Mike Shanahan

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by skinsguy

I'm not sure some of you guys who have a short leash tied around Mike Shanahan's neck truly know the depth and the extent to what all is involved in rebuilding a franchise that has been a losing franchise for the past twenty years. I mean, we sit here and piss and moan about Daniel Snyder and how he changes coaches like Skinsguy changes his socks - just like the media that pisses and moans about Daniel Snyder - and then us fans turn around and expect instant results within a two season span. Yes, you can go back and say, well Jim Zorn was just given two seasons......completely different situation. Zorn had no business being a head coach at that point. He was not qualified to be a head coach. Anybody with eyes and the least amount of football knowledge could see this.

Mike Shanahan has been coaching for well over 30+ years. He's coached Super Bowl teams, he's been around the best of the best coaches in the NFL. Shanahan knows his stuff. If he says he's here for five years and it's going to take that amount of time to build the Redskins into a dominating football team, what does that tell you? This team was in THAT bad of shape. Yet, we sit here and grade Mike Shanahan after two seasons, and say, "You know, he's not any better than Jim Zorn." That's just ridiculous. Come back and do your "I told you so's" after season five. If the Redskins are not a dominating football team by then, then I'll concede that Mike Shanahan didn't have what it took to rebuild this team.

But, while I agree that he's going to have a lot of pressure on him to show progress in the win column (and I did state that in another thread) next season, I give him his five years to bring this team back to being a dominate team. If this team is the "same ol' Redskins" by then, then you're more than welcome to say "I told you so so shut the efff up!" Until then, you had might as well strap on your helmets, pick your favorite seat on the bus, and brace yourself for a bumpy ride until we get to our destination.

And one more thing, don't give examples about the 49ers or the Lions, or even the Bengals. Those teams have had the correct talent or system in place for several seasons, it just so happened that the combination of both those players and the correct coaching staff(s) happened to fall in place this season. None of those teams were overnight successes, and any and all of those teams can be right back into last place come next season. As Shanahan said, to do it the right way, it takes time. Can't we just give a proven coaching staff, that time and realize we have to endure through all the crap if we plan on keeping the rebuilding on a consistent pace - as slow as it seems to be?

Sorry if I sound grumpy, I stayed up way too late watching the Baylor/Washington game last night and have only had one cup of coffee! I don't mean this toward any one person, I just think it's ridiculous to be complaining about not having what we've needed all of these years (a better GM in Bruce, a Super Bowl proven head coach, consistency) and then to complain because we have those things now. Just doesn't make sense to me.

Hail.

You don't sound grumpy, you sound passionate. I like that.

The argument itself is dangerous, and I can try to explain why. Lets say Mike Shanahan posted 6-10 seasons every year throughout his contract, until December 2014. If you cut and pasted this argument into December 2014, it would be no more or less fallacious than it is at this very moment. Everything you wrote right here will still be true in three years. Granted: you might not be as inclined to write this after five bad years instead of two, but that's the big point here.

Two years is an eternity in the NFL. I don't know whether you just haven't been following all of Mike Shanahan's gaffes at Redskins Park, or whether you just don't think they're really a big deal. What's indisputable is that they have limited the ability of the team to get much better.

What we need to analyze as fans is whether these mistakes are likely to stop. If they don't stop, the team is unlikely to get any better in 2012, its unlikely to get better in 2013, and there's no amount of money you can put into a coaching contract to make the whole thing work.

Furthermore, better coaches are out there. Now, whether those highly desired coaches are interested in taking this job is another issue. You could argue back in 2008, the best candidates were not interested (though they did interview). And that in 2008, someone like Mike Shanahan (or Chan Gailey) was the best that the Redskins could have done.

That, to me, is a very logical argument for keeping Mike Shanahan: he's a proven head coach and its too likely that we'll downgrade our coaching staff if we make another switch. Why would anyone want to take this job if the only guy the owner gave more than two years happened to be named Joe Gibbs (who in defense of Snyder, also had the best season in the Snyder era in his second season).

But when you compare and contrast Gibbs (who also qualifies under all the criteria you defended Shanahan with) with Mike Shanahan just by what they accomplished in two years (and Zorn left more pro talent behind than Spurrier, but I'll ignore that for now), Gibbs already had the Redskins winning. Shanahan didn't change everything.

I mean, you just have to go back six years to see why the job Shanahan has been doing isn't acceptable. It's not like we weren't here before. It took one bad season to clean up the 2003 mess. The 2009 mess wasn't nearly that deep, and if anything, the Redskins have gone backwards since then.