You have to clarify if you’re talking about what’s on one side of the equation or net proceeds. They are effectively using three first rounders and a second rounder to pick one guy.
I’d much rather that the Redskins go after RGIII than take a chance that Peyton Manning still has it.
That said, there’s something to Hippy Hollow’s thinking. The Danny has made the Redskins into such a crap team that it’s really hard to make them much crappier. What’s the potential downside of this trade, really? That RGIII bombs, and the Redskins are still crappy, and down a few big draft picks. The potential downside of not making it is that the Redskins don’t make much use of those draft picks, are still without a decent QB in 2015 or whenever, and are still going nowhere.
The Redskins are so close to the South Pole of talent and team cohesion that practically every direction is north. And the directions that take them south, don’t take them very far south, because there just isn’t that much further south to go.
More years of mediocrity? Loss of revenue for the team? Wasting the talents of Orakpo, Kerrigan, Helu, and anyone else on their team. Having a potentially elite QB flame out because there is no O Line?
I don’t think desperation and depression are very good ways to rebuild a franchise. It didn’t work when they signed Haynesworth. It didn’t work when they brought back Joe Gibbs. It didn’t work when they got admittedly good players in Arrington and Samuels, but couldn’t back them up with anyone else. It didn’t work when they went with the Ole’ Ball Coach, Jim Zorn, or when they got Donovan McNabb. The Redskins have been using the “we’re desperate, what’s the worst that could happen?” plan for awhile and it hasn’t worked very well for them.
Peter King’s take on the ‘math’
That “if we described it” doesn’t make sense. You can either frame the trade as “4 picks for Griffin” or as “3 picks to swap this year’s round 1 picks”. They’re not trading for RG3 and a swap of ones.
Correct. The Skins still have a first round pick in this year’s draft.
Which they use to get RGIII. As I said: “The price to get RGIII is 3 first round draft picks and a second rounder. 2 first round draft picks and a second rounder go to the Rams. One first round draft pick goes to the NFL for RGIII. The total price (which was precisely what I was talking about with the part of my quote you snipped, was for QB’s already in the NFL) is 3 first round draft picks and a second.”
I’m a Skins fan, and while I do think they overpaid for the pick, I realize it pretty much had to happen. They NEED a QB, and the drop off in potential drops off sharply from RG3. So while I do feel a little cheated, it really was their best option considering the free agent quarterbacks or waiting and picking the third best in the draft.
But really, I think people think too highly at draft picks. EVERY draftpick is a gamble. Certainly some positions have less gamble in them than others, like you rarely see a lineman rate well but fail in the pros, but even in “sure bets” there’s always the chance of a freak injury. Similarly, yeah, you could get lucky with a later draftpick, you remember the random 4th rounder who becomes a serviceable QB, but you forget about all the 4th rounders who have to fight for their job of holding the clipboard. Sometimes you get lucky on mediocre prospects exceeding beyond what anyone expects, and sometimes great prospects flop. It’s part of the game, but you have to pay for the prospect, not draft poor ones and hope to get lucky.
The thing with RG3 is he has a lot of upside, he’s interviewed well, he doesn’t have any known character issues, he’s smart, he’s an amazing athlete. As far as a prospect goes, he and Luck are about as good as it’s going to get, so you just have to pay for it.
But here’s the thing, we’re talking about prospects and it’s difficult to weigh them against eachother. Would you rather have one really good prospect who may flop or three somewhat lesser prospects. Remember, Redskins drafted both Ramsey and Campbell later in the first round, and neither of them panned out. So I think the thought here is that if they did do something like that, they’re just not going to get a franchise quarterback that way, but would probably get a serviceable starter in one of those three, even if two of them bust. This way, they probably have about the same actual expectation of getting a serviceable starter, but have a chance, even if a small one, at a franchise QB.
With a franchise like the Redskins, in the state its in, they need to take a few risks and hope they pay off because “playing it safe” with late first-rounders or “proven” free-agents hasn’t been working. If the Redskins were consistently doing well, they could afford to take a lot more picks and just see what does and doesn’t pan out, but they’ll never do better if they don’t take some real risks and get a little lucky.
