'Functional' Washington Redskins Still Look Pretty Dysfunctional
A "functional organization." It's tough to remember the last time the Washington Redskins were described that way, but it was probably before Dan Snyder bought the team.
Yet those were the words Junior Galette recently used to describe his new home, per CSN Washington: "I like the fact that Scot [McCloughan] was honest and upfront with me. And told me what he wanted out of me, what he expected out of me ... I'm just thankful to be with such a functional organization."
The fact those words came from the mouth of a player weighed down by significant off-field baggage is a little troubling. If I were a New Orleans Saints fan, I'd be worried.
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But the most worrying aspect of Galette's statement is that it came on a day when the Redskins looked anything but "functional." Galette was talking to reporters on Day 2 of training camp, the same day he signed with the Burgundy and Gold for the league minimum, per his agent (h/t CBS Sports' Will Brinson).
It was also the day promising young cornerback Bashaud Breeland received a one-game suspension and later suffered an injury set to shelve him for "four to six weeks."
A suspension, controversial signing and a key injury all in one week. Is this what a "functional organization" looks like?
It's been a strange offseason in Washington, one where hope is as dangerous as cynicism. Since the arrival of new general manager Scot McCloughan, the optimism surrounding a franchise in dire straits has skyrocketed.
McCloughan doesn't need to wear a Superman cape to his press conferences. Most fans already know the outfit is under his shirt.
If the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid" ever applied, it certainly fits fans in D.C. this offseason. Every move McCloughan has made has been treated as inspired genius, just one more step on the inevitable road to Washington's long, long overdue fourth Super Bowl win.
For many, it's not a question of hoping McCloughan will get it right. Instead, the real challenge is staying patient until he certainly does.
But hope is a dangerous thing for Redskins fans. They've seen this narrative play out time and time again. It goes like this.
A so-called more professional stamp is put on the franchise by the arrival of a proven commodity. Once upon a time it was Marty Schottenheimer, then it was Joe Gibbs mark II. Most recently, it was Mike Shanahan.
All of those stalwarts of the game failed in Washington for the same reason all ventures seem to fail at Redskins Park: dysfunction at the top.
Schottenheimer wasn't given the free rein Snyder promised him, while Gibbs was given too loose a leash on his comeback tour. As for Shanahan, he was either given too much power or not enough. It was the former for his first two years in charge before power was taken away and replaced with Robert Griffin III as his quarterback in 2012 and '13.
Yet no matter how many times this carnival of horrors plays out in D.C., Redskins fans never learn. In a classic Lucy and Charlie Brown scenario, they continue to believe that the next apparent messiah will be the one who actually gets it right.
That's been the way of things this offseason. Many have been falling over themselves to lavish praise on the new GM's work.
Now, the narrative goes like this: The Redskins are finally building the right way. They're being run by a true football man and paying attention to pure things like the draft, smart spending in free agency and character.
That's the party line, and it's not totally a bill of goods. McCloughan has done some solid work retooling Washington's defense. He also did the right thing on draft day when he shunned more high-profile prospects for a building block along the offensive line, his new team's greatest need.
Those moves have created hope, but this is still Washington. That nagging suspicion things will again go wrong is well-founded.
Scratch a little beneath the surface, and the party line for the more "functional" 2015 Redskins starts to look like an empty campaign promise.
Let's start with bringing Galette on board. Few, if any, teams wanted to touch him after reports from New Orleans indicated he was a locker room "cancer." B/R analyst Matt Miller addressed that issue, applauding the Saints for their decision to release the 27-year-old:
Meanwhile, Bleacher Report's Adam Lefkoe and Chris Simms detailed Galette's off-field troubles, with Simms also concluding the player is a risk not worth taking.
There was also the invective-laded Twitter tirade Galette and his girlfriend were supposed to be involved in, but they since denied, per WWLTV.com.
Still, the Redskins were undeterred. But the moment they signed Galette, the team's quiet, steady offseason ended.
Suddenly, words like "gamble," "risk" and "controversy" can be attached to the McCloughan plan. Those are words stable franchises don't usually attract.
It almost seems as if the plan was abandoned once Galette became available. There was no question of letting young players Trent Murphy, Preston Smith, Jackson Jeffcoat and Trevardo Williams develop into the pass-rushers Washington's defense needs.
Instead, the Redskins saw Galette and didn't waste a second. As B/R's NFL Insider Jason Cole noted, the move smacked of desperation:
Making moves out of desperation. Hardly sounds like something "functional organizations" do.
Of course, there's no denying Galette's talent as a pass-rusher. He has a great recent track record of production with 22 sacks in two years.
There's also no guarantee he won't seize the second chance he's been afforded and become a dominant force in Washington. Certainly, it would be unfair to rule out that possibility before he's even played a down for the Burgundy and Gold.
But by signing him in the first place, the Redskins have courted controversy they didn't need. Instead, they could have gone for a veteran like Dwight Freeney and avoided yet another media circus.
The problem is Freeney isn't as young or productive (recently at least) as Galette. Ultimately, that's what NFL teams care about more, no matter how many times they bang the character drum.
Looking past negative baggage for what might be produced on the field is what's gotten Washington in trouble so often during the Snyder era. McCloughan's move for Galette is more of the same, only at a fraction of the cost.
Now the team is putting on a brave face over a possible suspension for Galette, according to Cole.
New defensive coordinator Joe Barry doesn't need to lose another player to suspension after Breeland was ruled out for one game this season, per CBS DC's Brian McNally. It's an issue McCloughan seems to have inherited, according to McNally's report.
