This is pure awesomeness http://miketanier.sportsonearthblog.com/the-all-snyder-team/ The All-Snyder TeamPosted on December 17, 2013The following All-Snyder team is NOT an All-Pro team of the best players ever to play for Dan Snyder’s Redskins. That would actually be a pretty solid roster: anyone who spends a bajillion dollars per year — yet always has his team poised to draft early — is bound to trip over some great players in the course of 13 seasons.This team instead rewards the Snyderest of the Snyder acquisitions: the overpriced and over-the-hill, the poor fits with poor attitudes, the stones that other builders rejected which became the cornerstones of a decade-plus of expensive, noisy futility. Sit back, relax, and reminisce on a young millennium’s worth of awful decision making which shows no signs of letting up!Quarterback: Donovan McNabbThe McNabb saga, summarized: acquired in exchange for second-and-fourth round picks in April 2010. Enthroned as the new face of the Redskins almost immediately. Benched amid strange rumors of coaching conflicts in early November. Signed to a $78-million contract extension in mid-November. Demoted to third string in December. Traded for a pair of sixth-round picks the following July.McNabb’s greatest contribution to the Redskins during his 15-month tenure was the template Snyder and Mike Shanahan would later follow to the letter for the Robert Griffin fiasco. Any owner can make a mistake on a 34-year old former Pro Bowl quarterback in steep decline. Only Snyder could make two mistakes on the same 34-year old former Pro Bowl quarterback within six months, in complete defiance of his (admittedly a little too defiant) coaching staff.Running Back: Clinton PortisThe best Redskins player on this list, Portis was a terrific running back whose goofy persona concealed a no-nonsense attitude when it came to rushing, receiving, and blocking. But Snyder could not acquire a player of Portis’ magnitude without paying a deluxe premium. The Redskins traded future Hall of Fame cornerback Champ Bailey and a second-round pick to the Broncos for Portis before the 2004 season, then signed the running back to an eight-year, $50-million contract. Portis also became Snyder’s wine-and-cheese bestie; he could criticize coaches publicly without fear of retribution, and Joe Gibbs sometimes quipped that his running back doubled as an assistant general manager.Portis always delivered on the field, but his exorbitant trade and cap prices, coupled with his ability to generate intrigue, made his time in Washington a Faustian bargain. In fact, it might make more sense to tell future generations that Faust and the devil signed a “Snyder-Portis contract.”Running Back: T.J. DuckettCriticize Mike Shanahan all you want, but the Redskins roster has changed during his tenure. A player like Alfred Morris could never have developed before Shanahan and Bruce Allen grabbed the roster stabilizers; former GM Vinny Cerrato would happily indulge Snyder’s whims by larding the bottom of the roster with fifth-string fantasy running backs from three-year-old cheat sheets.Duckett was a 250-pound one-dimensional power back who spent four years in Atlanta proving he was capable of little besides one-yard touchdowns. The Redskins decided this one skill was worth spending a third round pick for in a complicated three-way trade in 2006. Portis and multi-talented LaDell Betts were both capable of scoring one-yard touchdowns, so Duckett carried the ball 38 times while eating a roster spot that could have been used on a younger, more versatile player.Snyder was still exhuming the likes of Willie Parker and Larry Johnson to fill out his third string when Shanahan arrived, but the coach known for developing seventh-round rushers into stars quickly got his way on this particular point.Wide Receiver: Brandon LloydEveryone knew Lloyd was talented when he played for the 49ers. Everyone except Snyder also knew that he was a one-dimensional run-and-jump receiver with little interest in crossing the middle of the field or learning the finer points of offense. Snyder gave the 49ers third and fourth round picks for the inconsistent receiver, who immediately recorded one of the worst seasons in modern history: 23 catches for 365 yards in 12 starts, plus an undisclosed number of missed meetings and an eventual benching.A 2008 post-mortem of the Joe Gibbs era revealed that the coaches were lukewarm about acquiring a player they knew only caught sideline bombs, but the scouting department was impressed by Lloyd’s sideline bombs. In most organizations, trading two draft picks for a player the coaches really didn’t want would be a tenure-defining error. For the Redskins, it was just another Saturday in March.Wide Receiver: James ThrashIn 1997, Thrash made the Redskins as an undrafted rookie who excelled on special teams. By the time Snyder took over, he had developed into a 50-catch slot receiver and all-purpose return man. Such non-pedigreed role players had no place on the Snyder Redskins, where the fourth and fifth receiver slots were earmarked for the likes of 36-year old Andre Reed, so Thrash was allowed