Washington Redskins: Saying Goodbye to the 2011 Season

It's difficult to spin a 5-11 season as anything but a failure, and in our winner-takes-all sports culture where regular season games—even those against hated rivals—are analyzed only in the context of playoff seedings and potential championship runs abject failure may be the most appropriate descriptor.

Revival was the theme of NFL 2011. The Detroit Lions and San Francisco 49ers made the playoffs for the first time since God-knows-when-or-cares-to-remember. The city of Houston earned its first playoff game since the beloved Oilers relocated to the Bible Belt. Even the Miami Dolphins showed signs of life after briefly threatening to lay a goose egg in the wins column.

In Denver, a God-fearing quarterback and serious young man teamed up with a resourceful coaching staff to revive the read option offensive scheme, which hasn't seen this much action since before the NFL-AFL merger.

But in the feel-good culture of reinvigorated franchises and continued TV ratings dominance not every team received an auspice of better things to come. The Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Browns, two of the most hapless franchises in all of professional sports, remain relegated to history, confined to NFL Films highlight reels that recall a time when meaningful games regularly took place off the banks of the Potomac and Cuyahoga Rivers.

Browns fans take the cake for most pained NFL fanbase since they have never experienced a Super Bowl win and their current team can only be described as the pseudo-Browns, the original franchise having left almost two decades ago to take up residence in Baltimore. But that doesn’t mean the men, women and children who commute an unfathomable distance to FedEx Field every Sunday to sing Hail to the Redskins are any less frustrated.

Washington and Cleveland are actually connected in more ways than one: Since Art Modell took his team and their talents to the city where everyone's favorite meditation on the decay of urban America was set, the Ravens, not the Redskins, have been the class of the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan area.

Twenty years ago no one could have predicted that the beloved and uber-successful Redskins would one day be usurped as the best professional football team south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but such a transformation has happened and now no one can say with certainty if the Burgundy and Gold will ever regain their status as one of league's elite franchises.

Bruce Allen hired Mike Shanahan to restore the glory, but the latter has since admitted that turning the Redskins around has been a more difficult task than he initially anticipated. Shanahan clearly did not understand all the baggage he was taking on when he signed Dan Snyder's offer letter.

But even in a rain-cloud filled season, there are a few silver linings to be gleaned and more than a few lessons to be learned.

Professional football today is all about the audacity of hope, the illogical impulse to believe that your team will be the one out of the 32 (a three percent chance for the mathematically disinclined) to host a trophy at season's end.

The Washington Redskins won't be that team this year, but with a few tweaks they may one day get back to where they once belonged. In the mean time fans can take solace that the Redskins are still 100 times more competent than the no-account Washington Wizards.

Rex Grossman Is Not a Viable Starting Quarterback

I enjoy Rex Grossman. I find his gun-slinging approach to quarterbacking very watchable even when it’s grossly ineffective.

But if the Redskins want to seriously contend for anything other than a top draft pick, they will have to replace Rex once and for all.

A quarterback cannot be effective when he averages two turnovers per game. Turnover differential is one of the most reliable predictors of NFL success, and cutting down turnovers should be the Redskins top priority entering next season.

The easiest way to do that would be to replace Rex. Any replacement won't do—we all remember the John Beck fiasco—but it is time for Allen and Shanahan to either draft or trade for a legitimate quarterback.

Au revoir, Rex. You had your chances, and it occasionally felt right even though we all knew it was so wrong. Now grab a clipboard and pretend to be doing something useful while standing on the sidelines.

The Redskins Need a Playmaking Receiver

On Sunday night, New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz singlehandedly defeated the Dallas Cowboys, thus ensuring the Giants a postseason berth.

In the first half, he took a short pass from Eli Manning and used his sheer speed to turn it into a 74-yard touchdown. In the second half, he made a brilliant adjustment on an underthrown deep ball to put his team in position to kick a late field goal that stopped a 14-point Dallas run.

Redskins fans who watched that game saw what their team has been missing since the days of the posse: a wide receiver who scares the bejeezus out of defenses.

Fred Davis is a very good tight end, and Jabar Gaffney, Leonard Hankerson and Santana Moss are above average wide receivers.

But in the pass-happy NFL, having a great wide receiver who can consistently make big plays is becoming more and more critical to offensive success.

The Redskins recent attempts to draft such a receiver have failed—call it the curse of Desmond Howard if you will—but at some point, Shanahan and Allen will have to identify a playmaking wide receiver they can obtain without breaking the bank or trading away too much.

A lot of great NFL wide receivers have come from schools that are somewhat off the radar, so the Redskins may not have to use a high draft pick to get someone who can stretch defenses and make big plays on a consistent basis.

The Running Back Position Is Set

Coming into the season, few could have predicted that rookie running backs Roy Helu and Evan Royster would play as well as they have in the second half of the season.

After Tim Hightower went down with a knee injury, the question of who would start at running back predominated many conversations about the team. It took Shanahan a few weeks longer than it should have to decide on Helu, but when he finally went with the rookie from Nebraska, the decision paid off handsomely.

Royster filled in when Helu got injured late in the season, and the Redskins running game never missed a beat.

Fast, shifty running backs like Helu and Royster tend to have the most success in run games based on zone blocking schemes like the one employed by Shanahan. And since running backs now play an integral role in the passing game, big hunkering running backs that can only run downhill are slowly going the way of the dinosaur.

Both Helu and Royster fit these criteria, meaning running back is one position at which the Redskins are set for the foreseeable future.

Mike Shanahan Deserves to Keep His Job

In his second full season as head coach of the Redskins, Shanahan made some very questionable moves that significantly hurt the team and may even have cost them some games.

The most notable was his decision to start John Beck for three games. The Redskins lost those three games in spectacular fashion, and rumors about Shanahan's waning hold on the Redskins locker room abounded.

Luckily for Redskins fans, Shanahan showed that he is not above admitting a mistake. He gave the starting quarterback job back to Grossman whose play stanched the bleeding just enough for Shanahan to retain his credibility with players and the general public.

By most accounts, Shanahan is a smart person who knows a lot about football, but his Achilles heel seems to be that he believes players are somewhat interchangeable, that his system can turn any frog into a football prince.

That simply is not the case. Coaching in professional sports matters—see Jim Harbaugh and the 49ers as example A of what a difference a coach can make—but even the most brilliant coaches cannot win without some semblance of talent.

In year one, Shanahan thought he could mold a then-floundering-Donovan McNbabb back into a Pro-Bowl quarterback. This year, he thought journeyman John Beck was the answer. Neither scenario worked well.

Despite these setbacks, Washington's offense showed improvement as the season wore on, and the team performed well against some formidable competition. The transition to a 3-4 defense that Shanahan champions also worked out well, and he deserves credit for making that switch despite vocal criticism from certain corners.

Shanahan is still a coach with two Super Bowl rings and a solid regular season record, and firing him at this point would be extremely premature. He needs time to finish the job he started, even if the process of completing that job takes longer than fans initially hoped for.

The most impressive thing about Shanahan's tenure thus far has been his personal moves. Under his stewardship, the team has drafted Ryan Kerrigan, Trent Williams, Roy Helu, Perry Riley, Leonard Hankerson and Evan Royster and traded for or signed Adam Carriker, Tim Hightower and Oshiomogho Atogwe. He clearly is a solid evaluator of talent.