Washington Redskins: Who’s Sinking the Ship?

Rumors are flying and gossip is thick and juicy. The Washington Redskins are in a tailspin, but who’s sinking the ship? Their general manager and quarterback are goners. Why?

I think the Washington Redskins are crumbling under the pressure of being a mediocre football team likely to finish between second and fourth in the NFC East next season. After head coach Jay Gruden was given an extension, it seems like the other main employees of the organization are out the door.

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What the heck is going on in Washington? Their general manager and quarterback are goners, despite two reasonably successful seasons and a division title. Who is sinking the Redskins’ ship?

Two brothers from New York,Dan Salem and Todd Salem, discuss the Washington Redskins in today’s NFL Sports Debate.

Todd Salem:

First up is quarterback Kirk Cousins. He gone. It’s no longer if he’s traded, San Francisco is a good landing spot. Now it’s “more likely than not that Kirk Cousins ends up being the 49ers quarterback.” Apparently, if those Michael Silver reports are accurate, Cousins has a better chance of quarterbacking the Niners than the Redskins in 2017. However, there are also reports that owner Dan Snyder told Cousins he wouldn’t be trade…despite Cousins asking for a trade!

NFL.com’s Charley Casserly seems to agree with Silver’s report, or at least he hopped on the same bandwagon. In his latest mock draft, Casserly has the Skins trading Cousins to San Francisco for the second pick in the NFL Draft. As we’ve discussed previously, it is hard to pin down Cousins’ value. He is a franchise quarterback who no one within his current organization seems to believe is a franchise quarterback. He’s the Jay Cutler of the next generation. Playing in Cousins’ favor is the fact that folks used to say the same thing about Matthew Stafford, but the latter seems to have outgrown that.

More alarmingly perhaps is that Washington is selecting Jonathan Allen with the second pick in that Cousins trade. Allen is great; he was expected to be off the board within the top five. That is, until teams learned about issues with his shoulders and he had a lackluster combine performance. According to Matt Miller, Allen is now likely to drop out of the top 10 entirely and may drop past 15. So why trade up to two to get him and spend your franchise quarterback in the process?

I think we may have an answer. Washington general manager Scot McCloughan seems to be…missing? This, according to an NFL.com report by Around The NFL. At the start of free agency, McCloughan was not with the team. He was also unambiguously absent from the NFL scouting combine. For the layman, it is not normal for a team’s GM to miss two of the most important dates in the league offseason.

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Some reports say McCloughan was sent away from the team. Whatever the case, he’s done with the Redskins now, according to Mike Jones of the Washington Post. This is a rough time to restructure the organization. Free agency is beginning and Washington’s franchise-tagged quarterback needs a long-term deal or a new home. It feels even weirder, then, that Gruden was just given a contract extension when his boss has been fired. General managers like to pick their head coaches, and frankly, their quarterbacks as well. I’m not sure what’s going on with Washington.

Dan Salem:

This is perhaps the most confusing and frustrating franchise in the NFL, because just when you think the Washington Redskins have turned a corner and will remain in the playoff hunt, they go and screw it all up. Letting Cousins go will be a mistake. I don’t care if the team thinks it can get Tony Romo, who is will likely wind up getting released by the Dallas Cowboys. They have a younger and less injured version of Romo on their team. Plus, I doubt Dallas would “allow” Romo to sign within the division. Perhaps they want Jay Cutler, or Colin Kaepernick, or to trade up in the 2017 NFL Draft for a rookie they fell in love with during the College Football Playoff. All of these options are bad when compared to a player like Cousins who proved he could succeed in your system.

If you can’t tell, I’m not a fan of letting Kirk Cousins leave. But apparently the Redskins have even bigger problems than their starting quarterback. Maybe the real truth is that Cousins desperately wants to leave the sinking ship before he goes down with it. Washington has fired McCloughan now. You noted how Washington’s GM has been MIA for quite some time, but the writing appears to be on the wall. Unless he’s suffering from an undisclosed illness, there is no way in hell he is left out of free agency decisions. He’s the general manager! The writing was on the wall

I suppose as a New York Giants fan you are secretly giddy that one of your division rivals is once again shooting itself in the foot. But as a fan of football, I hate this. I hate to see a rising player like Cousins bolting from the team he garnered success with. I hate to see an organization that had finally turned a corner into respectability, fall back to pieces before our very eyes. Perhaps its the Jets fan in me that sees something all too familiar with whats going down in Washington. Regardless, this is bad news for the Redskins. Why would any player want to sign there now?

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As a free agent, you enter the Redskins’ office and see the front office transitioning general managers—or even without one for a time. Unless Washington is just going to throw money at people, they will be SOL when it comes to signing most players. I’m excited to watch them try, however.