Fail to the Redskins

I've been following football and the Washington Redskins most of my life and I've never seen such negativity around the team. As a fan of any team, there is nothing more disheartening than the sense that your team has no plan in place to compete for a championship. From Snyder's "if it ain't broke" comments defending Vinny Cerrato's promotion to a head coaching search that gets more random by the day, many Redskins fans feel as depressed about the last month as about Sean Taylor's death.

It appears Gregg Williams won't be on the Washington staff in any capacity. I've heard whispers that he delivered a Vinny or me ultimatum to Snyder, and whether or not it's true, the mere existence of the rumor could elevate Williams to folk hero status. I find it hard to believe that the Redskins are looking to replace Al Saunders, one of the highest paid assistant coaches in the NFL, but the Redskins have already interviewed two possible replacements before they've hired a head coach.

The big winner in all this? The Atlanta Falcons. They reportedly hired the general manager without an interview, and their choice for head coach as already been criticized by one of his former players. That has to be alarming, because typically you hear nothing but praise from players when their position coaches or coordinators get promotions.

With Senior Bowl practices going on and the pool of coordinators drying up, it's less than ideal to go into February without a head coach in place. But that eliminates the possibility of hiring an assistant coach in the Super Bowl. The only way the Redskins can spin this in a quasi-positive light is if they go after Josh McDaniels or, more likely, Steve Spagnuolo, a disciple of Jim Johnson. McDaniels has indicated he doesn't believe he is ready for a head coaching job, but money talks. Spagnuolo deserves a ton of credit for turning around a Giants defense that looked like a sieve the first two and a half games of the season. But the fact that the Giants' defense is completely based on getting a pass rusher from four down lineman does give me pause about his creativity. For example, if you look at a Gregg Williams, Rex Ryan, or, for that matter, Jim Johnson defense, blitzes show creativity and can come from anywhere. The Giants don't blitz as much because their ends are so explosive and their linebackers are decent in coverage.