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This is a really good article. The Redskins are very much not alone in their desperation to improve as quickly as possible:

Free Agency Day 2: Catch Me If You Can - The Triangle Blog - Grantland

First, as you might suspect, most teams don't spend a significant amount of money to acquire a new free agent at a given position unless they were specifically subpar last season in that area. You might get the occasional exception, but the Bills aren't targeting Mario Williams because they have a dominant pass rush, and nobody with a franchise quarterback is going after Peyton Manning. The only situation in which it really makes sense to acquire a veteran player in the hyperinflated world of free agency is when you're desperate. So that argument seems superfluous.

The bigger problem is the idea that upgrading at that position, or in that facet of the game, requires a team to throw money at acquiring a talented player, even if it means that the team overspends in the process. Teams approach the problem of having below-average output at a position by saying, "We need to upgrade to something better here, even if it costs us too much." Instead, they should approach it from the equally compelling, alternative viewpoint of, "We're already so bad here that we can't be much worse next season, so upgrading to a superior player is incredibly easy!" Rather than seeing the free-agent pool as being full of players who would provide superior production to the guys on your roster, bad organizations insist on picking one player from that pool and spending more money than they should to obtain an upgrade they can get from just about anyone.

Jacksonville's signing of Robinson to a five-year, $32.5 million deal on Wednesday is a perfect example of this sort of dysfunctional thinking. It's important to take a look back at Robinson's career to put the logic related to signing him into its proper context and understand why this is a foolish move. Before the lockout, Robinson had basically been a middling receiver for the Falcons and Rams, while struggling to stay healthy; nothing about his performance record suggested that he was about to have a breakout season, which is why the Rams chose not to re-sign him heading into the lockout. After he sat on the sidelines for a week, San Diego nabbed him on a one-year deal for close to the veteran's minimum, $685,000, but he failed to make the roster and the Chargers cut him on September 3. Again, he returned to the waiver wire and sat there for days without any nibbles. A wideout-needy team like the Jaguars could have brought him in for a tryout, but they weren't interested enough to do so. Four days later, he signed with the Cowboys, who released him after a week. Again, the Jags could have trusted their eyes and brought him in. They chose not to. Dallas brought him back onto the roster a week later when Miles Austin injured his hamstring, and Robinson responded with 11 receiving touchdowns in 14 games.