Dan Snyder is back shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.
He fired his coach Monday morning after calling him into a 5 a.m. meeting. Nothing new about that. Jay Gruden was his eighth coach in his 20-year reign of error, he has fired seven of them.
Gruden was the longest tenured coach in the Snyder era, entering his sixth season after getting a two-year extension, so he will walk out the door with a lot of money.
But his reputation is in tatters after he was a highly touted offensive mind during his three-year tenure as the Bengals offensive coordinator. It is never good for a coach’s reputation to work for Snyder.
Bill Callahan was named interim coach but Snyder will look for a new coach in the offseason. But what difference does it make? Snyder will still own the team and Bruce Allen will continue to be his right-hand man.
Allen is another example of NFL nepotism at its worst. His only qualification is that he is glib and is the son of Hall of Fame coach George Allen.
His brother rode his name to the U.S. Senate in Virginia, but then the voters voted him out. The Redskins fans get no vote.
The solution for Snyder would be to fire Allen and hire a good personnel man and let him do his thing. Snyder’s not going to do that. He is a Jerry Jones wannabe who loves to meddle. Look up owner meddling in the dictionary and Snyder is the definition.
Snyder, though, didn’t attend the press conference Monday when the firing was officially announced. He sent out Allen to answer the awkward questions.
When asked about Snyder’s absence and when he will talk to the media, he said Snyder meets with the media from time to time but didn’t say when that next time will be.
He was also asked the obvious questions about his accountability and whether Gruden wanted rookie quarterback Dwayne Haskins. He ducked the questions saying nobody is hiding from the record. And that Gruden was excited about the selection of Haskins.
Meanwhile, nobody knows whether Gruden would have been a successful coach working for a good organization. He made the playoffs once and had them in the running for a playoff spot last year at 6-3 when Alex Smith suffered a devastating injury. They are 1-11 since then.
They took Haskins on the first round to be their quarterback of the future but the word is Gruden didn’t want him. Haskins was probably a Snyder pick.
Doug Williams runs the personnel for the Redskins but nobody knows who makes the actual picks. It is obvious they don’t pick anyone Snyder doesn’t approve of.
Meanwhile, Snyder has turned off what was once one of the best fanbases in the NFL. There are either thousands of empty seats or they are filled by fans of the opposing team. The game against New England last Sunday seemed like a Patriots home game.
The unfortunate thing for the NFL is that a bad team in Washington is bad for the NFL. They are supposed to be one of the flagship franchises.
So they will hire a new coach next year and nothing will change. The first day he is on the job, he will be one day closer to getting fired.
Snyder’s timing was good in one respect. He did it the week before they play winless Miami, which seems to be tanking the season. The Redskins will likely get a win and Snyder will convince himself they aren’t as bad as they looked in the five losses under Gruden.
Snyder is just fooling himself. He is the problem but he is not going to fire himself, so the Redskins will continue to be a once great franchise that lost its way under Snyder.
Firing the coach is just more of the same.
Been there. Done that.