First I laughed when the Redskins lost their first preseason game to Carolina 20-0. Then I was sad, because like an idiot I bought tickets to watch this garbage all season.
It's a sickness, really. Or, I'm an idiot.
After all, the Redskins charge the highest average ticket price in the NFL; the $59 per seat per game I pay to sit in the upper deck of [product-placed shipping company] Field, at the 20-yard-line, about 3/4 of the way to the back, is ridiculously high And that's face value; if you want to attend a single game, you would probably wind up paying double that to a scalper and/or ticket broker.
And for what? My money indirectly goes to paying the salary of a complete and utter moron. I'm speaking of head "ball coach," Steve Spurrier.
That's right, I said it. Steve Spurrier, who was hired by Daniel Snyder at a salary of $5 million a year for his offensive genius, is in fact a fucking moron.
At his college job, the University of Florida, Steve could recruit some of the best high school players in the South to play for his team. Then he would run up the score against cupcakes like Wyoming and Middle Tennessee State, and run it up against the bad SEC teams as well. Then he would lose to a decent team at some point during the season, dashing hopes for a championship, but everyone was so happy about going 10-2 all the time that they didn't care much.
Spurrier's brand of football was easily recognizable: throw the ball all the time, because running doesn't let you run up the score fast enough. He often had faster receivers than the other team's defensive backs, which made this process successful much of the time. And beating bad teams 55-0 made him look like an offensive guru, and his quarterbacks look like Heisman Trophy shoe-ins.
Fast forward to 2002. Redskins owner Daniel Snyder extracts Spurrier from his job at Florida and installs him as head coach. Spurrier proceeds to hire a number of men who played for him at Florida, and professes to the media that, by gum, what worked at Florida would work in the NFL.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. The NFL is completely fucking different from what you saw at Florida, goober.
In the NFL, your team will never be 10 times better than your opponent, like it would sometimes be at Florida. The NFL has a structured team salary cap and league-wide revenue sharing, which means every team can afford the same number of quality players. It's rare for one team to be able to hang on to all the good players, which means every team is a lot closer in overall ability than in the NCAA.
This has two important ramifications on the way Spurrier does business. One: his receivers are longer necessarily faster than the opposing team's defensive backs. In fact, they almost never will be. Two: he can't afford to hire every single Florida alum he feels like, because many (all?) of them just don't have the talent it takes to compete in the NFL. I thought maybe he learned this lesson after cutting several Florida players he added, including Shane Matthews, Danny Wuerffel, Chris Doering, Reidel Anthony and Jacquez Green. But then he rehired Wuerffel again a couple weeks ago. Go figure.
The key to successful offense in the NFL is a strong running attack. This has to be your team's bread and butter if you want to win a Super Bowl. A talented offensive line that can open holes in the defense and push them around, coupled with a capable running back who can find the holes and rack up quick yardage. The defense will tire out having to chase the runner, which makes running the ball easier later in the game. You reduce the risk of turning the ball over and keep the clock running, boosting your time of possession, which is a Good Thing.
I know this; the fans know this; the experts know this. Everyone who has closely followed the NFL knows and accepts this to be true. So why doesn't Steve Spurrier know it? He had a great running back in Stephen Davis last year, and actually had a better record when he called more running plays than passing plays. But he still insists on sticking to a pass-heavy game, which led to the Redskins releasing Davis. Yeah, the same guy who ran up a ton of yards Saturday night against them, in a great I-told-you-so moment.
It seems like an intelligent man would have made a few adjustments upon moving up to the NFL, rather than just assuming that he could do everything the same. Spurrier seemingly doesn't want to accept the fact that his approach to coaching in the NFL has been all wrong.
God, I just want to take that little man's head and bash it into the ground repeatedly. RUN THE BALL, YOU LITTLE BITCH! I'm like Matthew Broderick yelling at the giant tic-tac-toe computer at the end of Wargames. LEARN, DAMMIT!!! LEARNNNNNNN!
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