Smoot Lays the Smack Down (Redskins vs. Dolphins)

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Just as far as unrestricted free agents go, Matt Hasselbeck, Shaun Hill, Alex Smith, Tarvaris Jackson, Drew Stanton, Byron Leftwich and Matt Moore have all been unrestricted free agents since Shanahan had the job here. Caleb Hanie was an RFA who could have been plucked from the Bears for zero compensation. A competitive trade offer could have plucked Matt Flynn from Green Bay. Kevin Kolb was terribly overpriced and would have been a bad short-term acquisition, but he was available.

No one on the above list contains magical qualities that would have fixed the 2011 season (whether they could have kept it from being derailed is another issue), but they are all better than John Beck, and about half of them are better than Rex Grossman.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that it didn't matter in the long run, but the Redskins could and should have done better on offensive personnel than they have. Whether they could have done so much better as to build an annual winner is debatable, I think. What's not debatable is that they couldn't have built an annual winner while taking the strategic path they did.