Theory: Putting together a staff for the future

Now if Schwartz is hired I would take back a lot of the bad stuff I said about DS. That would be a great hire:

Scwartz HC
Zorn OC
Blache DC

Retain most of the other coaches not brought by Williams (because he'll take them)

If this scenario occurs then things are really looking up.

Schwartz has to be the leading HC...or maybe they even hired him already. Otherwise, the Titans wouldn't be asking for GW. Didn't GW work for Fisher before?

Not only that, do you think either one of those guys wants a built in staff or build their own? Sounds like they already made their choice and it's probably Fassel.

Thats possible, and they are just delaying until they hash out the details. But here is why I doubt it.

Why would they wait until after the Super Bowl? Snyder said 1. not to distract from the championship (please!) 2. To keep their options open. Now noone is going to take what comes out of a FO at face value so lets dig a little deeper.

Could he, as I said before, just delaying naming Fassel HC until the details of a contract are hashed out? I doubt it. Gibbs said to his former asst. a few days ago that it could be a couple weeks til a coach is named.

It sounds to me from both Snyder's and Gibbs comments that they have someone in the Super Bowl that they are at least considering. And the fact that they have hired coordinators suggests that they at least have an idea of how this mystery candidate would feel about them. I dont know how conflicting this all might be to league rules. Is it an dont ask dont tell kind of policy? Or can you really have NO contact with candidates still in contention? Can you talk to them via their agent and still be within NFL guideline?

I have no idea. But these are fairly deliberate moves they have made, and it seems that there is something going on that we aren't seeing. But I think we can almost certainly count Fassel out, though we haven't heard that he is officially out of the running. I guess, as someone said before, that they are just stringing him along as a second option, but he certainly is not a front runner at this point.

Is Matty Dan Snyder and Smootsmack Vinny Cerrato in disguise? Is it their responsiblity to calm the masses? Or are they getting paid by the skins to sell the company line? Just kind of weird that they always defend the Redskins moves.

If you bothered to actually read, you'd see that we're not always defending the Redskins moves. I've said that I think Saunders should have gotten another year because he's earned it. I've also said that this situation with Williams should have happened sooner since he deserved the chance to look for head coaching jobs elsewhere before they were all taken up. Among other things over the years.

All Matty and I (and others) are trying to do is generate some meaningful discussion on this site, and trying to maintain some sense of rational thinking. Instead of the mass hysteria-often largely based on assumptions-that seems to permeate way too often throughout this site.

Schwartz has to be the leading HC...or maybe they even hired him already. Otherwise, the Titans wouldn't be asking for GW. Didn't GW work for Fisher before?

Well the Redskins and Schwartz supposedly met for several hours yesterday. Williams did work for Fisher before. But if I'm Williams I might take a year off, and wait for a really good head coaching opportunity to come along.

Thats possible, and they are just delaying until they hash out the details. But here is why I doubt it.

Why would they wait until after the Super Bowl? Snyder said 1. not to distract from the championship (please!) 2. To keep their options open. Now noone is going to take what comes out of a FO at face value so lets dig a little deeper.

Could he, as I said before, just delaying naming Fassel HC until the details of a contract are hashed out? I doubt it. Gibbs said to his former asst. a few days ago that it could be a couple weeks til a coach is named.

It sounds to me from both Snyder's and Gibbs comments that they have someone in the Super Bowl that they are at least considering. And the fact that they have hired coordinators suggests that they at least have an idea of how this mystery candidate would feel about them. I dont know how conflicting this all might be to league rules. Is it an dont ask dont tell kind of policy? Or can you really have NO contact with candidates still in contention? Can you talk to them via their agent and still be within NFL guideline?

I have no idea. But these are fairly deliberate moves they have made, and it seems that there is something going on that we aren't seeing. But I think we can almost certainly count Fassel out, though we haven't heard that he is officially out of the running. I guess, as someone said before, that they are just stringing him along as a second option, but he certainly is not a front runner at this point.

I can tell you the "championship distraction" comment is most likely a suggestion (order?) from the very top, meaning Roger Goodell.

As to your other question about contact with current SB coaches. Good question, I don't know really the exact answer. You can't directly speak to one of the coaches in the SB, but there are so many ways around that

Is Matty Dan Snyder and Smootsmack Vinny Cerrato in disguise? Is it their responsiblity to calm the masses? Or are they getting paid by the skins to sell the company line? Just kind of weird that they always defend the Redskins moves.

Thanks for totally missing the point.

