DCT: Shanahan Leading Redskins in Right Direction

[GTripp0012]

I liked the article. I will let the peanut gallery handle the fine details of how much I agree or disagree.

I think Kyle Shanahan has a long coaching career ahead of him. I think Mike has held Kyle back at least as much if not more than Kyle has held Mike back.

With that said, I don't think he's a good offensive coordinator. I don't think it's a qualification issue, and I think while he might get better as he gets more experience, Kyle runs a very limited offensive system. I've said many times there is good theory behind it, but there are no seeds of being an offensive genius or whatever label you'd put on the best playcallers in the game. Playcalling is generally overrated anyway, but when you see the week-to-week gameplans, it's hard to think that an influx of talent is going to open things up.

In terms of the passing game, what Kyle does call, he seems to understand quite well. A defense requires a certain level of talent to stop what the Redskins have in the passing game. If they have it, you see games like the San Francisco one or either Philadelphia one where clearly, the Redskins aren't going to move the ball at all. Once you have Kyle's number, he typically needs more than 3 hours to figure out how to work his way out of the clutches of the defense.

I'm not going to rank Kyle among other offensive coordinators, as there are some other poor ones out there, I just think that if you assume we're going to see something different in 2012 from the offense than we saw in 2011, I think we're just misunderstanding what Kyle wants to do with his offense. Kyle wants to create chances for clean throws down the field, and he generally takes the majority of the mental work out of the hands of the QB. Having a rookie under center next year isn't going to change that, it's going to make the Redskins even more of a system team.