Size-Heavy Draft Shows Washington Redskins Are Building a Bully to Rule NFC East
Scot McCloughan is new to the NFC East, but the Washington Redskins' first-year general manager clearly knows its history. He knows size has traditionally been the key to ruling the division.
McCloughan used his first draft in charge to continue building a bully big enough to own the East. Seven of Washington's 10 picks from the 2015 NFL draft prove that.
McCloughan's master plan for ruling the division is alarmingly simple: Target unfashionable, but tough and physical football players to help out at areas of need.
.png?w=256)
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
The 10-player haul from this draft, a group whose class photo could be adorned with a phrase like "no frills" or a remark about lunch pales, is actually a throwback bunch.
The no muss, no fuss class that began with offensive tackle Brandon Scherff and was bookended by center Austin Reiter harks back to the days when the NFC East division ruled the NFL.
This was an altogether simpler time, one when football's most physical teams resided in the East. The Redskins, New York Giants, Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles all stomped a path across the league's landscape that left other teams cowering in fear.
All of these teams had one thing in common, namely, how they were built. Specifically, each roster was built with size, power and brute-force punishment in mind.
In perhaps the ultimate example of a macho standoff in all of sports, the Redskins, Giants, Cowboys and Eagles each had to be bigger than the other. It's not bias to say the standoff began with Washington.
When Joe Gibbs unleashed "The Hogs," a physically formidable and outrageously gifted offensive line, on the football world in the early '80s, the pattern for dominance in the nation's capital was set.
In no time at all, the Redskins lifted one Super Bowl trophy and contested another. Gibbs' teams won because they beat up defenses in the trenches and pounded the ball on the ground. In fact, when those hogs were really in the mood, Washington could also flip a switch and give quarterbacks who might've been average on another team a lifetime to pick apart coverage.
But trouble brewed on the horizon. Over in the Big Apple, Bill Parcells was no fool. He saw how easily and often Washington trampled teams.
His answer was simple. Parcells set about constructing arguably the most brutal defensive front seven in NFL history.
He stacked the D-line with brutes like Jim Burt, Eric Dorsey, Erik Howard and the truly frightening Leonard Marshall. They were bookended by giant linebackers Lawrence Taylor and Carl Banks, while tank-sized hitting machines such as Harry Carson and Pepper Johnson lurked with malevolent intent behind them.
Parcells made certain his defense would never be pushed around by the Redskins. Combine that heavy D with a massive, Bart Oates-led O-line knocking open holes for bruising, power-style runners, and the Giants started doing some treading of their own.
Big Blue won two Super Bowls and became a regular thorn in Gibbs' side.
Not to be outdone, Buddy Ryan and the Eagles had their own answer. It came in the form of a massive defensive line, as big as it was talented and destructive.
Any quarterback who faced Clyde Simmons, Mike Pitts and late greats Jerome Brown and Reggie White in those days likely still experiences night terrors remembering the pain.
Meanwhile, the Dallas Cowboys were a little slower to the party as they navigated the transition between Tom Landry and Jimmy Johnson. But once Johnson got the Cowboys going, it wasn't just the Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith trio, nor a legion of swarming speedsters on defense, who did the damage.
The Cowboys were just as indebted to a mammoth O-line. When Mark Tuinei, Nate Newton and Erik Williams put their hands down, the Cowboys had the power to do whatever they wanted offensively.
From the early-'80s to the mid-'90s, teams from the NFC East won eight Super Bowls and made nine overall appearances in the big game.
But as the league entered the new millennium, the division that was its cornerstone during the previous two decades quickly crumbled. It's been a long time since the NFC East was the NFL's own land of the giants.
Big Blue offered a rare exception by winning Super Bowls after the 2007 and 2011 seasons, but generally the East has been the home of also-rans and easy marks.
What was the point of treading this rather lengthy path down memory lane? To remind you this league is cyclical.
While the NFC East is no longer football's heavy division, today's power resides in the West. Specifically, it belongs in the NFC West.
That's where both the San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks have held sway for most of the last four seasons. They've each punished teams with big, vicious defenses and sledgehammer-style running games.
The Redskins should take note of exactly how the 49ers and Seahawks have done things. That's how Washington's roster is being built on McCloughan's watch.
He's using the same formula he deployed when helping construct powerhouse teams in the Bay Area and Washington State. But it's not a template exclusive to the NFC West.
In fact, it's the same blueprint that's traditionally decided who rules the East. McCloughan's throwback first draft class with the Redskins proves it.
