PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

If you have seen the Redskins play in the last few years, you know what agony can be. They have been awful and this year they got worse. There was only one game, to my recollection, where they looked like a team with any sort of future and they quickly followed that game with multiple losses to end their season. In fact, however, the season was really over within about the first four or five games, we just hadn’t gotten the news yet.

Team owner Dan Synder has been raked over by the media and the fans and he probably deserves most of the criticism he has gotten. Much of the “down with Dan” talk has centered on the fact that he is seen as an owner who meddles and won’t let his players or coaches alone long enough to let them win.

The implication is that no one who comes in “from outside football” can ever learn enough to manage, or help manage, a professional football team. To that I say: why not? Why can’t a smart person, over the course of a decade or so and having been a lifelong fan, learn enough to be part of the winning formula?

Well, of course, being an owner has disadvantages, the biggest probably being that you would be insulated from the normal learning and growth process. You’d start out thinking you knew more than other people and you might not change that attitude, even if, like Snyder, you’ve had one disastrous season after another. If you’re the big dog, why not blame everyone else but yourself? Why not tell them what they need to know, instead of learning from people with more direct experience?

While I am anything but a football expert, the problem with Synder, regardless of his learning curve or innate ability at football, is that he is too impatient.  This is coupled with a belief that only winners, stars, can win. He seems to believe if he can just get enough proven stars to line up on the field, the team will have to win. The idea of taking unknowns and turning them into stars over time seems to be completely foreign to him. One would guess this comes from his background in business, where there are a few people who can get things done, then there is everyone else.

The latest Redskins big hire, Mike Shanahan, fits the Snyder method completely: get the best person you can find with a long record of winning and, presto!, you’ll have a winning team. It probably takes two or three seasons to build a real winning team, for everything to come into play and be working together. Synder, no doubt, wants a big win next season and so do the fans, after the way they have suffered over the last few years, the last two in particular.

If this move turns into yet another disaster, the calls for Snyder’s head on a platter will reach massive proportions. There is no doubt that Shanahan knows the fundamentals of football and equally no doubt that he has clear plans about how to put together a winning combination of players. That, however, is no guarantee of success. History is filled with examples of people who were great at one time, but couldn’t in any way duplicate that success later. The Redskins lack a well grounded belief in themselves as a team, as football players and as a franchise. That’s awfully hard to fix.

Doug Terry, 1.10.10.

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