Is Jay Gruden a good fit for the Washington Redskins?

Redskins new head coach Jay Gruden

The Washington Redskins have named Jay Gruden their new head coach.

There has been a lot of mixed reaction to this hire by fans and analyst alike. Most fans that comment on  sports blogs have complained about many aspects of the hiring. Most of the comment narratives have been very hypocritical.

Anybody who reads comment sections will see comments about how Washington hired the wrong Gruden, yet the Redskins have been bashed for always making "splash" or big name hires. The fans also show a distaste for Gruden because of Andy Dalton's faults. It is also full of your run-of-the-mill "The Skins will be bad as long as Dan Snyder runs the team", as well as a random Cowboys fan loving the hire for the Cowboys.

But let's focus on the narrative that surrounds the Bengals inconsistent quarterback. Many fans point to Dalton's production in the playoffs as a sign that Gruden may not be a great coach. While I do think that Dalton's play should force people to take a look at Gruden's play calling skills, it makes sense to look at Dalton first. 

Many seem to forget that Dalton was drafted in the second round after the Bengals were forced to trade Carson Palmer. The Bengals had to go with a quarterback in a year where the quarterback position was fairly poor. Dalton had a decent career at TCU(Texas Christian University) but was labeled by many evaluators as being technically sound but lacking arm strength. 

It was also ignored that despite Dalton not having an offseason in his first season, he set records with A.J. Green for receiving yards as a rookie quarterback and wide receiver duo. Gruden managed to not only have Dalton produce his rookie season but also have Dalton grow as a quarterback every year sense.

Dalton's TD-Int numbers have improved each year from 20-13 in 2011, to 27-16 in 2012 and then 33-20 in this last season. A lot of that progress has to be credited to Dalton's work effort but Gruden does deserve some credit for putting Dalton and the Bengals offense in a good position to succeed. 

Gruden's critics point to Dalton's performance in the playoff (1TD and 6 Ints in 3 games) and inconsistent play overall. 3 of those interceptions came in his rookie year where the Bengals were just happy to be in the playoffs.  Although interceptions and turnovers can happen for many different reason, it is usually the result of bad luck and poor decision making and not offensive scheme. A coach can't make a guy not throw it to a guy that was covered.

That being said Bengals offense as a whole has seen increases in each of the last 3 years in key statistics. They have also been excellent in the redzone, one of the areas the Redskins struggled in this year.

Bengals Offense Under Gruden	Total Offensive Yards	Points	Redzone Scoring Percentage (TD only)
2011	319.9 per game	21.5 per game (18th in the league)	44.4% (25th in the league)
2012	332.7 per game	24.4 per game (16th in the league)	53.4% (17th in the league)
2013	368.2 per game	26.9 per game (6th in the league)	71.4% (2nd in the league)

It's almost no question that Gruden (former quarterback) can help RGIII and the offense. Griffin has a lot more arm talent than the limited Dalton. Dalton was labeled as limited coming out of college, while Griffin was touted for his accuracy as well as his deep ball. There was never a question about Griffin's ability to read defenses, not to mention he graduated Baylor early.

Griffin's only knock was that he would sometimes not use good fundamentals on throws. Now Griffin has a coach that can teach him the value of becoming obsessed with fundamentals. Griffin wants to be great and has the tools to be great and Gruden can teach him how.

Griffin's abilities weren't in question until this year.

 Many forget that although Griffin had a "bad year" he still only throw 12 interceptions to 16 touchdowns. Those numbers are no where near as bad as a quarterback like Eli manning who threw 27 interceptions to 18 touchdowns. Manning has only thrown less than 12 interceptions twice in his career. Griffin year was rocky but was perceived to be a lot worse than it actually was.

Although Gruden runs the west coast offense, like Shanahan did, his version is different. The Shanahans system was inverted because they looked for long passes first before reading down to shorter stuff. This mean that a lot of the time RGIII had to wait for plays to develop which probably led to a lot of his sack numbers behind a questionable offensive line.