So yeah, in short, I feel like it’s overpriced, but it really is the appropriate move to make, so I’m okay with it. If nothing else, hopefully their offense will be more exciting to watch next year.
Well things just got a lot harder with the Redskins Cap penalty. I wonder how RG3 is feeling about his new team now?
A $36 million dead money charge?!? I guess that’s one way to slow down Dan Snyder’s free agency blitz.
It didn’t “have to happen”. They chose to do it.
Why not add in another dozen draft picks or a few more years of #1’s to get Andrew Luck? If we only look at the upside and not the cost, hell why not just trade all your picks in the next five drafts to get Aaron Rodgers?
Yes, they need a quarterback. No, they don’t need to give away that many high draft picks to get RGIII.
Matt Flynn wouldn’t cost you a single pick. And it’s not like the NFL Draft will end this year after RGIII is drafted. The likelihood of your QB being elite is certainly less if you draft Tannehill, Osweiler, Cousins, or someone else, but, again, their cost isn’t nearly as drastic.
You can’t have it both ways. Yes draft picks aren’t a sure thing, but that’s true of RGIII too. What you can do is give yourself more opportunities to get an elite QB with more draft picks rather than put all you eggs in one basket.
No, you don’t have to pay for it. I understand RGIII is a great prospect, but he’s still just a prospect. Next year you’ll have the same thing with Barkley and Jones and more than likely another unknown QB (kinda like RGIII) will make a meteoric rise. Just look at the teams that reached for QB’s last year out of desperation. Would you trade 3 firsts and a second for Jake Locker? Gabbert? Ponder? Hell, would you even do that for Newton?
And Aaron Rodgers was 24th. Brady went in the 6th. Brees was a second rounder. The three elite QB’s in the NFL, none taken in the top of the draft. And none of them cost more than one pick. Continue on with Romo was undrafted. Schaub was a late third rounder. There’s 6 of the top 10 rated QB’s (by passer rating on NFL.com), that weren’t taken in the top half of the first round. Let’s throw in Roethlisberger, Smith, and Ryan, and you have 9 out of the 10 highest rated QB’s who cost a single draft pick. Only Eli Manning, the 7th best QB rating, cost more than one pick, and 6 out of 10 weren’t in the top of the first round.
Again, you’re not looking at the costs. Unless RGIII becomes an elite QB, you’ve overpaid for him. That’s a ton of risk for one player, even one with as much upside as RGIII.
Again, this is pure desperation. I don’t think that’s the best way to rebuild a franchise.
Usually the team that winds up with the best player is considered the winner of a trade. And that won’t be known until 3-4 years from now. It isn’t very meaningful to point out a handful of successful players that were drafted in later rounds. That is 20-20 hindsight.
Bear in mind that Washington probably would have just screwed up all those draft picks anyhow. 
And, again, there is one way for this trade to be a success for the Redskins. If RGIII becomes an elite QB in the NFL. Almost every other situation that could occur (if he’s a bust, if he’s just adequate, if he’s injured, if he’s average, if he’s better than average but not great, or if he’s a serviceable starter) would be a failure. Sure it’s completely possible for it to be a great trade for the Redskins. But the price makes that awfully hard to meet.
Of course we won’t know for sure whether or not any draft pick or any trade will work out until all the evidence is in. But I really don’t think that forecloses us from offering opinions on the subject.
Right, and now based on the last decade of drafting history the Rams get to screw up those draft picks! 
Somewhere in Georgia, Herschel Walker is breathing a sigh of relief that his name will no longer be an automatic win in the “Gave Up the Most Ever in a Trade” discussions of the future…
This could get interesting. Redskins GM Bruce Allen on reports of cap penalties*:
Just a statement, but it sounds like the team is at least thinking about fighting any cap penalties based on the uncapped year.
The Cowboys were the only other team to be penalized. The NFL would be hard pressed to find two more antagonistic owners to hit with this charge. Things could get ugly here.
*Note to mods: the quote in this post contains the entirety of the text published by the team at the linked page. I think it falls under fair use, since it was a public statement released by the team, but feel free to trim it if you need to.
