Color Ranking the Commanders Current Roster - The Scot McCloughan Way!

You all remember the great Scot McCloughan, right? We learned some good thing, and some not so good things, from his tenure in Washington.

One thing I took from Scot, that I still follow today, is his color coding system for players (which I have added to). Below is a excerpt from a 2016 interview with Bleacher Report where he describes his team-building mentality and his color scheme:

You don’t always need the biggest, fastest, strongest guys. You need football players who understand that it’s a team philosophy and, you know what, we’re fighting together.

Blues are like perennial Pro Bowl players. Reds are like really good football players.

So, if you’re lucky, you have four or five blues, and hopefully one of those is your quarterback. If you have another 30 who are reds, starters, solid backups, core special teams guys, then you have a chance. That’s how you build your roster. That’s how you build a team. That comes from this and this (points to his head and heart). It’s not about speed guys and the ESPN guy, the prettiest guy running around making plays. It’s a football player. You get enough football players, they’re going to fight together.

Taking the McCloughan approach, and adding a few colors of my own, I have color coded our current roster, done intentionally before free agency and the draft, to see where we currently sit per the McCloughan/Tyler way.

Note: I left out any pending free agents and special teams players.

Now, I also believe, in addition to the color coding system, that a good football team needs stars; however stars are not as important to me as having a lot of Reds on your football team.

Below, you can see how I rated our stars, and those who have star potential:

You can see we lack STAR POWER, and we lack it at some of the most important positions - very obviously including quarterback. That said, you don’t NEED a ton of stars to win IF you have enough Reds who play with that team-first philosophy - The Scot McCloughan Way.

My questions to you:

- Is this roster being built the right way; with a few Blues, but a core group of Reds?

- Do we NEED more stars to take us from being a perennial bottom ten team to a annual playoff contender?

- Ideally, you’d like to have a nice mix of Blues, Reds and Stars,... but having said that, would you rather more stars and less reds, or the opposite?

- Which players do you see making that jump to the next level - be it color or star?