Houston Chronicle column

SC, you seem to love to point out the Russell signing but how bad a move was it really??

We needed help on the D-line and he was the best available option at the time. We rolled the dice and it didn't work out. We previously rolled the dice on Gardener and that worked out great for one season, I think they were hoping for the same results with Russell.

It was a minimal contract and didn't do any cap damage. Didn't Russell also get another chance with his former coach Jon Gruden in Tampa after we dumped him? I guess we weren't the only suckers.

As for Snyder I'm not sure why you think he will "demand" the spotlight if the Skins win it all. He seems to be doing a great job at staying out of the spotlight the past few seasons. Yes he makes the splashy moves and signings, but is he in the media all the time looking for face time? If he is I don't hear or see it.

SC, you seem to love to point out the Russell signing but how bad a move was it really??

We needed help on the D-line and he was the best available option at the time. We rolled the dice and it didn't work out. We previously rolled the dice on Gardener and that worked out great for one season, I think they were hoping for the same results with Russell.

It was a minimal contract and didn't do any cap damage. Didn't Russell also get another chance with his former coach Jon Gruden in Tampa after we dumped him? I guess we weren't the only suckers.

I agree with you 100% Matty. Russell was a minor gamble that didn't work, but in the long run, no real damage was done.

But how about the fact that SC actually said the Redskins would win a Super Bowl eventually. Of course, who knows what he means by eventually but that's a big step for him for admit it will happen.

Matty:

Go check and you'll see that Grady Jackson was also available around the same time Russell was coming off his year long drug suspension. Jackson has the reputation as a pain-in-the-ass and a player who has let his weight get out of control once in a while, but he shows up on Sunday and plays hard all the time.

Compare that to Darryl Russell who also lets his weight get out of control and is also a pain-in-the-ass and also a guy who has been suspended several times and has had munerous run-ins with the law and who is notorious for taking plays off. Oh yeah, and he needed to "work himself into football condition" too. Like he actually ever came near doing that.

And by the by, who was running the "personnel department" during the time when the DL fell into such disrepair that they needed to go out and sign this kind of guy? Remember, OBC didn't even know the names of the guys on defense so It wasn't him. That leaves a choice between Vinny, Danny Boy or the Tooth Fairy. I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy and I don't believe that Vinny does anything without Danny Boy's concurrence including changing his underwear.


smootsmack:

I have no beef with Snyder. I merely think he is a business genius who has not yet realized that his jock-sniffing addiction as a youth does not make him knowledgeable about football even though he is rich enough to own a team. And for the record, I don't think he is the "worst" owner in the league by a long-shot. I just don't think he's in the top half...

True Jackson was available but like I said, Russell was a low risk gamble that didn't pay off. It wasn't a horrible move in the grand scheme of Snyder's player acquisition profile. There's certainly a lot of other more questionable moves that Snyder is responsible for, but Darrell Russell? Who cares?

If you want to talk about guys like Deion and Jeff George, then we have something worth talking about.

Amazing the amount of venon here. Tagliabue hates Snyder? Puhleeez!

If this story were about Jerry Jones, 99% of the people here would want Richard Justice to earn a Pulitzer Prize for his deathless prose. Read it for what it is; honest criticism of a blowhard owner who has yet to achieve anything in the NFL despite his bombast.

There is no point in idealizing Snyder's record, but at this point the past is the past. I'm letting it go personally. Snyder has brought in Joe Gibbs, and in so doing he has stepped back. It is an admission on his part that he was a failure. He knew he was on the verge of a massive and richly deserved "Dump Snyder" movement in DC, replete with the fans wearing t-shirts with "Dump Snyder, Save the Redskins", just as they did in San Francisco at Candlestick Park this past year about the 49ers and what's his name out there. To Snyder's credit, he woke up and thank god Joe Gibbs came back to take on the thus far thankless task of rebuilding this franchise that crumbled after he left years ago and the ownership problems emerged.

What amazes me is how ungrateful fans are often about Joe Gibbs. His job is hard enough without hearing all the miserable whining about what he's doing wrong all the time. Honest, calm critical analysis is one thing, but Joe deserves support. He didn't have to come back to save this team, it was an enormous sacrifice.

Shane - when the team is playing amazing football everywhere but where Gibbs is supposed to be running the ship, I feel there's room for criticism. Does that mean you kick them out? Absolutely not, but it doesn't mean you have to sit there and support them. Am I backing away from being a skins fan? Am I trying to get a new coach? No. I defend the skins to everyone who tries to attack them, but that doesn't mean everything is will in skins land.

Shane - when the team is playing amazing football everywhere but where Gibbs is supposed to be running the ship, I feel there's room for criticism. Does that mean you kick them out? Absolutely not, but it doesn't mean you have to sit there and support them. Am I backing away from being a skins fan? Am I trying to get a new coach? No. I defend the skins to everyone who tries to attack them, but that doesn't mean everything is will in skins land.

I agree that there is room to talk about things you want to see differently, Daseal. To me, it's easy to look for one cause for a problem, when things are complicated. I just reject scapegoating.

It seems like fans typically the approach of "this guy is sacred and any statement that you find fault with what he is doing is deserving of sharp rebuke," or "this bum is the cause of all the problems and I won't listen to any viewpoint that says otherwise!"

To me, the trouble with views like this - and I'm not saying this is what you're doing Daseal - is that they are based on emotion and not on realism. And as a fan, I make emotional judgments sometimes that aren't fair to the people involved.

I was criticizing Ramsey unfairly for example saying that his decision making was effected by nerves and that he didn't look at the whole field enough. That is something that isn't nice to say for one thing, and there are other explanations for some of the choices Ramsey made that didn't work, besides that. Things are complicated.

And because they are complicated, and its hard to walk a mile in another person's moccasins to see what they are seeing, usually it is better to lay off harsh criticism.