Gruden actually not only uses the WCO but he usually mixes his offense up with a lot of schemes to attack the defense. The Shanahans usually let the defense dictate what plays they were going to run. KC Clyborn wrote a great article explaining the deference in Gruden's offense versus the Shanahans that you can read here. The main thing to like about Gruden is that he did a good job of incorporating what his personnel did best in his offense. He should not only be able to make Griffin better but he should also be able to utilize guys like Roy Helu, Alfred Morris, Pierre Garcon and Jordan Reed. 

What people have failed to realize is that most of the Redskins problems this year and last year has been the defense and the special teams. Yes Griffin had an off year but there were plenty games where Griffin played decent but the defense and special teams let him down. Gruden's main task is to select great coaches that can turn around the defense and the special teams.

It has been reported that he will be keeping Jim Haslett as the defensive coordinator or promoting defensive backs coach Raheem Morris to that position. Although some of the blame has to be placed on Haslett for the woes of the defense, many of the problems were cause by a lack to cap space due to the NFL levying a salary cap restriction. It is also worth noting that he denied hiring any coaches in his opening press conference yesterday.

Now that the Redskins have ample cap space (Estimated to be around 33,581,070 by Spotrac.com) Gruden should have the tools to build up the teams defense and special teams the way that he wants. Regardless of what coaches he hires the Redskins should be able to increase the talent on the team in free agency and maybe draft a wide receiver like Florida State's Kelvin Benjamin in the draft.

It's too early to decide how well this hire will work out but Gruden has some tools to succeed in Washington. That doesn't mean it will be an easy task to fix all of the problems that are wrong with this team.

Wednesday Read Option 01-08-14

Johnny Manziel

    This is the first day I'm doing this, so let me take this chance to explain what's going on. The Wednesday Read Option will look at the the latest random sports topics of the day.

I will choose these topics at random and there might be 5 or 6 or even 7 different topics depending on what topics I fell like writing a paragraph on. This post will have an emphasis on the options (meaning I choose what I want to do basically). Now let's move on to the topics!

1. Johnny Football is NFL bound!

If you haven't heard for some reason, Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel has declared that he is going to enter the NFL draft in May. I'm sure most people--including me-- are not surprised that he came out. I mean there was a report that Manziel couldn't even attend regular classes because of how popular he has become on campus.

He won the Heisman trophy his freshman year, so he has already achieved a height that most college football players never attain. The only thing Johnny Football (Or J-Mula, the nickname I just made up for him) had left to do was win a National Championship, which wasn't going to happen soon unless A&M drastically improved their defense which ranked 96th in the nation in points against.

The real question now is how Manziel will translate to the NFL. This question has come up alot because of his size and frame. Manziel is listed at 6'1'' and 210 pounds which really seem like generous estimations. I do believe that he can succeed in the NFL if his future team adapts to what makes J-Mula great. He probably shouldn't run as much as he does now but if he uses his magic to scramble and find open receivers like Russell Wilson does than size shouldn't matter. If I am the Browns or the Jaguars I take him in the first round.

Frank Thomas

2. Only 3 Players made it into the Baseball Hall of fame.

Last year the sports writers didn't vote anybody into the hall of fame. There was only 3 people inducted by the pre-integration committee but none of them where living.

This year there is only 3 (Frank Thomas, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux) and there has been backlash to the process that decides inductees. Basically sportswriters, most of whom haven't played baseball, decide who makes it into the hall of fame. I'm not saying that sports writers don't know what they are talking about but man are they stingy with who they induct.

I don't pretend to know a lot about baseball but I do know that guys like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire deserve a little more consideration at least for what they have done for baseball. Even if you don't want to let McGwire in Bonds should be. Even before the steroids speculations Bonds had the numbers to warrant being in the hall of fame.

It was called the "Steroids Era" so most likely those guys where hitting home runs from guys who were on steroids as well. I say just except that era of baseball and move on from it. That being said, I can't really blame people who are hesitant to reward somebody who they think was cheating.

Smith Untying Marion's shoe laces.

3. New York Knicks Reportedly put J.R. Smith on the trading block.

The Knicks continue to be the Knicks as usual. Not that putting Smith on the trading block is a dumb move. It is probably the right move but it seems like they are doing it because J.R. Smith tried to untied or tried to untie opponents shoes.

