What Now?

Maybe it is time for some philosophical questions about the road the Redskins should take now that playoff hopes are down to a mathematical miracle.

Should the Skins lose their last two games to gain a better draft choice in an effort to do the only thing that is going to get them back to being something other than a sometime contender for a playoff spot?

If Dano was an Idealistic owner he would know by now that the only way to create a winner is by building offensive and defensive lines that can dominate the line of scrimmage. Dano should also have learned that these lines are built through the draft, not free agency. So far only Dano’s existentialism side has appeared. Confusion, not Confucius, rules.

Dano is probably on the right side of the questions about losing the last two games.

Losing is never good!

Losing is a virus that can be very contagious and spread through the entire organization. Once there, it can be very difficult to purge. Ask the people in Detroit. One thing that can be said for Dano’s Redskins, they are not losers. They are a 500 team that stays in the playoff race until late in the season. When they go 5-0 like in 2005 or 4-1 last year in December, they make the playoffs. Of course Joe Gibbs was the coach then and he was Mr. December posting a 46-18 after December 1.

We need to understand the second question: is this really as bad a season as it feels? After all we hired the wrong coach. We should have hired defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, who wasn’t a yes man that Dano needs. Not that Williams would have necessarily posted a better record than Zorn, but he was the correct choice because what the organization didn’t need was another big change. However, Williams would not have let Dano’s go-fer, GM Vinny Cerrato, dictate that all 10 of his questionable draft choices be kept. Maybe Williams would have insisted that they use draft picks to start rebuilding the lines.

Williams may have kept ridiculed offensive coordinator Al Saunders. In 2007 the Redskins average 21 points a game, a good 4 1/2 points higher than this fall. When Jason Campbell was hurt and replaced by Todd Collins, who had practice in Sounders system since 2001 when both were at Kansas City, the Redskins averaged 26 points a game.

Dano & Vinny ignored a couple of other historical facts in hiring Zorn. With the exception of Oakland’s Tom Flores, no former quarterback has been a great coaching success. And rookie head coaches over the age of 50 have been even less successful.

Let’s not get rid of Zorn and go through another painful process of mistakes. Fans need to hope that Zorn grows into the exception for those statistics. After all the Redskins will not be contender for anything meaningful until they rebuild both the offensive and defensive fronts.

The only change we need is in philosophy. Away from the Dano’s mantra “change is good” to a more solid realism of what wins football games.