Don’t forget Terry Robiskie. It’s interesting that The Danny bought the team too late to fire Turner, yet he had no problem firing him with three games remaining.
And I think it’s telling that Superior got twice as long to turn the team around as Schottenheimer did. Let’s look at some basics: We knew how Schottenheimer would run his team. We knew his style, and we knew how he’d react during games. We knew his play calling ability. We knew all we needed to know about him, because he’d coached for the better part of two decades. Spurrier? We knew nothing about his ability to coach with the big boys. Shouldn’t Schottenheimer have received another year, at least as long as Superior did?
Remember, they finished Marty’s one season very strong, and they had a lot of momentum heading into the next season. That momentum was ruined by Spurrier’s hiring.
Now, they have to move quickly to get a new coach, because there are plenty of openings out there - Arizona, Buffalo, Chicago, Washington, Oakland (soon), New York Giants, and Atlanta. It’s a coach’s market, in other words. Green and Fassel already have interviews scheduled with Arizona. (Which should tell you right there that the Cardinals will be different next year - normally they sign some coordinator or line coach cheaply.)
It’s not tough to figure out. With Marty, they were 8-8. The next year, with pretty much the same personnel, Spurrier went 7-9 and appeared to have regressed.
This year, with an improved receiving corps and special teams, they went 5-11.
Conclusion: The coach stunk up the joint.
When you have better players and those players wind up playing pretty well for you but you STILL lose more than you did the previous year… Well, then pitchin’ it around a bit ain’t cuttin’ it. Yeehaw, indeed.
Snyder needs to stop pretending, let alone that he’s a GM, that he knows anything more about football than “Go Skins!”. But that’s neither here nor there, since he doesn’t seem yet to grok that football is not as quantifiable as the business world. You can spend all the money in the world on individual football players or coaches with big names and none of it means jack when it comes to guaranteeing a winning record. It’s a team sport, and … urgh. Moving right along. I wonder who he’ll hire next.
You certainly can’t fault him on the business side, since the Redskins made more money last year than any other pro sports franchise in the United States.
And it probably shouldn’t. He did hire the guy, but he was gonna let him come back in 2004. Let’s not forget who had the bigger impact on the on-the-field results.
I think that was stupid, but it’s at least understandable stupidity for a newbie owner.
In 1999, his team had been within an eyelash of getting into the NFC championship game. So he opened his wallet for some big-name (and past-prime) talent, plus got two really good players in the draft. He was thinking Super Bowl in 2000. Then when they faded to 7-6 after the 6-2 start (especially with that woeful loss to the Cardinals) he must’ve thought, “maybe if I put in a coach with a bit more fire, they’ll wake up, win their last three, get to the playoffs, and save the season.” But that just isn’t how it works in the NFL. Hopefully Snyder learned that, once and for all.
I agree that Snyder should have stayed with Marty, once he’d hired him. After finishing 2001 as strong as they did under Marty, I thought for sure that the 'Skins would go 10-6 and be in the playoffs under Marty in 2002.
What it comes down to, though, is that Snyder had the hots for Spurrier. And Spurrier decided to jump to the NFL at exactly the wrong time for the Redskins. Snyder had two choices: to stick with Marty, and (if Spurrier succeeded in the NFL) miss his One Big Chance to get Spurrier. Or to dump Marty for Spurrier. For Snyder, it wasn’t even a close call; he was in love. This was totally predictable. And it’s why Snyder should never have hired a Schottenheimer in the first place.
Like I said, I hope Snyder’s gotten this out of his system now, and can settle down. As Harold Hill would say, “the sadder but wiser owner for me.”
Yes and no. It’s a star coach’s market, since there’s always only a handful of proven successes as NFL coaches who are available at any given moment. But I think Wilbon’s dead on when he says, “There are only 32 head coaching jobs in the NFL, and somebody darned good is always still standing when the music stops.” I think it’s always an owner’s market, if the owner has a GM who’s willing to do his homework and evaluate the offensive and defensive coordinators around the league to see who’s likely to be ready for prime time.
Unfortunately, Snyder’s not that owner. Hell, he doesn’t even have a GM. So for him, it’s a coach’s market.
Post story about the search for a new coach. Looks like they’re moving fast, and will interview both Green and Fassel this week, and Rhodes as soon as Monday if Seattle loses this weekend.
Ha! He hasn’t. The next guy will be a big name, and if he doesn’t get them into the Super Bowl soon, he’ll be gone too. At least that’s the owner’s modus operandi. Now, now, and now. The only way he’ll learn patience is by not being a hands-on owner.
No, it’s still a coach’s market for everyone, regardless of the quality of the coach. There are more jobs open now than there are “star” coaches - you have your Greens, your Johnsons, your Fassels, and then you have everyone else. (Johnson’s not going anywhere, in my estimation).
An owner’s market would be one in which there are very few jobs and many coaches from which to choose. There aren’t a lot of NFL-caliber coaches out there looking for jobs, but there are plenty of jobs.
The GMs of real football teams (your Giants and Bills, for example) realize they need to work hard to convince a coach to come to their team - though not nearly as hard as the Redskins will - because there are so many positions available. Maybe this’ll be the year Lovie Smith gets a job.
By the way, remember the NFL has those new guidelines in place, so everything has to be done by the book.
I think you missed my point. Snyder was infatuated with Spurrier, to the point where he was going to do whatever he could to land him if he became available. Will Snyder get the hots for another coach in that way? I don’t think so, really.
