2006 Point & Laugh at the taterskins thread

[MDS]

Best fans in the world, shut the hell up igy.

[paco]

If was able to find a link to the aricle written by the AEI economist, which was referenced in the article in the above post. Nothing we really didn't know already. 

AEI: Patriots vs taterskins

...
The Washington taterskins are perhaps the leading exemplar of this tendency toward irrationality. Last spring, for example, the taterskins gave up key draft picks for high-priced veteran players. An especially silly trade gave the Jets three taterskins' picks: in the second and sixth rounds this year and in the second round next year. The trade left the taterskins with only one pick in the first three rounds this year.

To compound this error, the taterskins filled their roster with mediocre, high-priced veterans, dropping $35 million on safety Adam Archuleta, $32.5 million on defensive lineman Andre Carter, $31 million on wide receiver Antwaan Randle El, and $25 million on wide receiver Brandon Lloyd--none of whom has ever been in the Pro Bowl.
...

What a bunch of BS.  Everybody know the man-god genius coaching angel Joe Gibbs and Sir Danny Snyder Esquire III are going against the grain becuase that is what will make you stand out in this league.

This article was probably written by some pencil necked accounting major who has no knowledge of football whatsoever.  Sure you can load up on draft picks and maybe get lucky with a player or two who works out.  But why not get a player with that draft pick that you know is good.

Instead of rolling the dice, Dan snyder got a known talent in TJ duckett. He got adam achuletta, a stud.  Sure they cost a little more, but you know they are good from their track record.

[paco]

Not sure if this is official yet, but let's pretend it is.

Broncos | Lelie trade produces pair of draft choices
Wed, 27 Dec 2006 07:12:17 -0800

Bill Williamson, of the Denver Post, reports the Denver Broncos will receive the Washington taterskins' 2007 third-round draft choice and a fourth-round pick from the taterskins in 2008 as compensation for trading WR Ashley Lelie to the Atlanta Falcons in August.

See, instead of wasting a 3rd and 4th pick (really, what talent ever comes out of the third or fourth round), they got a quality player in TJ Duckett.  Who can stop the 1-2 punch of Portis and Duckett.

[BigEd76]

So are we rooting for these guys to beat the Giants or what?

[paco]

So are we rooting for these guys to beat the Giants or what?

Not me.  The way I see it a Giants win will:
1) By virtually putting them in the playoffs (there IS a scenario where the Giants can win and not make it), it increases the chances that Coughlin will keep his job one more year, which will give us more to point and laugh at.
2) The extra loss will give Danny boy extra motivation to go on yet another spending spree which will give us more to point and laugh at.

[QB Eagles]

I see it as a win-win game for us. I only hope that the loss happens in as painful a way as possible to the losing team.

[BigEd76]

If Washington loses and Tampa Bay beats Seattle, the taterskins will get the #5 pick in the draft (assuming Arizona loses at San Diego)....

[MDS]

I'd rather the Skins get a high draft pick. It'll be that much funnier when they trade it away for DJ Hackett and proceed to sign him for 5 years and $32 million.

[Rome]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpAgtya5lMU

osama231   (3 weeks ago)

farging rednecks

Osama?   

[Beermonkey]

/quote]
This article was probably written by some pencil necked accounting major who has no knowledge of football whatsoever. 

This man will smack you upside your head with nonlinear regression models, then pop you in the nuts wit' some Bayesian statistics before you can blink. He is not a man you want to f with. 

[SD_Eagle5]

Archuleta lashes out at taterskins "I don't like being lied to" waaaaaaah

[Seabiscuit36]

cant say i blame him

[MDS]

Did he say something bad about Jesus to the Almighty?

[PhillyPhanInDC]

Archuleta lashes out at taterskins "I don't like being lied to" waaaaaaah

This was probably posted long ago, but with the Archuleta thing, it's relevant again. Many feel Archuleta was the "unnamed" player in this article, which is long, but should be mandatory reading for all those who enjoy pointing and laughing at the Failskins:

Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Updated: November 26, 6:53 PM ET
Reeling taterskins awash in troubles
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Tom Friend
ESPN The Magazine

They're irrelevant by Thanksgiving again, and somehow there hasn't been steam coming out of Joe Gibbs' ears. I covered Gibbs in the '80s, the glory '80s, when losses were like death, when he micromanaged, when he used to bring in his struggling players and offer them a bible. One year, the punt team couldn't cover a kick, so he hired a second special teams coach. One year, a player anonymously ripped his methods in the press, so he called a team meeting and ordered the mystery player to raise his hand. Nobody did. He might've been cut.