Smith probably should have been on the trading block a month ago when it was apparent that he was having a terrible season. Smith is shooting career worst 34% from the field and 33% from 3. His offseason back surgery has definitely affected his playing ability. He has been reduced to just jacking up 3's and long 2's.

I doubt the Knicks will get any serious return for Smith but there might be a few contending teams willing to take a flier on a scorer off the bench. But teams will shy away from taking on a guy known for jacking up shots. Specially one that is shooting so terrible from the field.

Update:

According to Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski, J.R. Smith trade talks are a scare tactic. This is because to no one's surprise, there isn't a market to trade him.

4. Jay Gruden is the Redskins leading HC' Candidate.

Bengal's OC Jay Gruden

According to multiple sources Cincinnati Bengals Offensive Coordinator Jay Gruden is the leading candidate to replace Shanahan as the Redskins coach. It has also been reported that he prefers the Titans head coaching job. I don't blame him for not wanting to be apart of the chaos in D.C.

That being said I also don't know if Jay Gruden is the right candidate because I can't decide if he has done a great job making Andy Dalton a lot better than he is. Or if we should credit Gruden for some of Daltons faults. Let's mind the fact that most of the Bengals offense was predicated on throwing the ball up to the talented A.J. Green.

The force feeding of their offense to green has to be a big reason that they have burnt out in the playoffs where teams try to take away your best options the most. Gruden could vary well be a good fit but based off of his resume I don't see why he would be the front runner. The Redskins might be best served to go with a more innovative offensive coordinator like Seattle's Darrell Bevell or The Broncos' Adam Gase. I also think a defensive minded coach wouldn't be bad as well but there are other coaches that have good resumes. Also James Franklin from Vanderbilt might be a great candidate.

I will say it does seem like the Redskins are doing their due diligence and interviewing a bunch of different head coaching candidates. The reason they might be thorough in the search may also be some of the hesitation for coaches to want to work for the organization. Many probably have reservations about the disfunction that surrounds Washington's owner Dan Snyder.

5.  RGIII Character Continues to be Assaulted.

Robert Griffin III

I know this is two posts but I have become irked by the amount of reports that have come out about Robert Griffin since the season has gone down the tank. The first crazy report was that Griffin asked to not watch his own mistakes during film study. The report has proven to be false, which honestly if believed that somebody in the NFL didn't want to watch his mistakes in order to learn from them unlike every football player since freshman year of football, you have to be pretty gullible.

There is no way anybody would even seriously entertain that idea. All the people that attack Griffin for being a madonna are ignoring a lot of key facts about the redskins season. First, where did all this nonsense about Griffin not being able to read defenses, poor work ethic, and attitude come from? The guy graduated from college early, was a proficient passer in college, not a runner like a Tim Tebow and was regarded for having great character coming out of college.

Yet there has been many reports about teammates having rifts with Griffin because of a relationship with the owner Dan Snyder. Santana Moss was quoted as saying Griffin needed to take more responsibility but I don't remember a press conference where he didn't. I do see Griffin speaking to the media after losses while some Redskins players let him take the blame for the season.

Last season Griffin had a whole offseason to work and healthiness, which led to him playing well in the season. People forget that the Redskins started 3-6 mainly due to a poor defense and questionable game management by the coaches. Mike Shanahan actually gave up on the season at that point and then the Redskins went on a 7 game winning streak that heavily featured Griffin and some improvements by the defense.

This year the Skins where predicted to be better because of Griffin but also because an improved defense. Yet the defense was last in the league in points allowed and the special teams was one of the worst in NFL history. Yes Griffin played a lot worse but putting that much pressure on a 2nd year QB coming off of an injury is unrealistic for a team this bad.

Anybody who believes otherwise must not have watched the games or the last 3 games where the same problems with the defense and special teams occurred under Kirk Cousins as QB.  The Redskins were terrible in every aspect of the team. Including coaching which is why Shanahan was fired after having losing seasons in 3 of the 4 years.