Football Outsiders Picks Redskins to Make Postseason

What's particularly stupid about this piece is that he automatically assumes that because we signed a bunch of veteran dudes, that necessarily precludes younger players from making the roster.

If the Galloways and the Vonnie Hollidays don't show in camp that they are worthy of one or two more years in the NFL, then they'll be history. Bringing in Galloway and Bobby Wade is a good way to find out if Malcolm Kelly and Devin Thomas are capable of stepping up. In their third NFL season, if a direct threat to their job security doesn't get them going, nothing will.

And is he actually serious in suggesting that we'd be better off with a combination of Derek Anderson and Jimmy Clausen instead of Donovan McNabb? You can't go saying shit like that and expect to be taken seriously as a writer. I mean WTF.

This.

You know, you make a great point. Very well supported.

What do want me to support it with? All I need to do is use common sense. Philly, NY, and Dallas all have a lot less question marks than we do. If I had to put money on it I'd say that we're still behind all those teams.

What do want me to support it with? All I need to do is use common sense. Philly, NY, and Dallas all have a lot less question marks than we do. If I had to put money on it I'd say that we're still behind all those teams.

Philly questionable line as far as pass pro and yet to be proven QB.. solid D

NY.. questionable D if it's like last year.. aka near bottom of the league.. probably the best line overall

Dallas... questionable O Line at least as far as pass pro.. good D

Us.. solid D, but changing.. QB improved.. not sure on line.. just a big question mark

anyone really can win the division but I don't think that it will be the Gnats.. I see us coming in 2nd or a VERY close 3rd

Well, yeah. It's not like this is a new technique to ShanAllen. Gibbs and Saunders did this too. Vinny didn't because, well, Vinny didn't do a a lot of things that common sense suggested he should.

If you look at our roster right now, there's a very small number of undrafted rookies compared to other teams. Those spots of "players likely to be released anyway" have been given to veteran players. So maybe Galloway gets cut so we can give a roster spot to...Mike Furrey, or someone.

In other words, while our competitors might be cutting their low cost vets in camp for younger bit players, we're going to be picking and choosing between a bunch of unwanted players to fill out our roster. Theoretically, that's a complete lack of depth.

None of that means that we won't find some good players somewhere, even if the young players we have aren't worth our time. I don't think Shanahan is adverse to cutting Vinny draft picks gone wrong. There is, however, a shockingly small amount of player development going on with youth of any type, and given that there's no mid round draft picks next year, that's where I think the pessimism is justified.

Fair points, and an accurate assessment. But unfair for him to lay the lack of depth at the feet of Shanahan/Allen. Just because they're trading picks for McNabb and Jamaal Brown doesn't mean they can't be more successful on the undrafted free agents than Vinny was.

Honestly, how can they not be more successful than Vinny??

So this guy has us better than the Giants and Dallas???? Um I don't think so. Right now those teams are better than we are. End of discussion.

As I understand it, Football Outsiders uses a fairly sophisticated mathematical formula for their predictions, it's not just some guy saying this is what I think. They have a pretty good track record in recent years too.

I would have to add a couple of things about the possiblity of next years free agency. There will be guys available, but it all depends on the new CBA getting done.

We can replenish the squad in FA and the draft next year, and continue building. I think we have thought of some fo the points the article brings up, but at the same time Shannahan and even Mcnabb are here beyond 3 years.

DS didn't fire Joe gibbs, he retired. I think this team is mike's for as long as he wants to coach which is going to be more than 3 years. Bruce Alllen is in it for the long hall as well.

One way to change our plight would be to actually change the way that we build teams. But unmentioned by the article: if the Redskins can win in consecutive years, that would shut up a lot of the same story lines we've had to read forever.

Talk about a backhanded compliment.
He thinks we'll make the playoffs but are doing everything wrong long term.

I don't think the 2 are mutually exclusive and i don't think our moves from one off-season have hindered us long-term it depends on what we do next year and the year after that.

But the Redskins haven’t built a true contender. They’ve built another version of their 2005 team, which went 10-6 in Gibbs’ second season. Gibbs promoted 35-year-old Mark Brunell over former top pick Patrick Ramsey that year, and Brunell had a 23-touchdown season. Eager to take the next step, Snyder and Cerrato added Antwaan Randle El, T.J. Duckett, Brandon Lloyd, and Adam Archuleta to the roster, even though Gibbs and his staff had no use for any of them but Randle El. The other three ate up cap and roster space, the Redskins fell to 5-11, and Brunell’s injuries led to a premature start of the Campbell era.