That's ancient history now, because Joe Gibbs is 3-7 and, by all accounts, a grandfather figure at taterskin Park. You ask players what they think of him, and they say, "Good dude." If Joe Gibbs was 3-7 in 1987, nobody would've been saying "Good dude" -- they'd have been cursing him for the three-hour practices. Joe, the first time around, would've fixed this by now, but instead he appears to be a burned out coach again, who is allowing his defensive coaching staff to run amok.

For whatever reason, this stubborn, controlling, innovative Hall of Fame coach has chosen to be more of an observer this season, to be a CEO, to let his millionaire coordinators earn their keep. That's why the team doesn't have his smashmouth mentality anymore, his fingerprints. I asked an Indianapolis Colts defender what he thought of Al Saunders' taterskins offense, and he said, "Gimmicky." I asked a taterskins player what he thought of defensive guru Gregg Williams, and he said, "Arrogant. Thinks he invented the wheel."

It is a fractured team that, frankly, needs the old Gibbs to intervene. A year ago, when the team was 5-6, he held player meetings, got the pulse of the locker room and rode Clinton Portis and a stout defense to the second round of the playoffs. It was vintage Gibbs; he personally willed them to January. But now, on Thanksgiving weekend of '06, it's apparent last year taxed him way too much. He doesn't call plays anymore. He may or may not have the pulse of the locker room anymore. And he may or may not be fuming about it anymore.

So that's where we are, trying to understand why the Washington taterskins are the biggest flop, the biggest turkey of the season. You originally could've argued for Miami, or Tampa Bay or Pittsburgh, but not any longer. Miami's gotten hot behind Joey Harrington, and Tampa Bay lost its starting quarterback early, and Pittsburgh's suffering through a predictable post-Super Bowl malaise.

So, no doubt, that leaves the taterskins. Forbes Magazine keeps saying they are the most valuable NFL franchise, the Yankees of football. Their offensive and defensive coordinators earn approximately $5 million a year combined, their budget is the moon, and owner Dan Snyder's jet -- taterskin One -- is probably already fueling up to greet Nate Clements and Dwight Freeney on the first day of 2007 free agency.

They are money-driven, but not always money-wise, and the decisions to throw cash at every problem, or free agent, or coach, has created ego and narcissism. It's not necessarily Gibbs' fault, because he didn't draw it up this way or imagine it happening, but the almighty dollar has created too many power trips at taterskin Park, or as one taterskins player said, "Too many chiefs and not enough indians." Naturally, heads, or chiefs, may roll this coming offseason, including Williams' and some of Williams' staff. But that's getting ahead of ourselves, ahead of how this all came about.

To simplify matters, and to understand this year's 3-7 record, you have to go back to Gibbs' first comeback year of 2004. On offense, he put his old band together, bringing back coaches Don Breaux, Joe Bugel and Rennie Simmons, all good, loyal, stand-up guys who played huge roles in the Super Bowl years. They were all affable workaholics, and humble, too, but when they returned for Gibbs' second stint, they appeared bumbling and overmatched, stuck in 1983. And from what I'm told, no one felt that more than the defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams.

Williams told people that the offense was almost "high school" that first year. Gibbs, Breaux and Bugel were practically holding caucuses before every play call, continually wasting timeouts, and the defense was forced all year to carry the team. And in all fairness, Williams' group was spectacular. He used about three basic defenses and coverages, blitzed from all angles and asked his players to fly to the ball and play uninhibited. They were the No. 3 defense in the NFL, and a young middle linebacker named Antonio Pierce, an undrafted free agent from Arizona, was the absolute key to the unit. An injury to Michael Barrow forced Williams to move Pierce inside, where he'd never played before, but Pierce was smart, got people lined up, played sideline to sideline and was particularly fierce against the run. It was a pleasant surprise, and with the ball-hawking rookie safety Sean Taylor free to roam the field behind him, it was a physical, championship-type defense.

Williams, who'd been fired the previous year as the Bills' head coach, had a ton of adulation tossed his way, and his swagger at taterskin Park was unmatched. He liked to tell people that he'd only agreed to take the job if Snyder "didn't stick his nose" into personnel matters, and Snyder -- who wanted to win in the worst way -- had agreed. That gave Williams a feeling of invincibility, and considering the egg that the offense laid that year in comparison, he probably deserved to feel that way.

But it was a blind confidence, and when Pierce became a free agent after the 2004 season, and talks began to stall, Williams, according to taterskins sources, claimed Pierce was "replaceable." It was the first hint of arrogance under the new Gibbs regime, a sense that Williams felt it was his system, not the players, that dominated offenses. Cornerback Fred Smoot was also a free agent at the time, and again, Williams felt Smoot was expendable, even though losing a starting linebacker and a starting corner would necessitate an extensive defensive overhaul.

