Open Letter to Daniel Snyder

Dear Dan,

We’ve never met before, but I wanted to send you this personal note anyway.

My name is Dr. Mark Roberts and I am a fantasy football expert. Recently, I have been prescribing meds to all my patients in the Northern Virginia and Maryland/DC area because they are nauseous watching your Redskins play this season.

Dan…times are hard now for Doctors. No one knows what President Obama's new insurance plan exactly means to medical professionals. So, I am coming to you to see about a job.

Let’s be honest…your team SUCKS! Your QB is a confused mess, your running game is getting older and slower by the minute, and your young WR have below average ability. Thank God for Chris Cooley and your kicker, Shaun Suisham…without them it could be ugly. Kudos to you for getting Albert Haynesworth in the off-season. He is a monster and certainly looks like he is having a good effect on your young defensive studs, LaRon Landry and Brian Orakpo.

Here is what I am proposing: I will do for you what Bill James has done for MLB teams. Let me guide the Skins from the shambles they are in to respectability. Now look, I know you have like a bazillion dollars and you are chomping at the bit to offer half of the Isle of Togo to get either Jon Gruden or Mike Shanahan to coach for you. I’ll make you a better offer. I will take $5,000 for every game we win in the first year. How can you beat that, Dan? I am practically working for free (still have to feed the kidos at home though).

Credentials, you ask? I have been playing fantasy football for years and have won my league now four years running. I even picked up Miles Austin this week before he had his big game. Another one of my sleepers was Jermichael Finley. He carried me to a victory the other week. Can your front office guys predict that? I know how to make lopsided trades, and am all over the waiver wire looking for the next great pickups. Do your guys do that? I don’t think so otherwise you would never have Devon Thomas and Malcolm Kelly on your roster.

You had a real chance this season, Dan, considering your schedule had the worst teams in football on it. But, you blew it and have lost to most of them. Tell me…what’s gonna happen when the schedule gets tougher?

Dan, I promise you that we can bring respectability back to the Nation’s capital. Hogs, Smurfs, you name it, we’ll have it all. Just stop with the madness and give me a call. I’ll let you call collect if it makes you feel better…

Your future employee,
Mark Roberts M.D.

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Dan, if you are reading this:

a) welcome to our blog
b) you’re a moron
c) call Dr. Roberts
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Have a Fantasy Football or Baseball question? Want to know who to pick up, who to activate and who the hot prospects are? Ask Dr. Roto. Let Dr. Roto guide your team to a league championship.

Zorn’s Welcome is Worn Out – So What Happens Now?

The Redskins are down on their back and upside down (not so bad I guess is it?)

In February of 2008, Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder hired Jim Zorn as the new head coach after Joe Gibbs’ departure. Zorn was the Seahawks’ quarterbacks coach and had never been a head coach before. But that didn’t matter to Snyder who was so impressed with Zorn during the interview process, he promoted him to head coach just two weeks after initially hiring him as offensive coordinator.

20 months later, Zorn looks like he is on his way out of Washington D.C. and Snyder is going to have to make another coaching change once again. It is rumored that by the time the Redskins reach their bye week, Jim Zorn will be fired after the horrendous start to the season. One of the assistant coaches will most likely fill in as the interim coach for the remainder of the season.

Mike Shanahan looks like the leading candidate to get the job. But I would not be surprised if Snyder tries to lure in Mike Holmgren, Jon Gruden or even Brian Billick.

Either way, I seriously doubt that any one of those candidates would take the job in the middle of the season. I don’t really see why any of them would want to work under Daniel Snyder anyways.

The bottom line is that although Jim Zorn has proven he doesn’t have what it takes to motivate his team (or be prepared enough to not waste all of their timeouts with eight minutes still remaining in the game), the problem starts at the top with Dan Snyder.

Just take a look at his coaching decisions in the past. He fired Marty Schottenheimer, a great coach (at least in the regular season) and then hired Steve Spurrier (someone who has never been a head coach in the NFL before).

After that experiment failed, hall of fame coach Joe Gibbs decided to come back to his former team and take over the head coaching position. He led the Redskins to the playoffs twice in his second stint in Washington D.C and brought in a great group of guys to round out his coaching personnel with defensive coordinator Gregg Williams (defensive genius) and offensive coordinator Al Saunders.

So after Gibbs retired, what did Dan Snyder do next? He fired Gregg Williams and Al Saunders for Jim Zorn, another guy who has never been a head coach before.

What are they doing now? Gregg Williams completely turned around the Saints defense and helped make them an elite team in the NFL. Al Saunders is in Baltimore and now the Ravens have one of the most prolific offenses in football. So I think it is safe to say that Dan Snyder has extremely poor judgment when it comes to football.

But Mike Shanahan would be perfect for this job as long as he gets just as much control as Vinny Cerrato. Because neither Cerrato nor Snyder knows what it takes to win.

Shanahan knows how to create a productive running game. He knows how to build an effective offensive line. His winning percentage in Denver was .646 (best in Denver history). And well, he is a winner (two Super Bowl titles in 1998 and 1999).

But for the Redskins as of right now, this is what rock bottom looks like when it comes to an NFL franchise. There is an owner who has no clue what he is doing. There is a “Vice President of Football Operations” (basically a general manager) who knows as much about what it takes to win a Super Bowl as my nine-year old cousin. There is a head coach who has never been a head coach in his career and simply looks in over his head. And then there are the fans who have to suffer and struggle with watching mediocrity game after game, even when the opposing team is just as bad or worse.

