Cousins to start 2015 Season

[JoeRedskin]

Originally Posted by 30gut

Griffin can still run. And to be clear Griffin did run read-option in 2013.

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Lets not pretend that Griffin got Shanahan fired. And lets also be clear the offense did work. Even in 2013 the offense was the best part of the team.

However; Mike didn't make anything else work. His efforts as a GM were palrty at best: W/L record, league worst defense, historically bad special teams. Then he took a flamethrower to everything.

As we have ALL said, there was plenty of blame to go around. Did RGIII "get Shanahan fired"? No. The complete breakdown of the team got him fired. At the end, nothing was working. Did RGIII contribute to the problem? Yes. Did his play on the field regress? Yes. Did he and his father contribute to the daily drama and general circus atmosphere of 2013? Yes. Did Dan Snyder contribute to the general sh** show that was the end of the 2013 season? Yes.

Shanahan sucked and was knifing as many folks in the back as he could - or at least that's how it seemed to me. RGIII, however, did not play well in 2013. He demonstrated he was not a drop back passer and had a loonggg way to go in that area. He ran the read option, but not with anywhere near the effectiveness of the previous year. And, when it failed or when down and distance removed it from the plays, he lacked the ability to move the team.

I don't have the stats and I am not going back to look them up. Shanahan is gone. RGIII has regressed. DS/BA contributed to the circus atmosphere which created distractions on the field. In 2014, DS/BA brought in a coach who had never worked with a running QB and who tried to fit a square peg in a round hole. It didn't work and the coach was stuck with a player he didn't want to play and the circus continued.

SM got hired and said - my way or the highway. RGIII sits. Coach gets to sink or swim with his guy. At the end of this year, JG & KC are either here together with RGIII gone or everybody is out.

Not sure why we are STILL talking Shanny. He contributed to RGIII's regression, but the man has his own faults to own up to.

Nice article from Keim from back in February that lays it all out nicely:

Mike Shanahan on RG III, Dan Snyder - Washington Redskins Blog - ESPN

But, just a guess here, it's not healthy for an owner who is not a football man to be telling a coach how to use a player. As Shanahan said he told Snyder, after meeting with Griffin and hearing some buzzwords that aroused suspicion, “I told Dan, ‘Hey Dan, I just had a conversation with Robert and I think this conversation is coming from you more so than it is Robert. If that's the case, there's no way, unless your owner, your GM, your head coach and your quarterback are all on the same page you win in the National Football League.” I know Shanahan was concerned about the relationship between Griffin and Snyder before the 2013 season.

Shanahan said Griffin talked to him after his rookie season and let him know what plays he thought were “acceptable and unacceptable.” Shanahan said the words sounded like something Snyder would say. I don't blame Griffin for voicing an opinion, but it also speaks to someone reaching a point in his own mind that he had not hit in reality. But you can only do so if you're enabled. That's why, in some ways (definitely not all), the last guy I blame for this is Griffin. And I don't blame him for wanting to limit the shots. The problem was, he took a lot of them in the pocket or when scrambling – and more than a few of those scrambles could have been avoided by throwing to open receivers.

Shanny, 2013, sucked. He set the team back a lot. He set RGIII back a lot. RGIII, 2013, did not help himself much. RGIII, 2014, did a lot himself to hurt the team's chances on the field, with his relationship with his teammates, and to hinder his development.

He's still here. Shanny's gone. Can we move on to where Scot McCloughan is taking this team? B/c KC wasn't horrible and the team ran the ball, stopped the run pretty well, and played tough. They lost through some dumb mistakes - similar to ones in the past - but they punched Miami in the gut and that's a good thing to build off of.