Of course, that made a mess of the draft. Instead of selecting the pass rusher they needed -- Shawne Merriman or Demarcus Ware -- they had to waste their first-round pick on replacing Smoot, and took a shot at Auburn cornerback Carlos Rogers. All their other picks basically went to Denver in a trade to get Auburn quarterback Jason Campbell, and so they had to replace Pierce from within. That meant Lemar Marshall, a career outside linebacker and converted DB, had to move inside for 2005, which was an outright risk.

But actually, again, Williams overachieved. Marshall played the pass better than Pierce did, although Williams did have to scheme more to stop the occasional bleeding on defense. He went often to Cover 2 defenses, meaning his safeties would play deeper, and his front seven would have to stop the run themselves. In other words, no "eight men in the box" to stop the run. But Tatum Bell and Tiki Barber exposed that run defense early, and the safeties were told they had to step up and stop the run from Cover 2, until the front seven got their act together. The insertion of LaVar Arrington into the run defense (for Warrick Holdman) helped get that solidified, although Arrington was again a clear victim of Williams' ego. Arrington was the highest-paid defender, and prone to freelancing -- he acted like he was bigger than the team -- and Williams was there to humble him. He made him a scapegoat, and wouldn't even talk to him at times, but once Arrington finally shut his mouth and acquiesced, he got to play. Was he an impact player anymore? No. But he helped stop the run, allowing them to play the Cover 2, and the defense went on a late-season tear to help get hobbling quarterback Mark Brunell to the playoffs.

[PhillyPhanInDC]

Continued:

The Skins finished as the No. 9 defense in the league, and Williams was naturally an absolute god in the minds of fans, and to some degree, Gibbs and Snyder. It's likely he would've been a front-runner for the Rams', Vikings' and Texans' head coaching jobs, but the taterskins tied him up with a ridiculous three-year contract worth a reported $8 million and a promise that if he didn't replace Gibbs as head coach, he'd earn another cool million. Well, that was power, and when it came time to recruit prospective free agents, Williams was heard bragging that he made more money than the head coaches he was recruiting against, that he carried more lumber than some head coaches in the league. Whether it was true or not, he believed it, and the players believed it, and that's how this all started heading downhill.

The first thing Williams did was wave goodbye to Arrington after the 2005 season, and deservedly so, because Arrington wasn't worth his contract or his griping. But Arrington was still, other than Taylor, the taterskins' most physical player, and he'd been disrespected by Williams publicly. And that's what didn't sit well with the teammates Arrington had left behind. Some players said they felt Williams never took the blame around taterskin Park, just passed it on, and now that he'd just received this jumbo pay hike, he was going to be even more incorrigible. The players felt it. They saw him jettison another cover corner, Walt Harris, who's intercepting passes now in San Francisco, and steady Ryan Clark, who has Troy Polamalu's back in Pittsburgh now, and veteran safety Omar Stoutmire, who's starting in New Orleans. They saw a revolving door. Again.

So that takes us to now, takes us to a Gregg Williams defense that is ranked last -- last! -- in the NFC. Opposing quarterbacks have a collective 103 passer rating against them, and on third downs, the taterskins give up a first down 43.5 percent of the time. They can't get off the field, and now it's the offensive coaches who have to be wondering if Williams is "high school."

The problem, according to a notable taterskins player, is a scheme, a staff and a play-calling regimen that is flawed and predictable, and a sense that Williams is on too much of a power trip to adjust.

"Why are we the 30th defense in the league? I think coaches got arrogant, I think Gregg got arrogant," the player said Tuesday, asking not to be identified. "They thought they figured it all out. They thought, 'We can win with scheme, we don't need players.' Don't be mistaken, this is a player-driven game, and so you need players. Any time in life when somebody thinks they've got it all figured out, it's going to come and get you. It's going to come and get you ... the sentiment is a lot of guys are mad because the coaches think it's all about them. They think they're f------ geniuses, thinking they can just let guys go and get away with handling people badly."

To be specific, taterskins defenders, particularly in the secondary, have regressed, Taylor being the main culprit. Out of the University of Miami, Taylor was arguably the most-talented cover safety to enter the league in years. His first preseason game, he intercepted two passes, returning one for a score. But he's been tinkered with so much now, taterskins players say he no longer plays on instinct.

A lot of Taylor's woes can be traced a lot to the hiring of Steve Jackson as taterskins safety coach. Jackson came with Williams from Buffalo, where he was a lower-level defensive coach, and Jackson supposedly was hurt when Williams chose DeWayne Walker as his main secondary coach in 2003 and 2004. He wanted the job himself, and when Walker left after the 2005 season, he assumed he'd get it. But Williams' old defensive coordinator in Buffalo, Jerry Gray, had just become available, and Williams hired him. Jackson was ticked.

