As today’s game against the Falcons underscored yet again, the brutal reality of this Redskins season is that if you don’t build from the foundation up–that is, starting with the offensive and defensive lines–the level of play in the NFL is too tough and exacting to yield many wins, no matter how well a team sticks together, or no matter how skilled your team may be at other positions.
And that is a front office issue.
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I’ve enjoyed this and this insightful comment on the Redskins season from my friend Andre at Every Square Inch.
“How to inspire great execution” is the key struggle Andre identifies, and I agree. To restate my comments back to Andre, I’d also ask how does the Redskins leadership–from Dan Snyder down to every assistant coach–demand great execution? This is a matter of culture. Does everything happening within the Redskins culture align around the central value of winning on the football field, or is it something else?
Rich Gannon, a former Redskin, recently met with Dan Snyder and then came out publicly to tell others what he hold Snyder, which is that there is a massive lack of discipline up and down the organization. That’s a statement about the Redskins culture.
Where I have been flat out wrong about these Redskins is at the level of culture–by being a loyal fan more than a being dispassionate analyst, I was willingly blinded to the obvious: there is a lack of consistent football execution with this organization.
While I stick by my observation that there is greatness in this team, it is at the personal level, where guys have rallied together and taken their lumps like men, without complaint and with the greater good of the team in mind. I love that. But, as I am learning in my love for bold predictions, there is not necessarily a connection between such character traits and winning. Discipline and execution are completely impartial as to faith, creed, race, or whatever. That’s why competition is so inspiring and revealing.
That leads me to see why the Redskins always seem to play to the level of their competition. There is no one person in the Redskins organization creating a winning football culture–an identity that carries from every front office decision down to the field of play in every game situation.
That said, perhaps there is some hope in that the Redskins have become a momentum team over the past few years, in lieu of being a team driven by a clear cultural identity. So they play week to week, typically right around the level of their competition. If this team is truly bad, expect a brutal stretch as they play the toughest part of their schedule, beginning with Atlanta.
But if this is a team that plays to the level of their competition, and when the start playing well it can build on itself and produce some momentum and unexpected winning streaks (as we saw in their two playoff runs under Joe Gibbs), then perhaps they will elevate their play starting right now…
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Yes.
I have seen true greatness in the way Jason Campbell and Jim Zorn have responded being benched and stripped of play calling duties, respectively. They have been open about their disappointment, but they have also been uncritical of those above them. Zorn especially has impressed me by saying he gave up being in the loop on Sherm Lewis’ sending in the plays to Jason Campbell because he wanted to “avoid the temptation” of changing the calls.
Accepting a demotion, being disappointed but supportive of the team, and still moving forward…that looks like humility to me, and that’s true greatness.
It has yet to translate into much success on the field, but I know in my own life that the outward success that may think to be so hard to realize really is not that hard, compared to winning the war within.
I am not sure the Redskins will win many games on the field of battle this season, but if these small breakthroughs of humility by the head coach and starting QB are for real, there is reason to think there may be some good things ahead…especially for an historically streaky team that seems to always play to the level of their competition. Considering how much better the coming teams on their schedule are compared to the last four games, maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised tonight.
And secretly in the middle of all that has happened this week, one very important breakthrough occurred: Jason Campbell will undoubtedly be relied upon to make more play calling decisions. I can’t see Sherm Lewis being as determined to call the plays his own way as Zorn was.
I am such a homer, I know, but I still have hope for this team, as crazy as that sounds.
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Regardless of how bad they have played, I am still loving this Skins team regardless. Some good sign about the team’s unity rallying around Zorn from the Redskins Insider blog, even though The Strain is Showing in Ashburn:
In the wake of the revelation that some prominent Redskins would appreciate a show of support from management for their coach, Jim Zorn said he didn’t need such an endorsement to carry forth with his job.”I would love to pull out the belt,” said Portis, who is 10th in the league in rushing.
…
After cornerback Carlos Rogers spoke out the other day, saying management was part of the problem, at least one team leader congratulated him for his candid assessment. Rogers definitely is not alone in being fed up with how the team operates.