Still, the Redskins have one defensive player suspended and another possibly facing sanctions. Dysfunctional, moi?
What's more troubling is how these problems have occurred against an eerily familiar backdrop. Since he arrived in Washington, McCloughan has been talking up bringing in so-called "good guys." Yet, as usual in the NFL, the actions haven't followed the words.
Shortly after Galette inked his deal, McCloughan was quick to play up the character angle, per Zac Boyer of the Washington Times: "Being new here and knowing where we’re going and what we want to build, I’m not going to bring a bad guy in here. I know he’s a really good football player, which I really respect, but I’m not going to bring a bad guy in here. I will not give on that at all."
That may sound good, but it's a tough sell considering Galette's backlog of reported incidents. Boyer noted how McCloughan said the same thing when he signed cornerback Chris Culliver in free agency, another new recruit laden with negative baggage.
Culliver infamously made highly controversial comments prior to the San Francisco 49ers Super Bowl clash with the Baltimore Ravens after the 2012 season. He subsequently apologized. Since then, he was arrested on hit-and-run and weapons charges.
Then there's fourth-round pick Jamison Crowder, a rookie already facing domestic violence allegations before he's even played his first pro game.
Of course, the sad reality is that if NFL teams only recruited players with no off-field issues, the league likely wouldn't be in business very long. Yet given his history, Culliver is a strange choice to be counted on as a locker room leader.
Yet, that's just what the Redskins are hoping for; in fact, they're counting on Culliver to bring a winning mindset, according to ESPN.com's John Keim. Does it worry anyone else that Culliver, Galette and another new arrival, Dashon Goldson, whose career bottomed out in Tampa Bay, are going to be among this team's leaders in 2015?
If it doesn't, it probably should. What's more troubling, though, is the rhetoric of not having "bad guys" around.
It's similar to the "character guys" stuff Shanahan used to spout. It's cringeworthy and disingenuous, to say the least.
Make no mistake, these Redskins want to win first and foremost. But taking on every player who can help, regardless of their baggage or performance, is a tricky needle to thread.
Yet Washington still needs a player like Culliver to lead from the front. There's little choice since his position has been decimated by injuries.
Head coach Jay Gruden suggested rookie sixth-round pick Tevin Mitchel has possibly been lost for the season after injuring his shoulder, per CSN Washington's JP Finlay. Now, David Amerson has also joined the walking wounded after injuring his shoulder, according to Mike Jones of the Washington Post.
Amerson's absence is only expected to be short-term, at least for the moment. But combine it with Breeland's injury and suspension, along with Mitchel going down, and cornerback depth suddenly looks very weak.
How long before a cover man with baggage gets a call? Sure, he's got problems, but he can play. That's all that matters, right?
In all fairness, though, injuries aren't dysfunction. But the current casualty list is part of a growing number of signs that all is not running so smoothly with the apparently new and smoothly run Redskins.
Some signs don't need much signposting, like star wide receiver DeSean Jackson spending the offseason all over TV, claiming to own the NFC East and stating nobody can cover him, per CSN Washington's Tarik El-Bashir.
Maybe somebody should ask Jackson to choose his words more carefully. Aside from motivating every opponent on the schedule to shut him up, the last thing this team needs is a bigger target on its back.
Other signs are perhaps more worrying, like top pick Scherff struggling. He was beaten like a drum in pass-protection drills on the first day of camp. Keim described how both Trent Murphy and Ryan Kerrigan got the better of Scherff.
Worse still, the starters aren't even close to set up front, according to new line coach Bill Callahan, per Jacob Feldman of the Washington Post: “There is nothing etched in stone.”
While part of that is standard coachspeak for this time of year, wouldn't it be better to hear Scherff has already nailed down a starting spot? Some bumps in the road are inevitable for any rookie, but Washington needs Scherff up to speed fast. He faces top pass-rushers Cameron Wake and Chris Long in the first two weeks of the season.
If the O-line isn't up to scratch, you can go ahead and put two L's in the win-loss column right now.
The line needs to be better for Griffin to have any chance to improve. Evidence of Washington's continued dysfunction starts at quarterback, where McCloughan has already undercut Gruden by tying down a player the coach doesn't want.
Even Griffin's latest words from camp should raise a suspicious eyebrow or two. MMQB's Peter King relayed these comments from No. 10 at Washington's camp:
"They are asking me to be basic and take the plays that are there. If that’s what Jay wants me to do, that’s what I am going to do. It doesn’t mean you take everything out of your game. When those opportunities come up to make plays out of the pocket I will do it and not think twice about it. But if they are asking me to do the ordinary, that’s what I am going to have to do.
"
At the risk of being labeled a conspiracy theorist, I just don't like the words "basic" and "ordinary" in this context. Reading defenses and throwing competently from the pocket aren't basic or ordinary parts of a quarterback's job.
They are staple, core qualities all winning passers at the pro level must possess. Griffin's choice of words hints that he still doesn't take those things as seriously as he should.
Once the games begin, how long before he tires of doing the "ordinary" and risks his legs to make a play? How long before he rails against what he sees as a "basic" offense?
The situation between coach and quarterback is already tenuous enough. A play-caller who demands a traditional passing game wedging a running quarterback into the pocket is about as dysfunctional as it gets.
But that's the thing about Washington this offseason. What's on the surface isn't telling the whole story.
For every good thing McCloughan has done, there's reason to be skeptical about the long-term prospects of his rebuilding project.
Galette says Washington is a "functional organization." History and more than a few issues beneath the surface suggest otherwise.
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