It’s going to be the Cowboys and Redskins against the other 30 teams in the league. They’re the ones who pushed for the cap hit, because they all stayed under the unofficial cap figure that the league gave, while Dallas and Washington tried to offload a bunch of contract money onto the uncapped year. They were warned, but decided to be shitheads about it. The extra cap money doled out to all the teams (aside from the Saints and Raiders) was meant to appease the players’ union, so they’ll stand aside.
Not true at all; there are plenty of busts at all positions. The biggest difference is that at most positions, a high pick who winds up just being OK instead of a star still has value; you can play him a specific role or in a rotation. A highly-drafted QB who is just OK instead of a star still ends up being problematic: e.g. Mark Sanchez, Alex Smith, Vince Young.
As Hamlet said: the only way this makes sense is if Griffin becomes a top-10 elite QB. If he’s just “good” or even “very good” – a much more likely proposition – you’ve given away the farm in order to improve to 8-8.
It’s not a matter of Griffin vs. some random late round pick; its Griffin vs. Ryan Tannehill plus three other guys or Matt Flynn plus four other guys. Yes, Griffin is a terrific prospect; Tannehill, Matt Barkley, Landry Jones and Aaron Murray are all pretty good, too.
If we’re talking “somewhat lesser?” – the latter, every time. You may want to take note of the Patriots’ draft strategy. If we’re talking about “way lesser” (e.g. a mid-round talent that was overdrafted by a team looking to make a splash, e.g. Patrick Ramsey), that’s different.
Do you seriously think the Redskins strategy over the last decade has been to “play it safe?” It sure looks to most people like an organization careening from one plan to another, always chasing the headlines and the big names, looking for instant success by constantly changing coaches and quarterbacks. This is just the latest example of that.
Unless Griffin is Jesus in cleats, the Redskins will still post a losing record this year, and likely next. So Shanahan will be gone, and it’ll be a new coach and a new system, and Griffin will have to adjust. And if he doesn’t do it the first season with the new coach, Snyder will be on to the next shiny thing.
You can’t compare QBs drafted in the second round or whatever to early first round prospects. Yeah, some of them pan out, and yeah a lot of work out, but it’s also out of a larger pool. They exceeded the expectations laid on them because, if they showed so much, they would have ended up as early first round prospects. And while it may be true now, there’s plenty of greats who were awesome prospects and did pan out: Peyton Manning, John Elway, Troy Aikman. Yeah, there’s not a whole lot of them, but there’s also only one or two QBs like that a year at most, some years don’t even have one that’s lauded like that.
You can’t just draft a whole bunch of 4th rounders and hope one of them turns into a Drew Brees. It’s like looking at a poker hand, you can have pocket Aces, but that’s no guarantee you’ll win. Similarly, you might limp in with a weak hand like and hit the nuts. But before a hand, you can’t know what’s going to come on the flop or the turn or the river, so would you rather have the pocket Aces or the weak hand? You look like a genius if the weak hand pans out, but you can’t blame a guy for betting big on a good hand. Of course, as far as RG3 goes, he’s not a pocket Aces kind of prospect, but he is still a good prospect.
What I meant by playing it safe is seeing a player or coach that succeeds elsewhere and signing them as a free agent. Pretty much since Snyder took over, the Redskins have all but refused to take any substantial risk in the draft and been trading those picks for already established players, some of them worked out, more of them didn’t. They’ve done the same with coaches, Snyder has gone after “proven winners”, and when he did take a risk on Spurrier, despite that it wasn’t a calculated risk, he didn’t think it was a risk at all because he just didn’t understand how and why his style wouldn’t translate to just as much scoring in the pros.
I think chasing big-name free agents and coaches is about as close to playing it safe as it gets in the pros, particularly when the belief is they’ll have the same amount of production despite being in a completely different environment. The alternative is patient and intelligent drafting and having a consistent coaching system in place that coaches. But that means dealing with a whole lot of calculated risks and running through a lot of prospects, some of which will pan out, many of which will fail.
I don’t think any Redskins fan realistically expects a winning record this year, even if RG3 is every bit as good as he looks. I’m not completely who ends up getting blamed, if it’s entirely thrown on Shanahan or if Bruce Allen gets some as well. I could see Shanahan getting a reprieve if they do in the range of 7 or 8 wins, but I’ll agree that I expect more in the 5 or 6 wins.
If only the fans could have a vote of no confidence in the owners and force them to sell the team.