Tom Schad of The Washington Times sees McCloughan's picks as the first step toward building a smashmouth team that wouldn't be out of place back in the division's glory days:
"If there is a common thread connecting the 10 players picked by the Redskins this past weekend in the NFL draft, it is that desire to rekindle the smash-mouth nature of years past. After a dismal 2014 season, the team hired well-respected talent evaluator Scot McCloughan as general manager and turned over much of its coaching staff. It entered the draft with a long list of needs but one primary goal: to get larger, stronger and nastier in every phase of the game.
"
Schad uses primary pick Scherff as the symbol of this shift in personality and philosophy. Washington's road-grader along the offensive front met position coach Bill Callahan and was left without a doubt about why he was brought to town, per Schad: “Just get back to the old days — the ground-and-pound football, which will open up all the passing lanes. I think that’s what they want to start doing and that’s what we will start doing from Day 1.”
It's easy to see a smashmouth approach influencing the decision to take Scherff fifth overall. Washington valued a 6'5", 319-pound scrappy, dominant mauler in the running game higher than any other player still available.
The same thinking no doubt led to the selection of guard Arie Kouandjio in Round 4. He's a 6'5", 310-pounder who's bigger than finesse-incumbent Chris Chester. When healthy, Kouandjio loves to drive opponents off the ball or pull around the corner to splatter second-level defenders in the running game.
With Scherff, Kouandjio and possibly even Reiter in the fold, McCloughan may soon have the same type of bulky, punishing line he built in San Francisco to clear the way for physical grinder Frank Gore.
Speaking of Gore, it's easy to believe McCloughan saw shades of his former draftee in Washington's third-round pick, Matt Jones. Like Jones, Gore was drafted in the third round. Also like Jones, he had his own history of knee injuries.
The fact McCloughan rolled the dice again shows how enamoured he is with backs who run with power and attack defenses downhill. That's what he's got in Jones, a back NFL.com draft analyst Lance Zierlein dubbed a "physical pile-mover."
Head coach Jay Gruden has indicated the arrival of 6'2", 231-pounder Jones won't affect starter Alfred Morris, per ESPN's John Keim. With Jones joining the 224-pound Morris to lug the rock, there should be no mystery about how Washington will batter defenses in the new season.
It'll be power on the ground because power football is what wins the NFC East.
The Redskins need only look at the Cowboys for proof. In 2014, the Cowboys returned to the playoffs for the first time since 2009 thanks almost entirely to the most punishing, clock-eating ground game in football.
DeMarco Murray pounded out the yards behind a giant line comprised almost exclusively of high-round picks (see Scherff). The formidable group was coached by Callahan.
Any team that wants to bully the opposition knows it first has to win the power game on the ground. McCloughan is steadily assembling an offense that will.
It's a similar story defensively. The draft added 6'5", 271-pound rush end Preston Smith to a front seven that was significantly beefed up during free agency.
Smith could line up at as many as three spots along Washington's hybrid 3-4 front. It's a front set to be bracketed by 6'4", 260-pound Ryan Kerrigan and 6'5", 258-pounder Trent Murphy a big-bodied, broad-shouldered duo of edge-rushers. Murphy is even working on getting bigger, per Redskins.com writer Stephen Czarda.
They'll be tasked with bookending a line that now has 331-pound, house-sized nose guard Terrance Knighton as its anchor. As if Knighton's mammoth frame isn't enough, Stephen Paea and Ricky Jean Francois, a pair of 300-pound ends (or close enough), were also added.
It's easy to believe McCloughan had one eye fixed firmly on the division when he made these moves. He knows he needs a group capable of winning the physical fight against the Cowboys' mauling front.
The Redskins will also know the threat of Philadelphia's one-two punch on the ground, Murray and Ryan Mathews. Then there's the Giants, who added 6'6", 329-pound Ereck Flowers to their offensive line via the draft.
How successfully Washington stands up to these challenges obviously still remains to be seen. But fielding perhaps the biggest front seven in the division will certainly help.
Getting bigger and tougher has been the common thread running through McCloughan's approach in both free agency and the draft. The majority of his first rookie class has merely completed a picture that began with broad strokes from the veteran market.
Getting bigger doesn't guarantee winning the division. In fact, following just seven wins in two years, Washington has to be considered a long shot for even a winning record.
Yet with quick turnarounds common during the league's modern era, nothing should be discounted, even with a Robert Griffin III-Gruden adorned two-headed elephant in the room.
Either way, what is clear is the road back to relevance and consistently competing for a championship has to start with dominating the division.
Fortunately, McCloughan seems to know the NFC East is usually won by the biggest bully on the block.
.png?w=480)
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
