5 decisions from last the 25 years that set Commanders franchise back

3. Choosing the sycophant over the football vet

After firing Norv Turner, who he had inherited from the previous regime, Snyder wanted a big-name coach. He really wanted Joe Gibbs, but Gibbs was not ready to come back. When Snyder hired Marty Schottenheimer, it was a shock. Marty, who had an outstanding career record as a head coach, had been openly critical of Snyder’s meddlesome ownership. He seemed a polar opposite from what Snyder really wanted.

And things did not begin well. Marty cut lots of players before the season even began and quickly realized he could not win with Jeff George at QB. He promoted Tony Banks to starter. The team began the season very poorly before turning things around and finishing at 8-8. (It was eerily similar to what had happened in Joe Gibbs’ first season.)

One of the other key moves Marty made early on was firing Director of Player Personnel, and personal friend of the owner, Vinnie Cerrato. Cerrato had come from San Francisco, but had shown little acumen on his own. Marty, who was no slouch in the ego department, felt he could handle personnel issues by himself.

But Vinnie never really went away. The owner allowed him to stick around and whisper in his ear. What he whispered was that Marty wasn’t right for the franchise. Unfortunately, Snyder agreed with Cerrato. He dumped Schottenheimer just when things were beginning to turn around, and made the doubly disastrous decision to bring in the paycheck-hungry Steve Spurrier as head coach, and Vinnie Cerrato as the new undisputed Czar of player personnel.

Vinnie presided over most of the next decade and was a catastrophe, setting the franchise back a decade with one bad personnel move after another. The eventual return of Joe Gibbs mitigated some of the immediate damage, but the die was cast. Washington would suffer for many years based on this one decision.

You can include the next decade’s decision to install Bruce Allen as team president in your own list of disasters if you so choose. I agree – it was pretty bad. But the move to Vinnie was worse.