redskins have been doing.
I’d say the problems with Washington are the usual things everyone talks about: too much roster turnover, too much splurging in free agency (often pricing second-tier players like superstars), too much willingness to trade away draft picks, and too little value attained from the few draft picks remaining. There was a good article on FO a few days ago about this, pointing out that the value of the draft isn’t just in getting cheap starters, but also cheap backups and role players. If for whatever reason you’re not able to get a serviceable backup defensive lineman in the later rounds of the draft who’s going to cost you $300K, then you’re forced to spend money on a veteran backup who might cost four or five times as much to get you the same level of performance, and who gives you no chance at maybe breaking out and becoming a solid starter. Repeat this process across the breadth of your roster, like Washington has, and it’s a serious problem for the franchise.
And what has it done for the team - absolutely bugger all good. Take that $100 million, spread it over a number of Offensive Linemen. Give Campbell the chance to hold onto the ball for more than a split second. Not that I am convinced it will do any good, but it cannot get any worse.
It isn’t that Haynesworth isn’t a great player, but he was a very bad for the 'Skins.
And I can get on board it being an awful lot to pay for a guy who plays such a limited percentage of the time.
Haynesworth is indeed a tremendous pass-rushing DT, but he’s not a three down player. He was only on the field for 59% of the Titans’ defensive snaps during his tenure as a starter, and only played 63% last year. The 'Skins planned to use him on 70% of the snaps this year.
Actually, I’m not going with TMQ there- I got that from Charlie Casserly, I think, during the Holmgren demotion.
Belichick has not been the de facto GM of the Patriots; he and Pioli split GM duties, although Belichick did have final say. Andy Reid I’ll give you.
Now, to be honest, I don’t really know enough to evaluate the Redskins organization. But I do know that ‘worst’ depends on what your goal is. Some people might say a team’s goal should be winning; others might say a business’s goal should be to make money. If you’re in it to make money then putting butts in seats should be valued over winning football games.
I mean, how can you say with certainty Snyder’s doing a horrible job when he’s still raking it in better than all but one other team in the league?
I assumed the OP is speaking in football terms. I guess from a business perspective the Redskins are doing well.
Because the incompetent things he does with the team damage the long-term revenue prospects. When you suck, people buy fewer t-shirts. At a certain level of sustained suckiness, you shrink the fanbase. Imagine you are a 17 year old boy growing up in the Maryland suburbs. Based on what you’ve grown up seeing, are you going to be a fan of the Redskins fan or the Ravens?
I’d agree with everything RNATB said, except that I don’t think Snyder will ever defer to a generic G.M. They need a Shanahan/Holmgren/Cowher big name, because that’s the only sort that will be able to tell Snyder to STFU.
I always enjoy pointing out that both their Superbowl wins in the 80s came during strike-shortened seaons. (They won the 1991 season fair and square.)
Dude! I’m totally high on logic! Lot’s of revenue ≠ big fan base! 
As an example, the Atlanta Braves of the 80s and 90s made lots of money, sold lots of clothing and caps, etc. But that was because they were on TBS, which was one of only two cable channels guaranteed to be in everyone’s cable lineup, so the whole nation watched their games, not as fans, but simply as people who hungered for baseball on TV. Contrast that to the Cubs, who not only were watched on WGN (the other channel nationwide at the time), but whos fans turn almost every ballpark in the NL into a mini-Wrigley whenever the Cubs visit. 
Which just reflects that much better on Gibbs, IMO.
As far as I am aware, the Redskins do not have their own TV network, other than the same local network-affiliate broadcast deals that every NFL team has.
Therefore, the additional revenue presumably comes from unusually high fan loyalty. If you have a more likely explanation, I’d love to hear it.
Lombardi held both roles with the Packers, and I seem to recall he did all right. 
But, that was a very different era; I agree with your general premise, that it’s very, very difficult, if not impossible, for one man to excel in both roles today.
Possibly, though teams like Pittsburgh and Green Bay have traditionally been seen as having extremely high fan loyalty, but they fall in the middle of the pack on that list.
I think it’s more likely that it’s the result of the Redskins:
a) having a new stadium, with the new revenue streams that that provides
b) having strong local sponsorship deals
c) being in a major market with a generally strong economic situation