We’re past weekly Ingredients for Improvement. The Redskins need an intervention from their perpetual incompetence.
After the first three weeks of the 2019 NFL season, the Washington Redskins are 0-3, and in each week, they’ve lost the same ways, with the same problems. The offense is inconsistent. The defense is porous. The coaching is inadequate. Players are losing faith. Seats are empty.
It’s at this turning point that the Redskins ownership needs to step back, and carefully analyze the big picture Ingredients for Improvement. Over the next six months, there are changes Dan Snyder and Bruce Allen can make, to start a new era on the right foot. Here are those changes.
No. 5 – Fire Jay Gruden after the Giants game
He’s probably going to lose. But if he wins? Don’t fool yourself. The Redskins aren’t winning with Jay Gruden at the helm. In fact, they’re not even moving forward.
Maybe wait until after the Patriots game, just to get the timing right. But Jay Gruden has been given enough time, to the point where he doesn’t even seem to want to be the coach anymore. To Gruden’s credit, he was dealing with an unwindable situation from the start. The front office doesn’t give coaches enough autonomy, and yet they draw out lame duck years in a futile attempt to provide more freedom.
The odds were always stacked against Gruden. But as I’ve written many times before, two truths can co-exist. The front office is insufferable, but Jay Gruden has also displayed flaws that would prevent him from winning consistently. From his inability to establish a culture, to his complete lack of in-game adaptability, Gruden simply isn’t the guy. And if he’s not the guy, the team shouldn’t wait to make a change. They should use the rest of the lost season to survey future options, and experiment.
In a short week, firing a coach makes little sense, because the new coach would have little time to get ready. But after the Giants game, the Redskins will have a full seven days to prepare for the New England Patriots, and after that, they’ll have another seven days to prepare for the Miami Dolphins. Somewhere in that time range, Jay Gruden should be let go, and the front office should conclude a painfully mediocre tenure.
No. 4 – Promote Kevin O’Connell to head coach, restructure offensive staff
With a full week to prepare after the Giants game, it’s time to turn the page, and start a new era. Use the final twelve games of the season as an evaluation period, and make young, up-and-coming offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell the primary subject.
We haven’t seen much of O’Connell, but in brief pockets, he’s displayed promising qualities in a coach. He’s clearly personable, he has previous connections with Dwayne Haskins’ former coaches, and he’s spoken about a desire to maintain aggressiveness on offense. The offense hasn’t been consistent in his time as coordinator, but we know Jay Gruden has maintained play calling duties. Gruden’s influence heavily dilutes what we know about O’Connell. And it makes this move riskier.
But with Gruden gone, the Redskins have to promote someone, and O’Connell is the obvious candidate. He has a promising background, both as a player and as a staff member. He’s young, he’s been brought up in the modern era of football, and he has a long career ahead of him. And frankly, no one else on the Redskins staff has a resume nearly as intriguing. The Redskins need to try something new. O’Connell is their best bet.
Outside of O’Connell, restructure the offensive staff a bit, just to supplement the move. Maybe promote Tim Rattay to interim offensive coordinator and have him provide input for O’Connell’s offense. Maybe offer Alex Smith a role as quarterbacks coach while he continues his recovery. See how these coaches perform in their new roles, so that in 2020, you have ammunition for informed decision making. Is there a future with O’Connell? Or do the Redskins need to look elsewhere?
No. 3 – Give Dwayne Haskins his first start against the Miami Dolphins
Once the offensive staff has been settled, and once Kevin O’Connell has gotten his feet under him as the new head coach of the Washington Redskins, it’s time to continue the transition with the game’s most important position. Out with Case Keenum. In with Dwayne Haskins.
It’s at this juncture that we should give Keenum some credit. He’s a player and a man who deserves respect, and at times in the first three games, he’s moved the offense well. But the Bears game provided an adequate depiction of his limitations, and the Redskins should accordingly plan the transition to their rookie signal caller.
O’Connell would enable this move, as Gruden doesn’t seem so keen on making a change. It seems as if Gruden may be clinging to “his guy”, who is Keenum, to either spite the front office, cling to whatever astronomically low chance of winning he has, or both. Gruden has said he wants “continuity” from his quarterback room, but the Redskins are 0-3, Keenum is coming off his worst game yet, and his stats have been inflated by garbage time production. Haskins is running the scout team. Continuity, if anything, has moved them backward.
Haskins needs to be given more credit in this discussion. He was a smart prospect coming out. He showed consistent growth in preseason, and with this receiving core developing quickly, and the line performing better than expected (they don’t play the Bears every week), he’d be comfortable coming in. The common assumption is that “he isn’t ready”, but the more likely scenario is that Gruden doesn’t want to modify his scheme to assist the rookie. Gruden’s decision to stick with Keenum seems to be anything but football related, and when clashing motivations impede the development of a rookie, something has to be done.
