There is a saying that crazy is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Yesterday it was announced that Mike Shanahan was signed to a 5 year contract worth $35 mil. Most fans would have some sense of optimism for the future of their franchise but not me. I see this as another decade, another fickle move by Dan Snyder.
We have all seen this before. Here comes a promising coach with some great pedigree and high expectations. On a local sports station Bill Romanowski prepared D.C. natives for a Super Bowl. Don’t hold your breath. It took Joe Gibbs 4 years to bring the Redskins back to respectability from the $100 million mess Dan Snyder brought the franchise. And he was the greatest Redskin coach of all time.
For years the Skins have done it Snyder’s way and the culmination of his being the GM resulted in the worst, most torturous season the franchise has faced in 3 decades. At least the 1994 Washington Redskins could still reminisce about their Super Bowl victory two years ago. So maybe this torturous season was something the franchise really needed. To wash away the dumb mentality Snyder has, thinking he can just run a football franchise and make it happen.
The last true General Manager we had was Charley Casserly in 2000. By the word “true” I mean that the GM had actual control over who the team’s players were. Fast forward 10 years later and we hire our current GM Bruce Allen. Meanwhile the current head coach, Mike Shanahan has the final say of who the players are, not the owner. This is clearly a stark change from the past.
Ultimately those changes will be in vain if Snyder doesn’t change the biggest virtue missing in his soul…patience. To build a Super Bowl team takes years of laying brick by brick and piece by piece together. Yes there are spectacular turn arounds that can happen like the St Louis Rams in the turn of the century. But that is more of a rarity than a commonality. Looking at the most successful franchise in NFL history, the Pittsburgh Steelers who has won the most Super Bowls of any team, they also have one of the fewest coaching counts in league history. They’ve employed about 4-5 head coaches in a span of 40-45 years, an incredible number. Their long term commitment to seeing the head coach’s vision of a team paid off. Even through mediocre years, Dan Rooney still stuck with Bill Cowher and even through a long Super Bowl drought that took 15 years till he won his first Super Bowl. Although they missed the playoffs this year, they have won 2 Super Bowls in the last decade and the main foundation is in place for another run at the Super Bowl. All that’s left is a few missing pieces.
With coaching turnover, you have to rebuild and get new players who aren’t acclimated to the system yet. That can take an x amount of time to transition and it seemed that the Redskins were always in transition the past decade.
If Snyder can get the patience for Shanahan to see out his 5 year contract, then I do believe his tenure will be a success with multiple playoff appearances. His contract extension years might even yield a Super Bowl. But if Snyder’s patience runs short…then it’s the crazy house for him and a bunch of other Redskins fans.
