Washington Redskins 2018 season interior defensive line grades
By Ian Cummings
Stacy McGee
Stacy McGee won’t grade out well for his 2018 performance, but it’s not entirely his fault. Much of the blame goes on the Redskins front office, for giving him a deal that wasn’t proportional to his demand, back in the offseason of 2017.
You probably remember that signing; in a time when the Redskins still needed more talent on the defensive line, the Redskins signed Stacy McGee to a five-year, $25 million contract, and fans promptly replied with Conor McGregor’s famous line: “Who the [expletive] is that guy?”
We’re now two years into McGee’s contract, and we still don’t know the answer to that question. Each season, McGee has merely logged snaps as a reserve. In 2017, he failed to capitalize on injuries that freed up reps for him on the interior, and in 2018, he was effectively buried in a rotation that featured three borderline Pro Bowl linemen.
McGee made $4.675 million of his assigned $25 million in 2018, per Spotrac, outpacing players like Zach Brown, Chris Thompson, and all of his defensive line counterparts. Stacy McGee was the highest paid Redskins defensive lineman by over $2 million. Yet, he didn’t play a single defensive snap until Week 9 due to injury, and he finished the season with just 13 percent of the total defensive snaps on his belt.
In his limited time on the field, McGee was minimally effective. The Redskins shouldn’t have paid him as much as they did. But because they did, the standards are higher. McGee did not meet them.