My Last Nerve

I am a Washington Redskins fan.  It has been mostly a painful experience, but since my first memory of watching pro football was watching the Redskins beat the Bills to win Super Bowl XXVI I have been a fan.  I tried very hard to de-fan myself in the early 2000s when the outlook was bleak but I couldn't do it.

Well I am almost at that point now.  One move could make me give up the Redskins for good: trading for Peyton Manning.  This is the exact type of move that set the Skins back so many times, wasting valuable draft picks to get the immediate impact player, who is past their prime (see. Donovan McNabb, Bruce Smith, Brandon Lloyd, Antwaan Randle-El, Alber Haynesworth, I can keep going but I would run out of page length).  But this trade would be devastating.

The Colts would never trade Manning right?  Ask Joe Montana about that and he actually won multiple Super Bowls.  Since it is no secret the Colts are actively trying to go 0-16 so they can land the top pick you have to assume they want Andrew Luck.  With the salary structure, Manning's contract, his age, his health, the smart move for the Colts is to get someone to over-reach for Manning.  They could get multiple draft picks and a quality player to fill many of their other holes that Manning was able to paper over.

Why would this be a bad thing for the Redskins?  Besides the McNabb experiment as an example I give you this.  The Redskins, when healthy this year looked like a decent team.  There is no depth in the secondary, or the offensive line, and we still need a quarterback.  If we were getting Peyton Manning from 3 years ago maybe this would be an excuse.  But we wouldn't.  The Redskins would be getting a 36 year old who has had 3 neck surgeries in 2 years.  And behind that offensive line, there is no chance he would stay healthy.

The other reason this would be bad is because of the way the new CBA locks rookies into teams for much cheaper than they have in years past.  This means the best way to build a team is through the draft.  This is one lesson the Redskins have failed at under Snyder.  It is why they brought in Bruce Allen and Mike Shanahan: they know that value comes in the draft because you build depth cheaply.  To get Manning the Redskins would have to give up a lot of draft picks, which would set the team back on course to where it had been since 2000 when Snyder took over and began treating it like a fantasy football team.* 

*This year's draft especially should have good depth in both the defensive backfield and offensive lines (two gaping holes), and there should be more than one QB (I'd like to see Kellen Moore as Drew Brees 2.0, undersized but smart, accurate, and a winner).

I can't go through that frustration again.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results (thank you Albert Einstein).  If the Redskins start doing the same thing they used to and expecting it to be different, they are insane to think I can keep rooting for them.