…[S]aid Portis, who is 10th in the league in rushing…”I would love to have a game where I could pull out the belt. But around here that’s the furthest idea from my mind. Finding a way to win first is really the concern.”
Not. Dead. Yet.
But they MUST do their talking and shows of support with W’s on the field of battle.
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The Redskins team and coaching staff have thrown themselves into the fire with their first four performances. There are basically two options now: Blow up (i.e., wildly exceed our expections) or be blown up.
How will they respond? I have tempered much of my enthusiasm about an 11-5 breakthrough season, but based on my keen observations, that is not yet mathematically impossible.
But many would probably say this team’s chance of that kind of success is virtually impossible.
Not so fast. This team came into this season needing to produce something special on the field, because preseason enthusiasm and confidence only last as long as your first few setbacks. And that’s exactly where we are.
Yes, the offensive line is a weak spot at times. Yes, Portis is showing his age. Yes, Jim Zorn has been lackluster in playcalling at times. Yes, Dan Snyder made a vote of (virtually) no confidence with hiring Sherm Lewis as a consultant. Yes, there are reports of tension in the locker room.
But I am still looking at this team as poised to breakthrough. I like Zorn’s focus on the details. I like the lack of any infighting or backbiting. I like that the team is rallying behind Zorn and Campbell as its leaders. I like that they are staying mostly medium through this down time, though they care enough to demand effective execution by teammates (as in the case of Portis of Mike Sellers).
How will they respond to all this on the field of battle? Can they channel all this into extreme focus and determination? If so, there is reason to think things can turn dramatically for the better.
This group of players has shown they are a rhythm and momentum team. They have followed up terrible play with inspired play the past 5 years since Joe Gibbs first returned. They have something to prove, and it seems to me that what they see on film leads them to believe they are close to improving their execution enough to get that breakthrough.
And they are very much in the hunt at 2-2. Like I said before this season, many of these guys are also professing Christians, which means God is working something in and through them that will not likely be evident to all.
But I think I can see real signs of a breakthrough waiting to happen here. I don’t know. I can’t know until it happens.
But put me on the record as saying I see it coming–though only on the field of battle will that breakthrough happen. For so many visible and invisible reasons, something tells me they are close to coming out of these dark woods and into some sustained success. Then, that momentum could really kick in and all those shortcomings could flip over and come together.
They need the eye of the tiger. Watching Campbell get past his 3 picks and lead the team to victory with only a few big throws and scrambles–you wonder what could happen if he joins that winning edge with his usual consistency.
That could prove to be the breakthrough. Or they could tank this weekend, and Snyder pulls the plug.
Can you tell I am loving being a fan this season? I hope I won’t be hating it…
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I agree with Pete Wehner’s article below and the opinion of Charles Krauthammer expressed in it…for the most part. We don’t want to play down to the lowest common denominator of world leadership. We need to see that many in the world want to undermine America, and it is deeply disquieting to see our President not only make such statements about his country, but also to be rewarded for it with a Nobel Peace Prize. This makes me wonder, Do these people really understand peace? Am I off, but to me this brings into question the whole award process and its philosophical basis.
On the other hand, the election of a Black man as President is a massive achievement for what many perceive America to be–bigoted. This is a very revealing award about our perception in the world, from that perspective.
Yet, can we not also say that we need to understand the underlying reasons why reasonable people in America and across the world agree with Obama’s narrative, namely, that America has a history of heavy-handedness and oppression? We must not forget that for all our progress and prosperity, the existence of slavery, elitism in all its forms, and abortion is a sad part of American history.
And it still exists in America today, because these sinful tendencies exist each human heart today. We need to talk about these things–not just blast the other side–even as we recognize the clear historical realities of America’s unparalleled leadership for freedom, prosperity, and human dignity in the world, which are undeniable as well. Man is born noble but has fallen, and everywhere he is in tension.
Krauthammer Nails It
Earlier this week, Charles Krauthammer delivered the 2009 Wriston Lecture for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Titled “Decline Is a Choice,” the Weekly Standard has adopted that lecture and published it in the forthcoming issue. (A video of the full lecture can be found here.) It is a brilliant and important address, providing as it does a kind of unified field theory when it comes to Obama.