I just wonder how the Redskins will do when they go up against some teams who have won a game or two so far… - Michael Klopman

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Have a Fantasy Football or Rotisserie baseball question? Want to know who to pick up, who to activate and who the hot prospects are? Ask Dr. Roto. Let Dr. Roto guide your team to a league championship.

Campbell Confusion

Washington Redskins quarterback Jason Campbell just can’t get any love. The fans aren’t cutting him any slack. Analysts and writers are close to giving up on him all together. The Washington organization has even implied that it may have had enough of him already.

But the question that nobody has answered yet is… why?

The 27-year-old has started in 36 games since 2006 and has played in a different system each season. Campbell’s completion percentage, passer rating and touchdown passes have improved every year. Though he only threw 13 touchdown passes last season and only averaged 6.4 yards per pass, he only threw six interceptions and started to use his legs as a weapon. Yes, there has been a lack of the “big play,” but Campbell is still improving.

But after he makes a bad throw, fans immediately call for backup quarterbacks Colt Brennan and Chase Daniel. When owner Dan Snyder and Executive Vice President of Football Operations Vinny Cerrato had the chance to acquire quarterbacks Jay Cutler and Mark Sanchez, they pounced on the opportunity but came up short.

This season will be his fifth in the league and the third as starting quarterback at the beginning of the season – and it seems like he is playing for his job this year.

The Redskins 2008 story is simple.

- A new coach implemented a new system and it worked for the first half of the season.

- The offensive line was healthy and that opened up holes for Clinton Portis, who was an MVP candidate during the first eight games (including a five-game streak which he rushed for 120 yards or more).

- The healthy o-line and Portis helped open up the passing game, allowing Campbell to throw zero picks during half of the season and lead the Redskins to a 6-2 start.

- THEN, the offensive line fell apart. Portis was no longer a real threat as he collided with Coach Zorn and the media. And Campbell was sacked 22 times in the second half of the season, making it nearly impossible for the offense to score more than two touchdowns in a game (that only happened once in the second half of the season against San Francisco).

Everyone needs to realize that Jason Campbell is not the problem. The problem is the offensive linemen protecting the former Auburn Tiger. As his passing statistics improved each year, the number of sacks drastically increased too. Campbell was sacked a career-high 38 times in 2008. The blame shouldn’t go to the quarterback if he is lying on his back for the majority of the game. If the offensive line can stay healthy and keep Campbell on his feet, then the Redskins will be able to put up plenty of points. But that is a very big “if.” - Michael Klopman

How much is enough?

If you were a coach on the field at the Patriots/Redskins game the other day, no matter which sideline you were on, you would’ve asked yourself this questions at least once “Have I’ve seen enough from my starters?” After Albert Haynesworth leveled Tom Brady, and if you were the Redskins Defensive Line coach, the answer must’ve been a resounding YES!

However, if you’re Bill Belichick, you have to be asking yourself today, at what cost do I need to see if Tom can still find the open guy?

And therein lies the dilemma. A head coach is expected to have his team game-ready and prepared opening day. To accomplish that, high priced players are asked to put their bodies in harm’s way in an otherwise meaningless game. And now, for the sake of argument, I present to you the two leading schools of thought on pre-season play.

Position 1: No game is meaningless when people are competing for a job. You see, teams are still completing their roster, and everyone must defend their place on that roster.

Position 2: Are you kidding me?…Tom Brady’s position is not open if Tom is healthy. Period.

Yeah…about that last part “if Tom is healthy”. It seems that there are growing questions about the health of Tom’s shoulder. And the ironic thing is, his place on the roster was not in jeopardy UNTIL he played in Friday’s pre-season game.

So what’s a coach to do? And, how much influence does an owner have on that decision?

Well…that depends. Currently the logic is, they play their professionals regardless of the price tag. Bill Belichick doesn’t have the luxury of depth at the quarterback position, and so one may want to reconsider the loss of value should the starting quarterback go down in an otherwise meaningless game. And let’s not kid ourselves. Owners like Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder are renowned for their meddling in personnel decisions. And don’t think they’re the only owners meddling, every owner does it. Jerry and Dan are simply the two most visible examples. And since owners hold the purse strings, their influence has far-reaching effects. Coaches don’t last as long as they once did because owners want to see immediate results. One risk that didn’t pay off, one costly injury that gave you one bad season, could signal a coaching change. That has to have some effect on the coaches decision, regardless of what they say at those orchestrated press conferences. And today’s coaches aren’t merely coaching men and women. Coaches are now the caretakers of today’s athletes. And today’s athletes aren’t the athletes of days gone by. Today’s athletes are now income generating machines. If a star athlete goes down, owners hear the sound of cash registers slamming shut and they envision rows of empty seats in the stands. So now the cost of injury has some measurable value. Men who had entirely too many accounting classes can actually calculate what an injury costs. And because teams can now calculate the real value of an injury, the days of pre-season (meaningless) football are numbered.

But for today, for now, in this game of risk with so much money on the line, players, coaches and owners are all asking themselves “How much is enough?”

For some may have already given too much. - Paul Moyer

Paul Moyer is an independent contributor from Reading, PA covering NCAA and NFL football.