Somebody please try to convince me that the FO has a plan.

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by SmootSmack

-Could they be better? Of course. I'm not naive to mistakes they've made. The Duckett trade was disatrous and unneccesary, as one example. But we see a Chad Rinehart drafted in the 3rd round not starting and suddenly the thought is OMG, the Redskins suck! They don't know how to even draft a 3rd rounder...yeah, but we drafted Chris Cooley in the 3rd round, we drafted Derrick Dockery in the 3rd round (but we tend to forget that). We see Devin Thomas not playing much his first year and we think This moron was a waste of a pick! But at the same time we want the FO to build through the draft, be patient, and not go for the quick fix all the time

To this, let me say that if the Redskins wanted a seamless transition between building predominantly through FA talent to building predominantly through the draft, picking at a similar hit rate to the rest of the league isn't good enough. We need(ed?) to take low risk players at positions of need with considerable upside. Even as I write that, it sounds impossible, but I know for a fact it was a reasonable expectation.

But ultimately, I have a real problem with the FO trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the fanbase by asking them to be patient with the building through the draft process, and then not demonstrating patience in the face of the Daniels injury by dealing for Jason Taylor. That is NOT building through the draft, it's throwing away your most valuable (wage-adjusted) pick for a 34 year old former superstar. Fine, if you think it's the move that gets us over the top, I impore you to do it. Just don't turn around after the season (and to Vinny's credit, he hasn't done this publically) and be like "we'll just be patient while we build through the draft." Uh, okay. Thanks for the reassurance.

I agree that the Redskins don't have a consistent, clear, long-term plan. They do seem to seize oppertunities in the market better than the league expectation, but that might just be thanks to having a huge cash surplus as an asset, and being so close to the salary cap that they have to wait for oppertunities (like a new CBA in 06 or a last capped year) to spend themselves ahead of their competition.