First off he's combining 2 off-seasons into 1 in the above exerpt.
Second, McNabb is cleary better then Mark Brunell.
Thrid, we don't know what moves we'll make next year and therefore he shouldn't assume that they'll be uneccesary and over-priced (money+draft picks).
Also, the moves we've made this off-season have all been inexpensive and we don't know as yet how they'll pan out.

This year’s Redskins have an alarming number of players who are about to simultaneously grow old, and that’s not even counting lunatic acquisitions like Galloway. McNabb, Portis, Johnson, Parker, Santana Moss, Rabach, Philip Daniels, and London Fletcher are all at or approaching the downside of their careers, with Andre Carter and Derrick Dockery not far behind them. There are few obvious successors to these key players on the roster, and with training camp bloated with Galloway and Holliday types, it will be hard for the team to find and develop quality replacements.

Shanahan and Allen did not create the current situation with the age of the players and the Redskins are not unlike other NFL teams that are or need to begin re-tooling.

There is no doubt the backfield will need a youth infusion soon because there is no youth other then Torrian and that's if he makes the team.

WR position depends on Devin and Malcolm.

The OL is gonna have to get younger but i think players like Trent Williams, Rinehart, Lichtensteiger and Edwin Williams are a start.

I think were pretty good on defense with good youth and some successors in place, although not big name guys.

OLB has youth in Orakpo and 2 replacements waiting in the wings in Chirs Wilson and Lorenzo Alexander.
ILB has Rocky and Blades, Riley and Henson being groomed.
The secondary has similiar youth and depth.
DL/DE-NT has Haynesworth, Golston and Carricker.

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There are two sad elements to the Redskins plight. The first is that some in the Redskins organization will feel vindicated when the team loses in the second round of the playoffs

Imo, whenever a team makes it to the playoffs they have a chance to win the whole thing, just look at the 2005 Steelers.
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The second is that so many of the Redskins problems are obvious and avoidable. Anyone who looks carefully at the roster can see long-term disaster brewing, and it doesn’t take much imagination to find healthier alternatives to the path the Redskins chose

In 1 off-season we've chosen a "path"?

The Redskins could have Jake Delhomme or Derek Anderson as their starting quarterback, with second-round pick Jimmy Clausen waiting in the wings. Or, they could have given Campbell another year, used their second-round pick on a defensive playmaker like Sergio Kindle, and let their defense win a few games while Shanahan made tough decisions on offense.

No he's doing if then scenarios?
Another way to view is that having McNabb gives us the opportunity to draft and groom a QB in the Kolb, Rodgers manner while still remaining competitive.

Heck, they could have
pulled the trigger on the McNabb deal but held off on all of the Parker-Johnson-Galloway nonsense, increasing their odds of finding a great young back or receiver who will improve as McNabb fades.

We need to fill out our roster and having Galloway and Parker is no worse if not flat out better then having Marcus Mason and Marko Mitchell.

The other major problem with his argument that I must point out (being a salary cap person), he indicates we're headed down the same vicious cycle that puts us under salary cap constraints, and says that's likely to happen to us in 2011.

He may be a statistical wizard working for football outsiders, but he's clearly ignorant of the realities of the CBA discussions to date (or lack thereof). Chances are slim there will be football in 2011, let alone a salary cap.

What do want me to support it with? All I need to do is use common sense. Philly, NY, and Dallas all have a lot less question marks than we do. If I had to put money on it I'd say that we're still behind all those teams.Well, using common sense would work just fine.

No one is putting us ahead of those teams, necessarily, and 9 wins probably isn't going to take the division. But, if we can reach that point, we'd most likely move ahead of somebody, and probably two teams.

I just don't know if the roster is good enough to reach first place in this division yet, which is the same boat that the Giants are in. They, like us, are hoping for rebound years from lots of underachieving veterans. Philly is doing the young thing, again, and according to the FO projections, that puts them on level footing with us, albeit with an arrow pointing up instead of down.

