Guide to the Washington Redskins as of 1:00pm EST, 1/5/10

Ok guys. To review: I'm a huge fan of the Washington Redskins professional American football team. I want them to be successful because their success creates a positive connection between me, my family, and the region I grew up in.

So: the Washington Redskins professional American football team just fired their head coach Jim Zorn after everybody in the world knew that they were going to fire their head coach Jim Zorn, because the team wasn't good this year and he was at least one reason why. This happened yesterday at like 4 in the morning.

Since then I have been scouring all the news reports about this event, not because I'm particularly interested in the event of the firing itself--I was one of the people who knew that the Washington Redskins professional American football team were probably going to fire their head coach Jim Zorn--but because I am looking for clues about what is going to happen to the Washington Redskins professional American football team. Why am I looking for those clues? I don't know. I guess, partially, to be well-informed in future discussions I might have with other football fans about the Washington Redskins professional American football team.

But another reason I'm looking for clues about possible future actions within the Washington Redskins professional American football team organization is that I find it necessary, as a fan, to set reasonable expectations for myself about the future success of the Washington Redskins professional American football team. This organization has a recent history of setting high expectations through player acquisitions and public relations-related bragging about how bright and successful the future will likely be.

I understand that much of this public relations strategy is gamesmanship by the owner of the Washington Redskins professional American football team. Because the Washington Redskins professional American football team is also a money-making enterprise, and fans such as myself, my family, and a majority of the people from my home region, will be more likely to spend money on tickets and merchandise, and more likely to watch television broadcasts of the team's games, if they operate as fans under the assumption that a successful on-field outcome is likely. So it's in the Washington Redskins professional American football team's best financial interest to always project an image of competence and high expectations for success, even if that image bears little resemblance to what my own football-watching eyeballs tell me about the cohesion and football-playing ability of the Washington Redskins professional American football team.

This is why it is so important to me, as a fan, to try and get clues about what the Washington Redskins professional American football team might be planning as a course for their future. Because I feel I would be better at setting my own expectation level for the performance of the Washington Redskins professional American football team that the team's image-conscious and profit-driven ownership would be. And in recent years, the team's image-conscious and profit-driven ownership has set the bar for expectations unreasonably high, and it has led, through the accumulating years, to a profound, almost desperate malaise. I am having a hard time enjoying the Washington Redskins professional American football team, and I want to enjoy the Washington Redskins professional American football team.

Why? First of all, because I enjoy the game of American football. I find its intricate balance of strategy and execution of strategy between two diametrically opposed forces (offense and defense) to be, when played at its highest caliber, a near-transcendent expression of human achievement. This is not an exaggeration. A professional American football game between two equally matched, high-quality opponents is one of my favorite things in the world to witness, and it can be expected to happen at least once if not multiple times each football season. And the feeling of enjoyment which comes from watching such a contest is ample reward for a season's worth of diligent watching.

And, for personal reasons that have to do with the area of the country where I grew up, the Washington Redskins professional American football team is my favorite team, and if I get a chance to watch the Washington Redskins professional American football team hold up their end of a contest between two equally matched, high-quality opponents, and even, if I'm lucky, win victory in that contest through more skill than luck, then I feel doubly rewarded.

But the recent history of the Washington Redskins professional American football team, one of high expectations set through the public relations effort of current ownership, and a continual paucity of on-field achievement by the football team in comparison to those expectations, has led to an accumulated disappointment. This disappointment, growing as is does each year, has now set a pattern of expectations. I now no longer have faith in the ability of the Washington Redskins professional American football team's ownership to reverse the trend of setting high expectations and then continually failing to meet them. I am beginning to feel less than a lack of faith in the Washington Redskins professional American football team. I feel faith instead in their ability to disappoint me. All of which is leading me down a path of indifference.

Which I feel is a shame, because I have very fond memories from my childhood of the Washington Redskins professional American football team. To create an analogy, it's a little like finding out that your favorite childhood toy was in fact a callous moneygrab on the part of the toy's manufacturers, and not some wonderful, innocent joyful experience. Only instead of a Voltron figure, it's a shared experience between an entire region of people, unifying many across vast socioeconomic and racial spectra.

