Mike Shanahan, staff officially fired to the surprise of nobody
Washington Redskins head coach Mike Shanahan walks off the field after a game against the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium. The Giants defeated the Redskins 20-6. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
The Washington Redskins have fired Mike Shanahan and the rest of the coaching staff, according to a tweet from the Washington Post’s Mike Jones, and hopefully this news doesn’t surprise anyone. Shanahan nearly quit last year when the team made the playoffs, because he was enraged at owner Dan Snyder for exalting Robert Griffin III over other players and not treating the likes of Kirk Cousins with proper respect. It’s no secret that Snyder likes his star QB more than the other players, and it’s no surprise that the league’s stereotypical big-money owner loves his big-name money-maker more than the others.
Shanahan’s fate with the Redskins was sealed when he benched RG3 for Cousins a few weeks ago, and it had nothing to do with RG3’s health or a desire to up Cousins’s trade value (Shanny doesn’t care about the Redskins future). No, he wanted to “stick it” to Snyder in every way possible by benching Snyder’s enabled “guy” for the talented backup. It was an effort made by Shanahan to force Snyder to fire him, because Snyder has to pay Shanahan a huge amount of money in order to fire him due to an expensive buyout clause.
It will be interesting to see if lawyers on both sides came to an agreement to decrease that buyout, or if Snyder was so sick of Shanahan that he just sucked it up and paid the money. Either way, Shanahan and his staff are gone in Washington, and it’s the least surprising event of the season, to be honest. Shanahan and his staff were resigned to leaving, knew they were, leaving, and now they are leaving.
Most of the members of the coaching staff are friends with Shanahan, and that’s pretty much how he assembled his group. He gave his whiny son too much power as the offensive coordinator, and he hired the incompetent Raheem Morris as the defensive backs coach. Jim Haslett catches too much flak for awful moves made by Bruce Allen and the Redskins organization when it comes to managing the cap and getting players on defense, but his firing definitely isn’t a surprise either.
The Redskins are starting with a clean slate, but the biggest problem still remains and will remain for the foreseeable future; owner Dan Snyder, whose stubborness will likely drive away almost every high-profile coach.