Did Redskins make a mistake going with the safe head coach hire?

It’s a question we won’t be able to answer for a long time. But it’ll hover in distant recesses of the mind, as long as Ron Rivera remains a coach without a Super Bowl.

For the Washington Redskins, success isn’t necessarily quantified by a Super Bowl title. After the team’s two-decade long, gut-wrenching streak of dysfunction and mediocrity, simply regaining relevance is a step in the right direction for Dan Snyder’s franchise.

The Redskins head coaching hire at the turn of the decade reflected this notion. The Redskins could have gone with a new, exciting head coach, with an added tangent of risk and potential reward. But instead, they went with Ron Rivera. Bluntly, he’s a re-tread. More realistically, he’s a known cultural savant who’s successfully turned around a team in dire straits before. He’s a coach who’s reached a Super Bowl, and at the same time never logged consecutive winning seasons. Optimistically, he’s exactly what Washington needed after ten years of Bruce Allen.

There’s a legitimate argument that Rivera could have easily accrued consecutive winning seasons, had he not experienced the level of adversity he did in Carolina. His quarterback was consistently injured, and Drew Brees and Matt Ryan have all but monopolized the NFC South playoff race for the past decade.

These are things we know: Rivera managed to insert himself into that playoff discussion, in one of the toughest divisions to do so. He turned around a 2-14 team, and instilled a strong culture that gave an organization new life. He won the Coach of the Year award twice. He went 15-1. And he lost a Super Bowl in that same season.

Rivera is what the Redskins needed to overhaul their culture, and there’s nothing wrong with finding the right fit. But in a league that’s Super Bowl or bust for 32 teams every year, is Rivera the  coach who can get them there?

When asked, in his introductory press conference, about things he would do better in Carolina, if given the chance, he said simply: “Win the Super Bowl.” There’s a certain contagious fire in Rivera’s tone, but no self-reflection. No accountability for where the Panthers might have fallen short in that miraculous season. No accountability for any role Rivera might have played in the Panthers getting close, but not to the mountaintop.

Rivera was presented with an opportunity to share what he’d do differently. What he might have learned. And he treated his Super Bowl loss as if it was up to chance.

Rivera touted “his way” repeatedly in his introductory press conference, and repeatedly claimed that if the players did it his way, they would succeed. There’s merit to his words, as his record shows. But coaches who are blindly in favor of their way have been known to fail, when they struggle to be adaptable enough or introspective enough, to change when they might need to.

Perhaps Rivera has these qualities. Perhaps he simply prefers to indulge them on the practice field. Perhaps he wants his work to do the talking, and maybe we’re all getting too worked up over one press conference line.

But the hire of a head coach is one of the most important, and most pivotal moves a franchise can make. A team ties itself to a leader for at least half a decade, and if there’s no Super Bowl ring to show for it, then it’s all a waste. Players, draft picks, money, and time. So much time.

Some teams make hires with more risk involved, with the intent to capitalize on that greater upside, so that when the time comes, that coach peaks above the rest of the competition. The Panthers did this with their hire of Matt Rhule. It’s a risk. It could very well fail. But Rhule is a motivator. Rhule is an innovative college coach. Rhule has historic LSU offensive coordinator Joe Brady on his staff. And Rhule has some of the highest upside in the NFL.

Can the same be said about Rivera?

Yes, Rivera made it to the Super Bowl five years ago. But the NFL is always changing, and what it took five years ago might not be enough anymore. The Redskins have made a pledge, to invest their time and money into Ron Rivera. Before long, we’ll know if it was worth it.