The Washington Redskins' Lack of Fundamentals Starts with Daniel Snyder

(Photo by Joe Murphy/Getty Images)

The Washington Redskins will not have a successful season in 2009-10. 

(This is the point where 65-percent of the audience has either cursed me or closed the article. For the remaining 35-percent, I will enlighten you as to why the Redskins will be laughable, again). 

We can sit here and do all the analysis on every position that we want. We can exhaust ourselves—as we do year after year, offseason after offseason—looking at the draft choices, looking at the free agent signings, and studying the position battles. 

We can find reasons as to why this season will be different from the previous decade-plus of failure under the current Daniel Snyder regime.

We can find glimmers of hope as to why Jason Campbell will become a Pro Bowler, how the two rookie duds of wide receivers from last year will suddenly combine with Santana Moss and Antawn Randle El to become a quartet of options like the NFL has rarely seen, and how the defense will put fear into opponents from kickoff to the final whistle.

And then the first game of the season will come, and it will go. 

So too will the first four games, then the next four, and then the next four. 

Winter will come, and by that time the Redskins will either be out of the playoff hunt, or sitting in the middle of a pack of mediocre teams. Eventually, they will find a way to lose, and we will start the cycle all over again. 

Been there, done that, and did it again. 

But I have finally had the epiphany that I hope many loyal Redskins fans have—an epiphany that the rest of the nation had maybe five games into the Daniel Snyder era.

If only I had known back then what I know now I wouldn't have eaten so much consoling food on Sunday evenings as I cried myself to sleep, and my blood pressure would be 30 points lower.

You cannot win in this league without basic fundamentals, and that starts at the top.  Winning is a culture. It is why teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots, and Philadelphia Eagles are in the hunt every year.

(I realize that the Eagles haven't won the Super Bowl, but be realistic, Skins fans would kill for that kind of success as opposed to what they've had since 1991). 

The reason those teams win is because they have owners who understand the importance of structure. They understand when to step in, and when to watch from a distance and let the team operate the way it was meant to.

Do you want to know why Google is successful and Dogpile.com isn't? They originally started doing the same thing, had the same computer geeks writing the same programs.  But one developed a culture and structure of exceeding the norm while the other didn't. 

The difference was billions of dollars and champagne on a yacht, as opposed to, well, mastering the Legend of Zelda, or whatever those other guys are doing.

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