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- As promised, here is a quick revisit of those things that seemed to find at least some general consensus among us. The 2018 season is all about Jay Gruden either becoming the reason this organization turns into a winner or the reason we don’t, in which case he doesn’t last that much longer. We need a running back early in the draft that can probably start in week one. The position coaches for this Redskins team are generally pretty solid and will hopefully be the driving force behind the development of the middle of the Washington roster.
- How about a few more contentious issues to get us primed for free agency? Since the site is sure to be filled with news and rumors and...well, more rumors, let’s keep this a little more short and sweet than normal. We’ll double back on some of the discussion on tomorrow night’s podcast (The Audible hits Facebook Live at 9 PMish every Tuesday. Last week, Shawn Springs dropped by to check us out—you never know who might duck their head into the basement!) I did include a picture of Su’a Cravens on this post...how about we start on that one? Hahaha...no shortage of opinions on what we should do there!
- Should the Redskins be the team that pays ANY player the highest at that player’s position? I am a firm “no” on this, and used this very space to suggest that was the primary reason I was so on the fence about the Kirk Decision. That said, the market is the market, and some guys in this league actually do return value on high-dollar contracts. In addition to that rare occurrence, sometimes to get the guy you need, you have to stroke a slightly bigger check. If and when that is true, it can work out...but this still plays into the over-arching issue of whether or not the Redskins are capable of being that team. There’s a lot there to feast on, methinks.
- Will there be a free agent pickup that 100% changes who the Redskins select in the first two rounds of the upcoming draft? I don’t know...maybe someone whose name rhymes with Schmo Scmilkerson? I think we would be naive to think that there is no player we could pick up that would cause the personnel folks to change their draft plans, but for my money, I am still taking the best player available at #13, and if that means that Wilkerson gets a rookie defensive linemate (Vita Vea, for instance), trust me when I tell you that I am more than okay with that. On the other hand, it ain’t like we only have one need!
- Have the Redskins “missed out” on some of the deals/activity that have dominated the last three or four days in the league? Forget about the quarterback tag issue for a moment and consider all the other movement of big players. The Redskins have cap space and needs that at least one or two of the players on the move could have filled. I don’t think it is too far-fetched to imagine some folks on here saw a deal that would have fit the Redskins situation. Further to that, is there someone on our roster that you would have tried to move to a team that made a move over the last week? (Be ready for some fans of stability to step into the comments section on this one—the Redskins are definitely looking for continuity in some places where they would have eschewed it in the past.)
- Here’s a big one: should the Redskins (or could the Redskins) have waited to make the Alex Smith deal so that they could credibly tag and trade Kirk? Let me be the first (in this space) to suggest the Redskins made an aggressive move that will likely result in the team’s ability to execute their offensive plan in 2018—without needing to rely on a rookie. Including Kendall Fuller in the deal is probably the only way Kansas City would have agreed to a trade like that so early in the process. After all, they would have had options themselves in the free-for-all that has been this offseason already. This topic has so many layers of disagreement among us, even after we debate whether we like Alex Smith or not. The loss of a solid cornerback, the decreased flexibility with a commodity like Kirk Cousins and the impact of any and all of that on the draft...and that is just getting started. I can honestly say I would have LOVED to have seen what the Redskins could have gotten from a trade for Kirk Cousins, because I have been arguing for months that teams were prepared to act very irrationally.