About Time! A little respect from the Washington Post

[sportscurmudgeon]

I think Joe Gibbs is an outstanding coach. I don't think he is infallible; but he's as good as anyone else in the league and a lot better than most of his peers.

I think Gregg Williams is an outstanding defensive coordinator; maybe he's the best in the NFL; maybe not. But he's in the top 5 out of 32 defensive coordinators.

I'm less enamored with the rest of this coaching staff - including the lionized Joe Bugel - but they are not stumblebums; they won't cost the team a lot of games.

Here is what the Redskins' organization LACKS compared to other WINNING organizations in the NFL:


An owner willing to let people who KNOW football make the football decisions.


I won't bore everyone here with the "we gotta get Jeff George on the field" decision or the "wouldn't Dion look good in the Skins' DB" decision. I just want to focus on one recent set of fiascos and then ask a question or two:

An NFL owner decided he had to have L. Coles so he paid him a $13M signing bonus just so the Jets wouldn't be able to match the offer. Coles had only wanted $10M and the Jets had refused to go to that number, but this owner bid against himself to make everything happen right away because he was busy singing away a bunch of other Jets' players. He got four of them and only one has amounted to a pinch of pigeon poop, but that's a detail for now.

A couple of years later, L. Coles wants out and this owner has a chance to release him and save a big chunk of cap money. But he pulls his "dictatorial card" and threatens to deactivate L. Coles - while paying him the salary that his contract calls for - and make him watch the games on a flat screen TV at home. L. Coles refuses to negotiate any more and this owner gets stuck with his humongous cap hit and a trade he would never have made if he were not on all fours with his ass waving in the air in a prison cell.

Now tell me if previous WINNING owners such as Robert Kraft, Malcon Glazer, Art Modell, Georgia Frontiere (who is as bizarre as they come by the way) or Pat Bowlen would ever do such a thing?

The correct answer here is: NO!

What is the common thread of the owners I listed above?

They have all won Super Bowls in the last decade; the Redskins have been in the playoffs once in the last decade.

Joe Gibbs is trying to turn this franchise into one that is run in a rational and productive way. He has to undo about six years of goofiness under Danny Boy and about six years of absentee ownership under John Kent Cooke. And until he gets some - actually 99% - of the "Danny Boy baggage" off his back, it will be two steps forward and one step back...

Oh, and BTW, don't expect the Washington Post to cut Danny Boy even the least amount of slack after he cut their season ticket allocation that they have had and paid for since the mid-1950s.