Is Matty Dan Snyder and Smootsmack Vinny Cerrato in disguise? Is it their responsiblity to calm the masses? Or are they getting paid by the skins to sell the company line? Just kind of weird that they always defend the Redskins moves.

Matty and SS are more forgiving when it comes to front office moves than I am, but they have criticized front office moves in the past. And, like me, Matty and SS get aggravated when people bash the Skins without thinking things through and being reasonable and balanced.

Rid the cancer first. Snyder needs to sell the team. He has never been part of a team, only businesses. IF one can corellate the two, awsome. He can't.

He's an excellent business man, but this is not his niche.

Alright I'm going to toss my hat in the ring and toss out this theory as to what the plan is.

With Gibbs out of the picture, the nice and easy solution would have been to retain Williams as HC and leave the rest of the staff relatively intact.

Here's the hitch though, this staff was Joe Gibbs' staff. He put it together and let's face it, it wasn't exactly a staff built for the long term. I'm not sure of the average age of the staff, but it's got to be right at the top for one of the oldest, errr, I mean experienced staffs in the league. Again, not a staff built for the long term and not one that was picked by Williams.

So what I'm saying is, even if Williams took over, there was going to be some pretty significant changes. Saunders was probably outta here no matter what, and guys like Breaux and Burns weren't going to stick around with Gibbs out of the picture. You promote GW, you need a new DC, so that's another open spot on the staff. A few other coach's have contracts that are up, so who knows if they would have been retained as well.

There have always been rumblings that Williams and Snyder weren't exactly best buddies the past few years, and Gibbs was the buffer between the two. Just look at Williams' style. Tough guy, disciplinarian, on the arrogant side, sound familiar? Sounds a little like another coach that Snyder didn't play nice with... Marty Schottenheimer. In summary, Williams and Snyder probably weren't going to last in the long run. Eventually their egos would have clashed (probably sooner rather than later), and then where would that have left things? In search of another new HC and more turmoil? If you ask me, if Snyder has any doubt about working with Williams for the long run, the right move is to not even try to go there. Cut the head off this thing now and move on rather than trying to avoid the inevitable. He tried this once with Marty and we all know how that worked out. He doesn't want to go down that road again.

So ultimately I think the plan is to put together a staff for the long run. If that means taking a step backwards now in order to take steps ahead in the future, this is what has to be done. It certainly isn't pretty, but it seems like this is what needs to happen in order for Snyder to have a staff in place that he is comfortable with going forward with.

I have to say that I already like the Zorn hiring, and before you jump all over this notion that why did they hire an OC without having a HC first, let's just point out that Dallas did the same exact thing last year when they hired Garrett before Phillips. Zorn was reportedly high on the lists of all the potential HC's, so it was a no-brainer. I think we're going to see some more quality hirings too and in the end once the dust settles we just might like the looks of the new staff. Give it some more time, stay patient, and let's judge the entire package once everything is in place. Did anyone see the Zorn hiring coming a few weeks ago? I sure didn't. That tells me that someone is doing their homework in this search to turn up quality assistants and they're not just shooting for the big names. Look at some of the other names that have been floated out there. Schwartz, Meeks, Spagnola... not exactly the sexy big names that we always blame Snyder for going after.

Feel free to agree or disagree, but let's just keep things civil. There seems to be this notion that the moderators here don't want to hear any dissenting opinions. That's simply not true, what we're looking for is less emotional over the top stuff and more civil rational discussion.

Fire away. :)



I just don't buy that GW was too egotistical for snyder. You must have a type A personality to lead. There aren't a lot of coaches who are anything but, and Williams was very good at his job. Fassel is also an ego and much more emotional than GW, so I'm not really seeing how the two of them would get along much better than GW.

I really think he's more enamored with someone from the pats, which I don't really blame him. Why not throw millions at a someone who coached on the "greatest team of all time"

Well the Redskins and Schwartz supposedly met for several hours yesterday. Williams did work for Fisher before. But if I'm Williams I might take a year off, and wait for a really good head coaching opportunity to come along.Yeah, and Snyder's got the media totally duped into thinking he's a candidate.

I'm thinking he's going to hire Schwartz, but even if he doesn't, assuming that he does already have his guy, he's done a wonderful job of handling PR (after making an unpopular decision) while keeping the media totally duped.

Snyder's handling of this process has been absolutely masterful, if not a bit insane, and hopefully it leads him to hiring the best candidate. After all, that is the goal of the process.