That leaves just Dallas as someone that should, in theory, still be way ahead of us. Their argument that Dallas is going to be the non contender in this division is far from persuasive, IMO, but Dallas builds their team just like we do: good success on first round draft picks and lots of money spent in free agency without much of an eye on player development. Records aside, we've more or less alternated being better and worse than the Cowboys since 2003, so it's not unreasonable for the roles to flip in 2010 and us to beat them twice again.

I think we're at a bunch of disadvantages in Week 1, of course. Dallas is likely to be a much better team that week than later on in the season. Of course, the same could be said about this team.

Anyway, it shouldn't be hard to believe that we're even with Philly and ahead of NYG in projections because neither of those teams has improved much since last year. The gap between us and Dallas was far greater, and so if they fall from first to last, it makes it a lot easier for us to contend for a division title.

Second, McNabb is cleary better then Mark Brunell.
McNabb wasn't better in Philly than Mark Brunell was in Jacksonville.

Donovan McNabb NFL & AFL Football Statistics | Pro-Football-Reference.com (http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/M/McNaDo00.htm)

Mark Brunell NFL & AFL Football Statistics | Pro-Football-Reference.com (http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/B/BrunMa00.htm)

They're pretty similar players, overall. Mike Shanahan and Joe Gibbs both put stress on the quarterback getting the ball out of his hands as not to stall the offense, so we'll probably see an improvement in McNabb's sack rate similar to that seen in Brunell's Washington days and also Jake Plummer's Denver days (http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/P/PlumJa00.htm).

While you can't say that McNabb is better than Brunell when they came over, he might very well turn out to be a better Redskins quarterback. Comparing the compensation packages for each, I'd expect Shanahan is getting a better project than Gibbs is. Or more accurately, he thinks he is.Thrid, we don't know what moves we'll make next year and therefore he shouldn't assume that they'll be uneccesary and over-priced (money+draft picks).
Also, the moves we've made this off-season have all been inexpensive and we don't know as yet how they'll pan out.We don't know anything about the moves that will be made for next year's team, only that they will be numerous, and the team is already short two draft picks, and is looking into some sort of Haynesworth-Jackson swap, possibly costing a third draft pick. A lot of it will depend on how the team does this year...the better they perform in 2010, the more likely they are to be veteran-laden in 2011.

I don't want to rule out some shrewd FA pickups, like they did in 2004 with Springs, Washington, and Griffin, but open player markets are getting more barren by the year, and the new CBA could restrict player movement even more.
We need to fill out our roster and having Galloway and Parker is no worse if not flat out better then having Marcus Mason and Marko Mitchell.Mason is a replacement level player with no developmental upside, so he's probably not a good example for me, but Mitchell is an excellent example of the fact that there's absolutely no player development going on in Washington.

He may or may not have fit the scheme or had any sort of long term potential under Kyle Shanahan, but rather than fool around with a 25 year old longshot for a year and risk a sub-replacement performance, we cut him outright in June and look to be going with some sort of veteran in the fourth receiver role. It's only a few plays per game, so whatever, but the interest is clear: we have two third year players for youth who are already pretty developed (at least as close to their primes as we can reasonably expect), so there's no reason to have even more young depth at the position. We instead must "push" Thomas/Kelly to perform now. Now, now, now. We didn't replace Mitchell with a more scheme-friendly developmental prospect, rather, we just scrapped the idea of player development at the position.

Mike Shanahan and Bruce Allen both fall heavily on the nature side of the nature/nurture NFL talent continuum. Both have failed mightily in the draft with "raw" prospects, and do much better when selecting older draft eligible types who can learn on the field. We certainly are going to press Forester's ability to turn some late round picks into serviceable starting lineman -- at least one should emerge on the 2011 OL. But at WR/RB/DL/LB/DB, there's no emphasis on development. Which means vets instead of unproven rookies over the next four years.

If they keep drafting superstars in the first round every year, they'll keep winning. Vinny left a pretty nifty present with Orakpo, and I like Trent Williams as a line anchor for at least the next three or four years, hopefully longer. If we hit on first rounders in 2011 and 2012, we'll have a nice amount of young talent regardless of the lean towards veteran productivity. One miss and that's when the "age will get us" predictions start to hit their mark.