So I am looking for clues, after the recent firing of the Washington Redskins professional American football team's head coach Jim Zorn, that the Washington Redskins professional American football team will reverse this trend of disappointment. I am looking for a glimmer of hope that the dominant practices of the last several years within the Washington Redskins professional American football team will be nullified, and a new, more successful approach will take hold. One which will set reasonable, reality-based expectations for fans like me, and then, perhaps, exceed those expectations. And maybe, through this reversal, I will be able to participate as a witness to that most coveted goal of my fandom, a good, maybe even great, professional American football game between the Washington Redskins professional American football team and another, equally-matched, high-quality opponent. I am not even asking for a Redskins victory in such a contest, nor am I asking for the game to have some arbitrary set of professional American football-related consequences, such as "playoffs" or "Super Bowl." I only wish to see the Washington Redskins professional American football team play good football. One entire game worth of good football. That is my only expectation, and I think it is reasonable. It has been met, occasionally and to varying degrees, in the not too distant past. I would like the chances for its realization to increase.

So I am looking for clues about whether or not I should expect a reversal from the current "I have faith that good football will not occur" state and a possible future "I have faith that good football might reasonably occur" state, as far as the Washington Redskins professional American football team goes.

Now, without going into too much detail about my opinion of what actions are most likely to lead to an increased likeliness of success for a professional American football team (they are debatable and I am not an expert) I can say with certainty that a pattern of certain actions within the recent management of the Washington Redskins professional American football team are not in dispute. Recently, the Washington Redskins professional American football team has done the following with a high degree of regularity: 1. turned over coaching staffs within a maximum of three years, first hiring with an announced high expectation of immediate on-field success, then firing or accepting a resignation when that expectation is not met, 2. placing a higher value on older, established players acquired at a relatively large expense through free agency than younger, unestablished players acquired at a relatively lesser expense through the amateur draft, 3. announcing, through various public relations channels, a desire to improve immediately through coaching changes and free agent player acquisitions, rather than ever overtly expressing a desire to forgo immediate success (a process often referred to in sports as "rebuilding") in order to create a sustainable operational stability which will lead, through careful planning, to a higher chance of success over the long term. These recent behavioral patterns are not in dispute by anybody.

Whether or not these three recent trends have any bearing on on-field success for the Washington Redskins professional American football team is a question up for debate. Just because they have not recently does not mean that they can't ever. One might (and I do) suspect that these operational trends might have a correlation to the feeling of disappointment experienced by myself and many other fans of the Washington Redskins professional American football team, but correlation is not causal. Without delving too far into my opinion of what should be done by the Washington Redskins professional American football team, I feel that other, more successful professional American football teams have recently followed the exact opposites of the three above-stated behavioral patterns. And that reversing one, or two, or possibly all of these trends might be a good idea, and certainly could not hurt much.

So I am hopefully looking for some signs that the Washington Redskins professional American football team will reverse those recent trends. And it has not been easy, because the profit-driven nature of the organization precludes honesty and openness in their relationship to the sporting press. And, in the midst of a coaching chance which even I, who would like fewer coaching changes within the Washington Redskins professional American football team, will admit is necessary, it is difficult to know whether the current transformation from old coaching tenure to new coaching tenure will represent a shift in underlying philosophy or just more of the same, a reset of the old pattern. The recent resignation of football executive Vinny Cerrato, who has been one of few constants within the Washington Redskins professional American football team for the last ten years, is cause for some hope. That represents a reversal of at least one larger trend, if only the trend of Vinny Cerrato working for the Washington Redskins professional American football team. There is some indication that some of these potentially-destructive practices might be done away with, although I'm skeptical. And I'm monitoring the situation with a great deal of interest, because I don't want to be suckered, yet again, into setting false expectations for success. So far it's been more encouraging than not.

But: today I have found cause for alarm in the form of a quote by recently-hired new General Manager Bruce Allen, published in the Washington Post: "I believe that we have to do everything today to get better," said Allen, the son of legendary Redskins coach George Allen, who was hired as general manager on Dec. 17. "What that gets us in number of wins this year, I can't make that promise. I do know one thing, that the organization's going to do everything it can to be successful immediately."

And the alarm is caused by the insistence on "today" and "immediately." I have a feeling that this does not bode well, and I wanted to share that feeling with you. It looks, based solely on conjecture flowing from this one quote, that the basic underlying principle behind the three recent behavioral patterns displayed by the management of the Washington Redskins professional American football team, that of impatience, has not been reversed. It has been ratified. Which I feel reasonably sure will ultimately lead to more mediocrity and disappointment, rather than a reversal of recent trends in that direction. And that sucks.

Thanks for listening.