So Williams threw him a bone, a bone which has literally torn up the secondary. He made Jackson safeties coach and Gray cornerbacks coach and allowed Jackson to run his own meetings. That means that the taterskins' safeties and corners do not meet together, which is practically unheard of.

"Talk to any coach in the league, and ask them, 'Have you ever heard of corners and safeties not meeting together?'" the taterskins player says. "They'd say, 'What are you talking about?' That's crazy. But ever since minicamps, OTAs, training camp, we hadn't met as a secondary. On the field, the corners will start making a call or doing something, and the safeties will be, 'What are you talking about? We didn't go over that.' So now the corners are expecting help in certain situations, and the safeties aren't getting there in time. And people got beat in the secondary.

"Everybody was saying they had to start meeting together. So the last three weeks they have. But 40 percent of the time Steven Jackson's not in the meeting. Because he pouts, because Jerry's running the meeting."

On the field, Jackson's (and presumably Williams') techniques aren't working, either. The innovators of Cover 2, such as Monte Kiffin and Tony Dungy, want their safeties staying deep, 2 yards inside the numbers and staying squared up. They want them reading the quarterback and breaking downhill on everything.

But Jackson began teaching Taylor and Co. not to read the quarterback, but to read the receivers' breaks and releases and react accordingly. He wanted them to be aggressive out of Cover 2, to help on the run, even though Cover 2 is not known to be a run-stopping defense. Williams wants to call it a lot because, ideally, if you can stop the run with a Cover 2, you have the best of both worlds, because it's specifically designed to prevent the deep ball. But Jackson kept exhorting Taylor and his early-season safety mate, Adam Archuleta, to be aggressive playing the run out of the Cover 2, and they began to get beat on the play-action pass repeatedly.

According to the taterskins player, Jackson then began berating his players profanely -- although he tends to go lighter on Taylor -- and they reached bottom in Philadelphia, when Donte' Stallworth beat Taylor deep for an 84-yard touchdown. Witnesses say that at that point, the other defensive coaches became officially peeved at Jackson for making Taylor "play like a robot," and for turning him into a confused, regressing player who now tunes out coaches and teammates.

"And then Steve Jackson began pouting at practice," the player said. "He pouts at practice. He'll stand by himself and won't coach anybody. This last game in Tampa, we had a player at halftime go up to him and say, 'Are you going to just sit there and pout, or are you gonna f------ coach your guys up?'"

Williams, in the meantime, has not backed off of calling the Cover 2, perhaps out of stubbornness. And the rest of the league has clearly caught on.

"Guys are saying teams have figured Gregg out, his M.O.," the taterskins defender said. "They know he's going to play the run with Cover 2. They know he's going to come and blitz [leaving corners on an island] on third down, and none of our blitzes are getting there anymore. We're trying to get too cute, we're trying to reinvent the wheel, instead of understanding what wins football games.

"Gregg Williams, I don't understand. They're so arrogant around here, they think they can stop the run in Cover 2. When it's an obvious running down, he calls Cover 2. That's a seven-man front. They're going to get 4 yards a carry every time. There might be some games where, hey, we're playing the crap out of the run in Cover 2. Well, that's great. Then, you call it. But when you're getting gashed Cover 2, Cover 2, and they come out in two tight ends, two running backs, and one wide receiver and we're in Cover 2. ... And if we don't call Cover 2, we blitz. And you live by the blitz, you die by the blitz."

There have been myriad scapegoats, too, all players that Williams asked for. Scapegoat No. 1: Andre Carter. He was brought in to rush the passer, but players say Williams calls so many run stunts, he's not being allowed to do what he does best: speed rush.

"Last year, the D-line started playing well when they straight started rushing the passer," the player said. "They could beat guys one on one and get in a rhythm and tee off. Now, we're trying to get too exotic, so we've got Cornelius Griffin doing exotic stuff, who doesn't rush on third down anymore basically. ... All these stunts and games? The D-linemen are just saying, man, just let us go, just let us go."

Scapegoat No. 2: Archuleta. Bears coach Lovie Smith, Archuleta's former coordinator and mentor in St. Louis, badly wanted him in Chicago, and Archuleta preferred Smith, too. But the taterskins offered the richest deal ever for a safety, and Archuleta accepted it -- according to his agent Gary Wichard -- because Williams promised him he'd blitz him more than Smith, that he'd keep him in the box. Instead, Archuleta's blitzed only a handful of times, and has been benched for Troy Vincent and now Vernon Fox.

Wichard says that Jackson and Williams haven't spoken to Archuleta since the taterskins' bye four weeks ago, and that rookie Reed Doughty, who's been mostly inactive this year, is getting reps ahead of him in practice this week. That means Archuleta, who signed for a $10 million bonus last spring, is on the scout team, which baffles plenty of NFL executives.