[GTripp0012]

NFL offensive coordinator is not a position where typically the criticisms of your work are fair.

With that qualification in place, I'd question whether or not he was a hot name based on his work with the Texans. One thing is for sure: he's young and has some upside as a pro coach. On our coaching staff, that's important. We need new ideas constantly. Mike Shanahan and Jim Haslett and Danny Smith and others have been around the block in the NFL with less-than-promising results. Kyle at least deserves the shot to fail, which is not something you can say about the lot of our coaches.

2010 was a pretty big failure though. The longer Sherm Lewis remains the gold standard of what the Redskins offense can accomplish, the longer we will go since being a model franchise. As a staple of who he is, Kyle Shanahan just isn't formation diverse. That's fine, because you can do a lot out of a couple of formations and personnel packages and using motion to work between those formations, but he's a pass heavy playcaller who isn't formation or package diverse, and that's what doesn't fly in the NFC East.

The gag of throwing the football with running personnel on the field creates opportunities for the big play, but he almost then needs a super efficient running game to be the heart beat of the offense because you don't have screens or quick passes in there to move the ball consistently down the field. But he's one to let his offensive personnel dictate if he's going to run the ball at all.

The problem, then, is that at worst, their is no consistent principle present in the offense. Sometimes you can play the super bowl champs and win 16-13 because you caught a second team safety deep in the fourth quarter for a fifty yard score...but that relies on your bottom quartile defense being able to hold the Packers offense to basically no positive movement after the first quarter, AND to force the GW T.O. in overtime. Point is, it can work, but when you try to repeat the model six weeks later against the Vikings, Brett Favre gets on the edge a couple of times and you lose to a bad team.

Kyle Shanahan needs to demonstrate the ability to create formation mismatches so that the Redskins can throw the ball for 6-12 yards at a time with consistency, so that they can choose when to employ the running game and when to force opponents to defend the pass. The current model is one that I just don't think works. You can have the personnel to throw downfield a lot, and it creates big yards in the aggregate, but it puts a lot of pressure on the defense to keep you in the game.

I think 2010 was the worst case scenario under Kyle Shanahan, but I don't think that excuses his approach entirely.