Seeing red: once one of the league's model franchises, the Redskins have become an embarrassment

JUST TWO YEARS AGO, THE Washington Redskins were among the elite teams in the NFL. All that prevented them from reaching the 1999 NFC Championship Game was a botched field goal in their divisional playoffs matchup against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Their prospects seemed boundless after that season. They had two first-round picks in the 2000 draft, and general manager Charley Casserly had managed the salary cap so well that they were in good position to sign a quality free agent or two.

Yet two years later, the Redskins are one of the worst teams in the league. After the Skins posted a disappointing 8-8 record in the 2000, the bottom has fallen out this season. They started out 0-5--including an embarrassing 9-7 loss to the Dallas Cowboys on "Monday Night Football" in what one of the Redskins players, Kenard Lang, called "the Gutter Bowl" because both teams were 0-4 entering the game--before finally getting into the win column against the lowly Carolina Panthers in Week 6.

So what in the name of George Allen and Joe Gibbs has happened to one of the most storied franchises in the league?

In a two-decade span--excluding the three-year tenure of Jack Pardee from 1978 to 1980--Allen and Gibbs turned the Redskins into a juggernaut. They took Washington to five Super Bowls and won three of them. The Redskins-Cowboys rivalry was one of the most intensely followed in the NFL, and former New York Giants coach Bill Parcells used to call his duels with Gibbs "the best the NFL has to offer."

But such epic matchups now are in the distant past. Since Gibbs retired after the 1992 season, the Redskins have fallen on hard times.

Richie Petitbon was fired after just one year on the job, leading to the hiring in 1994 of then-Cowboys offensive coordinator Norv Turner, who was supposed bring the Redskins back to prominence. Turner, now offensive coordinator of the San Diego Chargers and one of the league's better offensive minds, made the Redskins competitive, but he wasn't a leader. He also wasn't particularly adept in the personnel department. He wanted Heath Shuler and Michael Westbrook to be his Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin. They weren't, which is why the Redskins didn't make the playoffs under Turner until 1999.

It didn't help that the team was in limbo after owner Jack Kent Cooke died on April 6, 1997. If Cooke had lived, Turner probably would have been fired after an 0-7 start in 1998. But Cooke's son, John Kent Cooke, didn't want to make any drastic changes until the ownership situation was settled. In a puzzling move that has never been explained, Jack Kent Cooke didn't leave the team to his son. According to his will, the team had to be sold to provide money to start a foundation.

With team values skyrocketing, John Kent Cooke wasn't able to come up with the money to keep the Skins in the family. Instead, they were purchased by Daniel Snyder on May 25, 1999, for the whopping price of $800 million.

One of Snyder's first moves was to fire Casserly, a decision he told Casserly he now regrets. Casserly currently is running the expansion Houston Texans. Meanwhile, Snyder undermined Turner, especially after he chewed him out in the locker room after a loss in Dallas. But when Turner made the playoffs in 1999, he was kept for the 2000 season.

Without Casserly or anybody else to challenge him, Snyder decided he could essentially run the team by himself. He went on a spending spree of almost $100 million in 2000, buying such big names as Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, Mark Carrier, and Jeff George.

Snyder became the latest owner to discover that it's nearly impossible to buy a championship in the NFL in the era of the salary cap. As it turned out, Sanders and Smith were near the end of their careers, and Turner didn't want George. Turner already had his quarter-back in Brad Johnson.

The Skins actually were a preseason favorite to reach the Super Bowl in 2000, even though the big-name players didn't mesh. And late in the season--despite a loss to the Giants that dropped them to 7-6--the Redskins still were in the playoff hunt. Nevertheless, Snyder fired Turner.

Snyder then gave wide receivers coach Terry Robiskie the job on an interim basis. Unfortunately for Robiskie, the players all but quit, losing their next two games to fall out of playoff contention.