But I’m not saying that Snyder’s learned patience. Those are two entirely different issues.
Well, yeah, I said this much myself, excepting your conclusion.
This is where you and I disagree. I believe that, at any given moment, there are a fair number of offensive and defensive coordinators, and other assistant coaches, who are ready to become successful NFL coaches. And a year from that given moment, most of them will still not be head coaches. IMNSHO, it’s only a coaches’ market, ever, if you restrict yourself to the pool of previously successful head coaches.
Which should make it even less of a coaches’ market. Are there black assistant coaches who are ready to take the reins of an NFL team who are consistently passed over? Well, look at how long it took Marvin Lewis to get a job at a head coach, and even then it was with the lowly Bengals. If he’d been white, he’d have been a head coach somewhere about 2 weeks after the Ravens’ Super Bowl win.
A Marvin Lewis doesn’t come along every day, of course. But the point is that there are black assistant coaches who aren’t as exceptional as Lewis, but are still more than ready to run a team. If Lewis was passed over two years running, and finally got offered one of the worst head coaching jobs in existence, the others are doing even worse in terms of getting on the interview list.
If there’s an owner and a GM out there that are ready to take advantage of other owners’ reluctance to hire top talent on account of color, there’s a wellspring of talent available to them. The new guidelines may nudge a team or two in that direction, ya think?
It remains to be seen, of course, but this would imply he’s learned some sort of lesson. Do you really think he has?
There will always be a fair number of viable candidates, but this in and of itself doesn’t make it an owner’s market; an owner’s market would be one in which only a couple of jobs were open with even fewer excellent candidates.
The thing is, we’re talking about NFL owners, not typical employers. Most - but not all - will look for “name” coaches; this is how coaches get into the “old boys club.” So if Owner A is looking for a new coach, he’s not looking at 40 viable candidates, he’s looking at fewer than 10. His bigger problem is that several other owners are doing the same thing and are looking at the same particular candidates. This allows the potential coaches to have their virtual pick, making it much more of a coaches market.
If you’ll note, the guidelines are not strictly about hiring practices; they’re about interviewing. A team must interview at least one African American coach. They don’t have to hire him. This only increases the number of candidates who might get interviewed, making it even more of a coaches market (i.e., there might be some African American candidates who will be interviewed who might not have been interviewed had the guidelines not been in place).
At any rate, the owners will have a wider pool to draw from, ostensibly, but that doesn’t mean they have more viable choices, or even choices that they deem to be serious candidates. The coaches, because so many jobs are available, still have the upper hand.
Yes, meaning that there are more opportunities for the coaches, not the owners. Makes it more of a coach’s market, not an owner’s one. (I really think the only time you’d have an owner’s market would be when one or two head coaching positions are available.)
An Arky, you mean like Jack Del Rio? There’s a guy who had nothing on his resume that would lead directly to a head coaching job, and yet there he is, coaching Jacksonville. There were probably better candidates, but the Jags decided to go with inexperience. They could have picked any number of suitable candidates: Lovie Smith, Sherman Lewis, Brad Childress, etc. Geez, in olden times coaches either were hired from the college ranks or were promoted from a coordinator position (not line coach, quarterbacks coach, ball boy…).
By the way, as to whom the Redskins should hire, I don’t know. I’ve seen rookie coaches and experienced coaches alike be successfull in the NFL. I’ve also seen them stink up the joint.
The team has quite a bit of talent and should be more like an 8-8 or 9-7 team, with an actual coach.
In my fantasy world, they hire a GM who then hires a coach.
Of course, they aren’t my team of rooting interest anyway, so whatever they do is okay with me.
The Redskins can’t block. That was obvious from week one of this year. If they are going to bring in an assistant, bring in an OL coach. It’s possible the players were sacrificing quarterbacks to get rid of Spurrier. You know, like throwing virgins in the volcano.
The argument goes: Spurrier’s system was to blame for all the quarterback hurries, pressures (euphemisms for getting lit up), or sacks. The problem with the going theory: Spurrier went to the two tight end system in the NFL. Moreover, he kept a back in to chip away at rushers. Still, Patrick Ramsey wants to go to Iraq to get away from the violence.
Yeah, but a good coach will realize that his blocking back or his tight ends can’t block and will make adjustments. He either realized this and refused to make adjustments or he didn’t realize it at all - which makes him an utter fool.
Spurrier is better off in college football where he can have more talent on his team and pretend the talent is his own. Too much parity in the NFL exposes Spurrier’s coaching (in)ability.
But Dan Synder is what’s wrong with the Redskins. The fish stinks from the head down.
I have to call bullshit on this one. Lewis was all set to get the Tampa Bay job, until the Glazer’s screwed him. Why did they do that? They had their eyes set on Parcells, and then Gruden. They didn’t screw him because he is black. They screwed him because they already had their minds made up, and they weren’t listening to the GM they had hired to take care of this sort of thing. It had nothing to do with his skin color.
My pops told me last night that one name that has come up is Russ Grimm, the OL coach for Pittsburgh. He was one of the Hogs, and has done an excellent job with the O-lines for both the Redskins and the Steelers. But with the news being that Snyder wants either Fassel, Green, or Rhodes, I don’t think Grimm has much of a chance. But you never know.
Kind of sad when a coach has to inspire a group of overpaid babies. What ever happen to playing for pride? I’d say a lot of the blame has to be put on Snyder as well…with his merry go round attittude in regards to coaches.
