Interesting piece on Dan Graziano's NFC East Blog today. He talks about the quarterback "competition" between John Beck and Rex Grossman. However, some might even wonder if Mike Shanahan is just conceding on the season by A) not making a serious attempt at keeping Donovan McNabb or B) not making a serious play on another veteran quarterback who can contribute right away. Why would we he want to "tank" the season with either Beck or Grossman under center? The answer is quite simple. Andrew Luck (barring injury or other disaster) is going to be the undisputed #1 overall draft pick in the 2012 NFL Draft. He would have been the #1 pick this year had he not decided to go back to Stanford for his senior season (the distinction this year went to Cam Newton, who looked pretty good in his first preseason game, but did not make one attempt to tuck it and run like he did so well at Auburn). That being said, Andrew Luck is they type of quarterback talent that teams salivate over. Since he's pretty much guaranteed the #1 pick next year (again, barring disaster scenarios), the formula for getting him is pretty simple. Play as bad as you possibly can: 2 wins max, 0-16 just to be safe. Many look at what the Redskins are doing as just our way of making sure we are as bad as possible so that we get the #1 pick and therefore Andrew Luck.
As bad as the Redskins have been since we last won the Super Bowl following the 1991 season, we have never been so bad as to have the #1 pick. In fact, the Redskins have NEVER had the #1 pick in our entire team history (78 years worth). There has always been at least a couple teams worse than us. My question to Shanahan (and by proxy Daniel Snyder) is this. Season ticket sales and waitlist sales are already dropping precipitously as it is. What possible good will it do for the team and the organization by tanking a season so that we get an outside chance at a kid who could be the next Peyton Manning...or the next Ryan Leaf? It's not worth it. Snyder's ultimate fear is blackouts (which has not been a problem in the last 30 years since we have sold out every game since 1980). That could very well happen if we put a product on the field this year that wins at most 2 games.
If you believe the Shanahan duo (Mike and Kyle), they would have you believe that they really like what they see in Grossman and Beck in particular. Grossman led the Chicago Bears to the Super Bowl in 2006 (on a team that was led mostly by defense and Devin Hester returning kicks...wonder how much HE likes the new kickoff rule...). Beck has a lot of so-called "upside," but the one shot he had at starting was in 2007 after Trent Green got hurt with Miami. He went 0-5 on the way to a 1-15 season (the one win being earned by Cleo Lemmon). So on the surface, it appears as if neither Beck nor Grossman have the kind of pedigree to lead this team to anything more than a mediocre season. Now, Beck has been talking some serious smack since it became clear that McNabb was not in the team's plans this year. Beck has said from the get go that he would be the starter. Grossman has even gone so far as to say that the Redskins would even win the NFC East. I like the enthusiasm, but even still they need to know that they are not superstars, and other than Moss and Cooley, they don't have superstar talent around them. However, if they play as well as they did against Pittsburgh in the preseason game last weekend, who knows? There are 3 more preseason games to go...
No comments:
Post a Comment