Monday, July 16, 2007

The Sad Demise of Redskins Mania

The Danny's goal is to get as much money as possible from Skins fans. At some point, the amount of money that fans are willing to pay, while also tolerating the team's dysfunction, will peak. We are at that point now.

The 2005 season was amazing: a 10-6 record and a playoff win. Yet what happened in the postseason that followed was a stark reminder of the heartbreak that is the sad Reign of the Danny. The abysmal 2006 team performance wore out even the most loyal fans. I gave up my season tickets, as did friends of mine who had them since the RFK days and were crazy obsessed tailgaters.

After that one playoff win Danny raised ticket prices 40%, and they already were hard-to-justify expensive, paid for by exploited fans. I used to buy club seats, about $400 per seat per game, to get access to the microbrew bar and seat service. But after a few years of no toilet paper in the women's room, the seat service having nothing available except for Bud Light and the conversion of the micro-brew bar into a Michelob one (I guess Danny struck a marketing deal with Michelob) I felt really ripped off.

Had the Skins kept winning as they did in 2005 I might have felt differently. But their horrible 2006 performance was a continuation of the front-office dysfunction that any layman could diagnose and propose a solution for. Start with Gregg Williams, the Darth Vader of the Skins. His personnel calls have been nothing short of catastrophic for the Skins, and Joe Gibbs gets part of this blame too. To give up Champ Bailey for Clinton Portis plus draft picks was a monster of a bad idea. There was only one of 97 players at the Pro Bowl who had been traded. Guess who that was? Our shutdown corner. And that led to the Skins having to replace him by drafting slippery fingers Carlos Roger and passing on future HOFer Shawn Merriman.

The dysfunction continued with Williams letting Antonio Pierce, the captain of our greatest year of defense, not just go but go to a division rival, the Giants. Smart teams like the Patriots do everything in their power to avoid that, but Gregg let it happen in order to prove that his "system" won games, and not players. So Gregg is a verified ego maniac whose goal of proving himself is in direct conflict with the interest of the franchise. If the Skins had a GM he would cut GGG's balls off and make smart decisions for the team. Sadly, there is no GM and there certaintly are no smart decisions.

As bad as the Pierce decision was, it cannot rival the idiocy of letting Ryan Clark go. Clark was a steady and reliable strong safety and wanted $1.5 million. He also was a critical locker room guy and mentor to talented but crazy Sean Taylor. Instead of paying Ryan the $1.5 million, the Skins have paid $25 million to Adam Archuleta and a first round draft pick. Meanwhile, Ryan Clark is doing well in Pittsburgh. And Walt Harris, the cornerback that we discarded post the 2005 season, lit the lights up in San Francisco with 8 interceptions. That compares pretty favorably to the 6 total interceptions that the Skins managed last season.

The Champ Bailey trade set in motion a series of dumb domino moves for the Skins. Can they recover? I don't know. Fan fatigue is at a high and perhaps the only thing that will save this franchise is for the Danny to stop making so much $$ on it.