to leave Washington as a free agent.Thrash spent three years as a productive starter for the Eagles, turning himself into the ideal Snyder acquisition: a veteran pushing 30 whose numbers and reputation were beginning to outpace his skills. The Redskins traded a fifth-round pick to get Thrash back in 2005. The Eagles drafted Trent Cole with the pick, Thrash spent five seasons as a special teamer, and the Redskins managed to get all of Thrash’s career except the good parts.Tight End: Chris CooleyThere has not been much Snyder tomfoolery at tight end, so let’s give this space to Cooley, a productive starter through three coaching administrations. Cooley once accidentally included pictures of his penis in blogged photographs of his playbook; the NFL made him spend an hour with a psychologist after the incident. Cooley is now a Redskins broadcaster, and if local radio stations poke too much fun at the broadcasts, Snyder’s minions threaten to sue. There’s karma buried there somewhere, but when the least interesting thing a player does is publish pictures of his playbook, you have entered the magical world of Redskins football.Tackles: Jammal Brown, Ray BrownSnyder is smart enough to know that he must spend whatever high draft picks he doesn’t trade away on elite left tackles; Snyder enjoys reading in the Washington Post that he is getting smarter after he remembers to acquire the 320-pound kid from the cover of the Pro Football Weekly Draft Guide. After drafting a Chris Samuels or Trent Williams, the Redskins often would forget about the tackle position for three or four years, sometimes leaving them with no second starter for the right side, let alone depth.Jammal Brown, a former Pro Bowler, had lost his Saints starting job and missed 2009 with an ACL injury when the Redskins traded a mid-round draft pick to acquire him as Williams’ bookend right tackle. When Brown played well in 14 starts, Snyder pulled out his pocket calculator and decided that 30 years of age plus 18 missed starts in two seasons equaled $20.25 million dollars over five years. Hip and groin injuries immediately began to hamper Brown, who played just 12 more games after signing the deal in 2011.Ray Brown’s NFL career started in 1986, and he started at guard for several seasons for the post-Hogs Redskins lines of the early 1990s before sojourning around the NFL. He appeared to be retired after the 2003 season, but when Redskins right tackle Jon Jansen was injured in 2004 training camp, Joe Gibbs tabbed the 42-year old and moved him from guard to tackle. By some Gibbs Racing miracle, Brown played pretty well, so Snyder signed him for 2005 as well, and a lineman two years older than the team owner started a handful of games off the bench after Jansen returned! It’s one thing to turn to a 40-something veteran in an emergency, but it’s another very Redskins thing to decide he is worth keeping around for an extra year.Guards: Randy Thomas, Pete KendallThe Jets were the Ned Flanders to Snyder’s Homer Simpson for many years: before the Jets were a comedy cabaret in their own right, Snyder kept trying to fleece them in trades and free-agent poker, with both teams usually suffering as a result.Randy Thomas was a near-Pro Bowl caliber guard when the Redskins lured him away from the Jets for $27.6 million over seven years. The problem, of course, is that good guards are pretty easy to come by, so paying an eight-figure premium for one makes little sense. Sure enough, Thomas continued to play at a high level, but he made a bigger impact on the salary cap spreadsheet than the football field, and the Redskins soon had to coax him to restructure his deal so they could afford their next set of bad decisions.Pete Kendall was a well-traveled 33-year old who got into a nasty contract dispute with the Jets. The Redskins obligingly offered the Jets a mid-round draft pick and Kendall a raise to resolve the issue. Kendall enjoyed two serviceable seasons for the Redskins, at one point starting across from Jason Fabini, yet another 30-something former Jets guard. Snyder’s mid-2000s Redskins rented old guards the way your down-and-out in-laws rent home entertainment systems, and it made just as much fiscal sense.Center: Casey RabachCenter, like tight end, is a position that has not suffered Snyder attention. The Redskins signed Rabach as a young free agent, enjoyed five years of solid play, signed him to a lucrative contract in 2010 and released him before the 2011 season. This is about as normal as it gets in Washington, the Redskins analog of a successful team actually drafting and developing a player.Defensive End: Bruce SmithSmith’s arrival in 2000, accompanied by Deion Sanders and Andre Reed, was the harbinger of the Snyder era, when the scouting department might well have been replaced by a crumpled five-year old Street & Smith’s annual found at the bottom of a desk drawer. The trio was a combined 106 years of age. (Jeff George and Mark Carrier, two other major-name acquisitions that offseason, added 65 more years.) Smith was 37 years old, and his sack totals were in a three-year decline, so why not lock him up for $42-million