While things are looking fairly good for the Redskins’ playoff hopes right now with six games to go, we can only wonder how much better they would be if the Redskins didn’t have to fight their own poor personnel evaluations over the seasons’ first ten weeks.
Today’s anticipated release of veteran WR Joey Galloway is another chapter in a book of “what were they thinking” type moves from the Redskins this offseason that brought in Larry Johnson, Willie Parker, Artis Hicks, and Galloway. Galloway may have been the worst signing of the bunch, if only because there was never any benefit to having him here, and the Redskins flatly handed him a spot on the 53 man roster without ever testing his skill set in the preseason to see if it could help. Galloway played like a guy who didn’t belong on an NFL roster, mostly because he has for the last three seasons been a guy who didn’t belong on an NFL roster.
A lot of the Redskins’ more controversial moves since Mike Shanahan and Bruce Allen took over have actually worked out pretty well for them. For example: they’ve found a quality return man in Brandon Banks. Their release of Devin Thomas has produced nothing yet for teams in need who have kicked his tires. They were right to leave Trent Williams at left tackle, and teach right tackle to Jammal Brown.
But the less controversial moves, particularly the veteran signings and the McNabb deal, have really held back the team. Galloway was the most obvious example of a player who the Redskins felt could handle a role in their offense that he clearly could not. They were just able to admit their mistakes on Larry Johnson and Willie Parker earlier: Parker before the season began. They appeared willing to admit their McNabb error before they concluded anything wrong with giving Joey Galloway so many snaps. Getting Galloway out of there should help McNabb immensely. They’ll start Artis Hicks this week at right guard, and likely be forced to admit that mistake soon enough. Reports are that Casey Rabach’s run as the starting center might be over as well, another error admission that at least the Redskins appeared to be considering at the start of the season simply by keeping Will Montgomery on the 53-man roster.
I mean, that’s a lot of “times we screwed up” admissions by the Redskins in the past, oh, eight months. On the bright side, Vinny Cerrato would never have offered the critical self-evaluation necessary to admit he could have possibly done that much wrong in a single season, and he would have never corrected his own errors as the Redskins have slowly done. On the downside, how many errors did Cerrato actually make in a season? Certainly, he didn’t make 6 or more personnel errors on the offensive side of the ball, right? At least not unless you count Jim Zorn’s terrible roster building decisions in that count. By the way, don’t get me started on the roster making decisions to give us this current OL group.
The main thing about Joey Galloway is that he really should never have been a Redskin for more than a month anyway, and its not easily excusable that he played 10 games, starting 4 for this team. This is the right move: Terrence Austin will make better use of his 53-man roster spot than Galloway would. But there just wasn’t any reason to keep either Devin Thomas or Joey Galloway at the beginning of the season, and risk losing Austin to another team — unless the coaches just didn’t think Austin could play. If that was the case then, adding Austin now with six games to play isn’t going to save the season.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
