Since I closed the SuckWagon thread, I’ve had no particular place to ruminate about the Redskins, and I miss that. So, for my own amusement (and everyone else’s, I’m sure :)), I’m opening up this thread as a place to celebrate the Redskins’ turnaround, and otherwise chew the fat about the Washington Redskins’ season as it develops.
First thing I’d like to talk about is Schottenheimer. What are Marty’s strong and weak points as a coach? To what extent is he responsible for the turnaround, and to what extent did he get the 'Skins into trouble in the first place?
I’d say he deserves full credit for the turnaround - but I also have to acknowledge that he made a number of mistakes that delayed the beginning of the comeback.
Three mistakes especially come to mind:
-
Being overly committed to Jeff George as his QB, in the face of much (many have said overwhelming) evidence that George was a lousy match for Marty’s offense. (Of course, we don’t know how much room Snyder gave him on this one.)
-
Being extremely slow to find an experienced backup for George. Tony Banks began training camp with the Cowboys, and came over fairly late in the preseason. Learning a new offense is a nontrivial task. If the Redskins had had an established backup QB (Banks, Dilfer, or whomever) from the beginning, he might have been familiar enough with the offense to affect the outcomes of Games 4 and 5, which we lost to the Giants and Cowboys, but were very much in the game until the closing minutes.
-
Taking several games to realize that Stephen Davis had to be the heart and soul of the Redskins’ offense. As I said after the first Giants game,
I tell ya, that was driving me nuts at the time. Good thing he eventually got with the program. 
And (just to show I can’t count):
- Apparently excessive nitpickiness about things like what time each player would lift weights, assigned roommates on the road, etc. (You mean that in the multibillion-dollar world of the NFL, they can’t afford to give each player his own hotel room for eight nights a year? Damn.) I’m glad as hell that he’s insistent (I won’t call it nitpicky) about fundamentals such as good snaps and handoffs, avoiding illegal motion penalties, and so forth. But this other stuff…let’s just say I’m glad that that meeting after Loss #3 seemed to resolve those sorts of issues, however they did it.
Having said all that, I think Schottenheimer is the right man for the job; he may have partly dug his own hole, but he managed to dig his way back out again. He’s learned from and recovered from his own mistakes: Stephen Davis is now the key of the Redskins’ offense (which is good because Banks is still a work in progress), and he apparently gave enough ground on the extracurricular nitpickiness to mollify the players.
And best of all, Marty’s fixed what was broke under Norv: that aggravating tendency to make lots of minor mistakes that, eventually, would equal defeat. Botched snaps, motion calls, 10 or 12 men on the field - that stuff’s mostly disappeared. They’re not beating themselves anymore. They’re not getting rattled when things go against them. They’re not winning by playing over their heads, but by doing things that they can go out and do every week: they block, they tackle, Davis runs, Arrington hits, and they don’t ask Banks to do more than he’s ready to do.
The one outstanding question is one that’s left over from Marty’s teams in Cleveland and KC. Marty works his teams pretty intensely, from training camp on, and his teams tended to run out of gas at the end. That could still happen here. We’ll find out soon enough. But until it does, this team’s going to win some games.