Following the 2000 season, Snyder decided he was going to hire a big-name coach. After striking out with Bill Parcells and Steve Spurrier, he settled on Marty Schottenheimer, who had said on ESPN that he could never work for a meddling owner like Snyder. A four-year, $10 million contract changed all that.

Although Schottenheimer had failed to take either the Cleveland Browns or the Kansas City Chiefs to the Super Bowl, he had a 150-961 mark in 15 years as a head coach. He appeared to be a proven winner. Snyder gave Schottenheimer control of the entire operation, even though personnel decisions never had been one of Schottenheimer's strong suits. In Cleveland, for instance, he drafted Mike Junkin in the first round over Jerome Brown, Shane Conlan, and Rod Woodson.

Furthermore, Schottenheimer was handicapped by the salary cap problems Snyder created with his spending spree in 2000. But Schottenheimer also made several questionable decisions. He deluded himself into thinking he could co-exist with George, he got rid of Larry Centers because he felt the fullback wasn't buying into the program, and productive players such as James Thrash, Derek Smith, and N.D. Kalu left for more lucrative deals.

Schottenheimer then opened training camp with second-year pro Todd Husak and rookie Sage Rosenfels as his backup quarterbacks after passing up chances to sign Gus Frerotte, Mark Rypien, and Trent Dilfer. The coach finally signed Tony Banks after Dallas cut him on August 16, but Schottenheimer was forced to rush the QB into the starting lineup after cutting George after just two games. Don't feel sorry for George: He walked away with $3.75 million.

Schottenheimer assembled a coaching staff that included several of his old Kansas City cronies. He also decided to take a hard-line approach that alienated many of his players. For example, he wouldn't allow players to have their own rooms on the road. Bruce Smith wound up sleeping in the hotel lobby before one game because he said Dan Wilkinson's snoring kept him awake.

The first alarm was sounded when the team lost all four of its exhibition games. Then the Redskins lost their first four regular-season games. And mind you, they didn't just lose those games--they lost them by a total margin of 135-25. Reporters scrambled to check the record book, and couldn't find a worse start, not even by the expansion Buccaneers of 1976 and Cowboys of 1960. The 1943 Brooklyn Dodgers didn't score a point in the first five games, but they were outscored by only 91 points, 19 fewer than the Redskins.

In a matchup against K.C. in late September, the Chiefs put together eight straight drives against Washington of 50 yards or more. Records aren't kept on such things, but that type of onslaught is almost unheard of. By this point, it seemed as if the players had quit on Schottenheimer, figuring that Snyder had little patience and wasn't likely to keep him around next year.

After that loss, Schottenheimer held a clear-the-air meeting with the players. He acknowledged he had made a mistake in how he had dealt with the players in camp. "There was a communications lapse on my part," Schottenheimer said. "I readily admit that, and I accept that. There were some things I asked for and didn't tell them why. That's not good."

Surprisingly, Snyder backed Schottenheimer while addressing a luncheon gathering at the National Press Club, saying, "I think that we all must have a little more faith than we do. One thing that's definitely being displayed is how fickle fans can be." Snyder also reminded everybody that he had allowed Schottenheimer to do as he pleased. "You didn't want me to meddle, did you?" Snyder said with a laugh, alluding to all the times he has been criticized for his meddling. "You got what you wanted."

It probably won't be long before Snyder is back to his meddling ways. He's already personally scouted such highly rated college quarterbacks as Fresno State's David Carr and Oregon's Joey Harrington. If the Redskins keep losing, they'll have the No. 2 pick in the draft behind the Houston Texans, who enter the league next year.

The Redskins will start over again in 2002, but it remains to be seen if Snyder can hire the right people to turn this struggling franchise around. "It takes time to put together a winning organization," Snyder said in his National Press Club speech. "It takes a little bit longer than I anticipated, and, clearly, we'll get it in the right direction. For me, this is about years of winning, not one year."

The problem is, it doesn't look as if that winning era is going to dawn anytime soon.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Century Publishing
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group