In his address, Krauthammer says,
as he made his hajj from Strasbourg to Prague to Ankara to Istanbul to Cairo and finally to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama drew the picture of an America quite exceptional — exceptional in moral culpability and heavy-handedness, exceptional in guilt for its treatment of other nations and peoples. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own country for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness (toward Europe), for maltreatment of natives, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantánamo, for unilateralism, and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.
That, in two sentences, explains why Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today. Now the Nobel Committee couldn’t quite come out and say that directly; it decided to couch the award in this language, taken from the citation: “[Obama’s] diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”
There you have it: Barack Obama has given voice to what many of the world think about America — and it’s not flattering. That much of the world — composed as it is of autocrats and dictators and weak and wobbly defenders of human rights and human dignity — isn’t happy with the United States is not news. What is news is that an American president would validate many of those charges. I find that deeply disquieting. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not surprisingly, considers it worthy of its highest honor.
Posted in Election, Geopolitics, Worldview | 1 Comment »
You may have read some of my impressions on U2, their staying power, and the sense of urgency in their music.
What stood out to me about the show itself, by contrast, was the cleanness and effectiveness of it all. As I mentioned to a few friends, the performance was not about U2, but more like a celebration of music and life, and also a call to the audience to both a higher and a deeper perspective about life–that’s what all their music is about to me.
I really liked when the Sikh gentleman with the American flag and the young boy were brought on stage by Bono. I also loved the statements on the band’s democracy. These guys clearly have things to do in the world, and their music is a platform for that.
Yet, in everything they did, I felt appreciated and well-served as a fan. I could see the temptation for them to try to use their fans in their political agenda–as if to show the world the size of their movement. But they don’t do that, and they don’t manipulate.
But they do communicate. And that is fantastic. They are about music–and more than just their music. There is an elegant interplay there that makes them entirely unique, and I believe that sets them apart from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, or our other favorite pure rock bands.
I very much felt a part of all that last night, and gladly so. It was about being part of something larger than myself, but being able to be myself in that, and even so how I fit, if that makes sense.
U2 seems to get get that they are a medium for their fans to look out to the world and its specific issues, and also a medium of life’s deep, complex issues–and its highest hopes–out to their fans. A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.
Even the lighting and the screen seemed to communicate something clean and profound, without being in your face. The video screens interconnected sort of accordian-style. When the screens were together, they were an amplifier to give close ups to the farthest seats, but when the screens broke down, they became transparent the closer they got to the ground and to the band itself. Behind the screens was this center beam, which I believe represented a rocket.
It all seemed a commentary on the TV and marketing worlds in which we live, in contrast to the substance of their music, and of the good human potential available behind all the facades that have ordered human culture up to this point–this point of departure. “Every generation gets a chance to change the world…the sweetest melody is the one we haven’t heard.”
And yet, in Magnificent, it’s clear that they know that in one sense, the sweetest melody is the One we have already heard:
Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love unites our hearts
Justified, till we die you and I will magnify, oh, oh
Magnificent, magnificent, magnificent
Magnificent show, and magnificent viewpoint (pardon the bad iPhone pic):
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Wow. What a show. What a great crowd. Behind the veil of the music and the political side of U2, there is something very profoundly insightful and culture redirecting continually going on in and through these guys.
What is it that enables a group of four men to stand together for over 30 years and keep climbing, keep elevating, keep withstanding cultural changes and the inevitable crush of being idolized by millions of people? You have to be a little crazy to make it through that. Could it be that Someone let them in the sound, so they can see from the quiet place inside the chaos that a long-term change of heart is something that you nudge forward, one lyric, one note, one fan, one concert, one album at a time?
With this new album No Line on the Horizon and with this 360 degree tour, there is a growing urgency to this powerful group of four men, and I think we should all take note of this.
What do I mean exactly? Later on that. For now, I’d say I am heeding Bono’s advice. Each of us may want to find our own quiet place in the chaos, and know precisely what within us would be right to release us to “stand up for your love,” to reboot, to go crazy in this crazy world. Bono is far from the only one who sees the line on horizon being slowly but systematically wiped away. Every change of heart–whether to a line or to no line (between right and wrong?)–takes time.