With Gruden gone, the Redskins and Kevin O’Connell can turn to Haskins at the right time, and the upcoming Dolphins game provides a suitable debut date. The Dolphins are competing to be the worst team in the NFL this year; it’ll be a low-pressure affair for Haskins, where he can finally experience the pace of the NFL first-hand, and start to develop with on-field reps.
The Redskins used a first-round pick on Haskins. And from that moment Haskins was drafted, he became the future, for better or worse. You don’t withhold reps from Haskins for simple continuity. Keenum is a bridge, and sooner or later, we should reach the other side. Under the new coaching staff, Haskins’ development won’t be neglected any further.
No. 2 – Promote Kyle Smith to general manager in the offseason
The season will play out as it may. The Redskins will get a glimpse at what Kevin O’Connell and Dwayne Haskins can do when they’re in lock step. If they impress, then the Redskins would give O’Connell the full-time job, and work through the ensuing coaching changes.
In this period, O’Connell and Co. would have a lot of decisions to make. Greg Manusky needs to be relieved of his duties as defensive coordinator, but his ouster would reportedly cause Jim Tomsula to walk as well. Perhaps Manusky would agree to a move back to outside linebackers coach, and allow the team to search for a coach who’s more comfortable in the scheming world.
That search won’t be easy; it never is. But this offseason, the Redskins will have another valuable mind to provide insight. Kyle Smith, the team’s college scouting director who’s turned around the team’s draft performance since the dismissal of Scot McCloughan, will have been promoted to general manager.
None of Smith’s draft classes have yielded nationally recognized players, but under his watch, the Redskins have acquired talent at an impressive rate. Since 2017, when he originally took on the role of scouting director, the Redskins have drafted 28 players. All but two remain with the team in some capacity, and ten of them are starters. Four rookies this year (Montez Sweat, Terry McLaurin, Cole Holcomb, Jimmy Moreland) have taken on consistent starting roles, and a fifth, Dwayne Haskins, is waiting for his shot.
Smith is another young executive, and his early returns suggest that he has a bright future ahead of him as a talent evaluator and acquirer. The Redskins should lock him up in that role early, and promote him to general manager once the season is over. The team’s ownership needs to step back and give more autonomy to their football staff, and one way to help with that is to diversify and reward exceptional performance.
Of course, stepping back has never been easy for the duo of Bruce Allen and Dan Snyder. And that’s why the No. 1 Ingredient for Improvement is most important.
No. 1 – Introspect, and adjust accordingly
All this improvement is for naught, if the Redskins front office can’t fulfill the final requirement of the list.
Dan Snyder’s inability to see the bigger picture, or at least acknowledge it, has seemed almost deliberate at times, over the course of his tenure as owner. Former football executive Michael Lombardi said as much on 106.7 The Fan earlier this year, proclaiming that Snyder’s problem is quite simple: He doesn’t know how to build a winning football culture, and by extension, a winning football team.
Twenty years into the game, that’s just embarrassing. It would be too embarrassing for a prideful person to admit defeat, fire Bruce Allen, and start over. And that’s why it’s not going to happen. But Snyder and Allen, as human beings, can learn from their perpetual failure. With open minds, they could, in theory, look back and analyze how, at each step of the way, they impeded uniform progress and growth, and how their failure to construct a unified vision for their franchise cost them time, effort, and talent.
Snyder wants to be the hero. He wants to institute the move that saves the franchise he fawned over as a child. The move that saves the franchise he’s ultimately doomed. But like a casual fan, he doesn’t comprehend the gravity of his role, in its entirety. Or he’s at least blind to it. He doesn’t understand that turning around a football franchise takes more effort. It takes more patience. It takes more self-reflection. And it takes more structure. It takes a plan, which is more than what Snyder can offer.
But perhaps the weight of an entire generation of sorrow takes a toll on the Redskins much-maligned owner. Maybe he does use the tail end of 2019 to soul search, and self-evaluate. Maybe he starts to understand how his actions, and the actions of Bruce Allen, have stunted the team’s development and lowered their ceiling. And perhaps, with this new knowledge, he makes the requisite changes, scaling back Bruce Allen’s role as president, while taking on a more open-minded approach as the owner, and implementing a structured plan for the future.
It’s time that Snyder learns that the problem isn’t the coaching carousel. It isn’t the heavy turnover of talent each year. And it isn’t the injuries. The problem is the one thing that’s stayed the same. The problem is Dan Snyder, and if the Redskins want to improve, Dan Snyder needs to be introspective, realize that, and adapt.
Is it realistic? No. But these are the Ingredients for Improvement for the Washington Redskins. One should not stray too far from the recipe.