Cerrato Gets His Due

I am not a Washington Redskins fan by any stretch. Before Jerry Jones took ownership of the Cowboys, I grew up as a die-hard Dallas fan and thus have always had a natural hatred of the Skins.

But still, I found it very sad over the past few years to watch the Washington franchise crumble under the ownership of Daniel Snyder, and the tenure of Vinny Cerrato as vice president of player-personnel.

Well, at least one of them is now gone.

On Thursday morning the team announced that Cerrato had resigned and that Bruce Allen — who despite being waaaaay to close to John Gruden who couldn’t coach his way out of a paper bag — is a pretty good football man and a solid square dancer.

But a quick look at Cerrato’s career makes you wonder how he lasted so freaking long.

• He worked in San Francisco with Dwight Clark and Carmen Policy to take a wrecking ball to the 49ers franchise that had won four Super Bowls under previous management. When they all got fired, Policy went on to ruin the Cleveland Browns’ rebirth in the NFL, and is now out of football. Clark is also out. They welcome Cerrato to their club now.
• After contributing to the 49ers demise, Cerrato landed with Washington where he began a swath of spending on big-name free agents who were at the tail ends of their careers like Deion Sanders and Bruce Smith. The ship faltered badly.
• Marty Schottenheimer came on board and the first thing he did was fire Cerrato who went to ESPN for a year.
• Then Snyder fell in love with Steve Spurrier, fired Schottenheimer and brought back Cerrato, and they headed down the same path once again.
• Joe Gibbs was brought in and he took the gears over but Cerrato was still instrumental in player personnel. But what many Skins fans forgot as they paraded over Gibbs’ return, was that after he won a power struggle with Bobby Beathard, and took over player personnel responsibilities — the Skins’ drafting was horrendous. Desmond Howard anyone?
• So Gibbs bails after a few years, realizing he simply can’t fix the sinking ship even with the sturdy hands of Cerrato, and Vinny takes back full control.
• They hire Jim Zorn among much head scratching, sign the likes of DeAngelo Hall — who couldn’t make it with the freaking Raiders — to a ludicrous contract, and there the team sits at 4 – 9 on its way to another waste of a season. Oh yeah, they’ve also got a pretty goo quarterback who they spend so much time trying to replace they forget he’s not the problem and that most of the people around him are.

Look, I don’t know Vinny Cerrato, but it seems the only quality he possesses that some great leaders have is that he’s a relatively a good looking guy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I hope he goes back to ESPN, entertains us with his witty reparte, and lives a long life. But please, please, please NFL owners — for the sake of your franchises and my sanity — don’t bring the man back into the NFL.

By the way, don’t be surprised to see Gruden as the next Redskins coach. The bum.

Carry on.

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