“I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”
She’s a rainbow and she loves the peaceful life
Knows I’ll go crazy if I don’t go crazy tonight
There’s a part of me in the chaos that’s quiet
And there’s a part of you that wants me to riotEverybody needs to cry or needs to spit
Every sweet tooth needs just a little hit
Every beauty needs to go out with an idiot
How can you stand next to the truth and not see it
Oh, a change of heart comes slowIt’s not a hill, it’s a mountain
As you start out the climb
Do you believe me or are you doubting
We’re gonna make it all the way to the light
But I know I’ll go crazy if I don’t go crazy tonightEvery generation gets a chance to change the world
Pity the nation that won’t listen to your boys and girls
‘Cause the sweetest melody is the one we haven’t heard
Is it true that perfect love drives out all fear
The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear
Oh, but a change of heart comes slowIt’s not a hill, it’s a mountain
As you start out the climb
Listen for me, I’ll be shouting
We’re gonna make it all the way to the light
But you know I’ll go crazy if I don’t go crazy tonightBaby, baby, baby
I know I’m not alone
Baby, baby, baby
I know I’m not aloneOh oh oh
It’s not a hill, it’s a mountain
As you start out the climb
Listen for me, I’ll be shouting
Shouting to the darkness
Squeeze out sparks of lightYou know we’re gonna go crazy
You know we’ll go crazy
You know we’ll go crazy if we don’t go crazy tonightOh, slowly now
Oh, be slow
So I ask you in all sincerity, my friends, what I believe U2 has asked us:
Could you go crazy?
Could you let go entirely of the narrative of you given you by this world?
Do you have another basis, in a land “as white as snow,” upon which to place your roots?
From that other basis, could you shout to the darkness and squeeze out the sparks of light that are your unique identity–the one arising not in this crazy life, but in life itself–where the streets have no name?
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One thing this brief Redskins season has proven is that if you don’t finish drives with touchdowns, if you don’t stop the other team when it matters most–on 3rd down–you belong in the very bottom of the NFL. No matter how much greatness there may be lurking beneath the surface, and no matter how much potential a team may have, if you don’t bring it on the field with complete focus and abandon, other more hungry men will beat you.
I would never shift the blame for a lack of onfield execution away from players and coaches to the owner. That’s a cop out. But, the owner creates a culture. And when you have an owner with a habit of overcompensating guys, does that not fuel the lack of hunger? Doesn’t it produce a mentality among the players inside and outside the team that this is where you come to cash in, to retire, to maximize one’s earning potential as a professional.
It’s hard to fault that kind of thinking if you are Albert Haynesworth, Deangelo Hall, Deon Sanders, and the rest of the guys who have cashed in here.
The best teams in the league–Steelers, Colts, Patriots, Giants, Eagles–are the teams that have a culture of hunger, focus, execution, and putting lesser teams away.
That said, I think these Redskins are the eye of the tiger away from being a very good football team, capable of beating any other team. Without having that edge, they are capable of losing to any other team.
The direction of this team’s culture, perhaps for the duration of the Snyder era, will be determined in the coming weeks. I believe Joe Gibbs and the nucleus of this team have set up something that can achieve greatness. I still believe that. And I do think Zorn could get this team over the hump. But there must be a culture here that accepts nothing less than all-out grit and determination to win. Not to be famous. Not to make money. Not to be loved by the fans.
The ironic thing, as the first Gibbs era has shown us, that if you have that killer instinct, these other things follow. Even teams with only above average overall talent can win it all. Again. And again.
I am eager to see how this group responds. I am not ready to throw in the towel and downgrade my prediction that they make the playoffs and win some games in the playoffs. 11-5 may be tough, but until they are X-6, there is still hope.
But, if they don’t respond and get the killer instinct, the eye of the tiger, and bring it to every single thing they do, this season is going to be even more painful than it is today.
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Put up or shut up time today. The Detroit Lions are going to have the Eye of the Tiger today. The Redskins will need the killer instinct to win.
I still say this team has greatness in it. Jim Zorn really has impressed me this week.
But now it has to be done on the field.
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POTUS Notes