over seven years?In fairness to Snyder, Smith had a couple of productive years left, unlike the rest of the 2000 Hall of Fame Delay haul. But seven-year contracts are bitter pills, and because the Redskins faced a dead-money crunch the moment they released their most disastrous/disenchanted 2000 signees, they had to keep Smith on the roster until he was a broken-down 40-year old before it made financial sense to release him.Defensive Tackle: Albert HaynesworthThe captain of our All Snyder Team. Many veterans took Snyder’s money and ran. Only Haynesworth took it, plopped to the ground, made money angels with it, took a nap on it, then set off stink bombs so anyone who got too close to it became ill. Goldbricking at Haynesworth’s level requires far more effort than actually doing your job correctly; Haynesworth may have perversely had the strongest work ethic of any Snyder acquisition.In case you have forgotten the details: seven years, $100-million, failed his first conditioning test, griped about switching from 4-3 to 3-4, malingered, dogged it so clearly that he practically leaned against a lamppost with a horseracing form while opponents scored touchdowns, faked illness, shuttled to and from the inactive list, disappeared after two seasons and 6.5 sacks.Defensive End: Philip DanielsDaniels was a productive player and a great locker room influence, so it is easy to overlook the fact that he was yet another player signed after his 30th birthday, with his best seasons behind him, who had to restructure his contract so the Redskins could keep trotting him onto the defensive line after his 36th birthday. Daniels stuck with the team for a few years as a Director of Player Development, but left early this year when he noticed that his business card also read “Patron Saint of Lost Causes.”Linebacker: Jeremiah TrotterDeveloped by Andy Reid and coordinator Jim Johnson into a Pro Bowl linebacker, Trotter was never quite as good as the Eagles system made him look: Johnson allowed him to blitz often and drop into coverage sparingly. Signed by the Redskins in 2002 for $36-million over seven years and expected to be Ray Lewis, Trotter flailed around for two ordinary years before he was released. The Eagles re-signed Trotter at a low price, and he started in the Super Bowl and for two seasons afterward.Most Redskins-Eagles transactions of the last 13 years only make sense if you start with the assumption that Reid beat up a bully for Snyder when they were kids, or something like that.Linebacker: Jessie ArmsteadAnother old big-name defender acquired at the end of his run. Redskins rosters can be deceiving in retrospect: you read all the familiar names and wonder why the team wasn’t better. Then you remember that all the familiar names were in their 30s by the time they reached the Redskins. The production can also be deceiving: Armstead had a fine 6.5 sack season in 2003, but once you realize that those 6.5 sacks were a short-term rental at a premium price, the foolishness of Snyder economics slowly dawns on you. Though not as slowly as it dawned on Snyder.Linebacker: Robert JonesFormer Cowboys star, acquired at 32, played for one season. When you marvel at London Fletcher — and you should marvel at London Fletcher — keep in mind that the Redskins employed so many over-the-hill defenders in the last decade that they were bound to uncover an ageless medical marvel by sheer luck.Linebacker: LaVar ArringtonThe Redskins drafted Arrington second overall after a blockbuster trade involving multiple high draft picks. Arrington was billed as a once-per-generation talent, and he lived up to his reputation early in his career. But as soon as he hit a developmental snag, his career descended into squabbles with coaches and arguments about money. Sound familiar?Arrington was the first player drafted in the Snyder era (Snyder purchased the team after the 1999 draft and did not exert much influence in his first offseason). The Arrington pick came from the Saints’ Ricky Williams fascination thanks to Charley Casserly, a general manager who liked to stockpile picks instead of using them as tokens in the Veteran Journeyman Arcade. Snyder fired Casserly, then used Arrington to establish the new roster paradigm: one or two splashy draft picks who fall short of expectations, an over-the-hill brigade of free agents, and anyone willing to work for the remaining nickels after the spending spree ended.Cornerback: Deion SandersSign a seven-year, $56-million contract, play for one year, complain the whole time, exit for Baltimore. Sanders always knew a sound business decision when he saw one.Cornerback: DeAngelo HallA symbol of the modern Redskins. Hall is far more famous than good (though he is not quite as awful as his detractors suggest), derives most of his value from three or four highlight-reel appearances per season, combines numerous inexplicable errors with dozens of mundane “oops, a 12-yard completion” mistakes, and keeps doing the same thing year after year, maturing at the rate of a sequoia sapling. When Snyder figures out just how badly he has overvalued Hall, he will discover the secret of football, but by then Hall may have a greater net worth than him.Safety: Ryan ClarkTo cut the Redskins some slack, they have had some tragic misfortune at the safety position: Sean Taylor, of course, but promising young safeties like Chris Horton have also had their careers cut short. Safety may be the one position where Snyder’s teams generally succeed at developing homegrown talent, only to suffer a cruel whim of fate.That said, the Redskins were still capable of making their own bad luck at safety. They acquired the young Clark from the Giants, started him for two seasons, then slammed into a vintage Snyder brain cramp. “We have a former undrafted rookie playing free safety? Unacceptable! Let him go and sign someone expensive and famous to take his place!” The bargain-hunting Steelers signed Clark and started him from 2006 through last Sunday night. The Redskins replaced Clark with …Safety: Adam ArchuletaArchuleta became famous while playing for the Rams for his workout routine and his big-play ability; whenever a football player is famous for his weightlifting, and he is not Larry Allen, be afraid. Careful scouting revealed that Archuleta excelled in a specialized linebacker-safety role, which allowed him to blitz and play shallow zones for a team that often had a 35-6 lead and could deploy all the gonzo nickel defenses it liked. Careful scouting rarely factored into a Snyder acquisition, however, and the Redskins plunked down $30-million over six years in 2006, making Archuleta the highest paid safety in the NFL at that point.Like the Brandon Lloyd signing, the Archuleta deal was the result of a disconnect among Joe Gibbs’ staff, the scouts and Snyder. Gibbs wanted a true safety, not a customized defender, and once Archuleta proved incapable of covering deep routes, Gibbs replaced him with converted cornerback Troy Vincent (another old Eagles retread; we could actually create a second-team All Snyder Team, with similar stories to these). Archuleta groused. The Redskins released him, and he was out of the NFL one year later.Kicker: Shaun SuishamLet’s examine Snyder’s fantasy football-esque thought process one last time. Novice fantasy football gamers usually draft a well-known kicker too early, not understanding relative value at the position. Once they figure the game out, they start grabbing any-old kicker near the end of the draft. Snyder evolved the same way. Early in his tenure, during the Stick-It-To-The-Jets phase, he spent big bucks on John Hall, an ordinary kicker. Having realized that he got little bang for those bucks, Snyder just let his coaches acquire anyone willing to play for the pocket change left over after all the free agent accounting was finished.Suisham shuttled from Washington to Dallas several times over the course of the 2005-09 seasons as a kind of butler who tidied up after both Snyder and Jerry Jones. At times, you expected Suisham to kick for the Redskins on Sunday and the Cowboys on Monday night, or play “steady kicker” during their head-to-head games, though that never happened. Suisham was never particularly good (he’s still not), and when he missed a 23-yarder late in the 2009 season, the Redskins released him and signed Graham Gano from the short-lived United Football League.Gano turned out to be pretty good, but it was hard to tell because his holder kept making mistakes, so the Redskins released him. Who was his holder, you ask?Punter: Hunter SmithPunter is the one position on a football roster where you can sign a 37-year old to a three-year contract and no one bats an eyelash, yet the Snyder Redskins still find ways to create drama. Veteran Josh Bidwell, who the Redskins signed despite the fact that he missed the 2009 season with a hip injury, began the 2010 season as the team’s punter. Shockingly, the injured 34-year old could no longer punt, so former Colts punter and Christian rocker Hunter Smith returned to the Redskins to replace Smith.Smith ran and threw for touchdowns on fake field goals when he punted for the Redskins in 2009. But by 2010, both his leg and hands were failing him. Smith’s hang time was terrible, and his field goal holds were worse. When he botched a hold at the end of a loss to the Buccaneers, Mike Shanahan released him and grabbed someone named Sam Paulescu to finish the year. In fairness to Smith, it was pouring in that Bucs game, and the snaps were coming in every-which-way. Also, Shanahan claimed after the game that Smith was not released because of the botched hold but because the Redskins wanted an upgrade, because Shanahan says ridiculous things to cover his vindictive actions.The Snyder Redskins solved their punting problem the way they solved so many other problems: they grabbed an old guy from the Eagles. But Sav Rocca almost never made it to Washington: when the 2011 lockout ended, the former Australian footie star was stuck in his homeland, unable to obtain a work visa. The Department of Immigration eventually relented, and Rocca is now a (mostly innocent) part of one of the worst special teams units in history. The Snyder epic is hardly a dried-up billabong; we are just Waltzing Matilda into a new era.
