The Washington Redskins Mess—Don’t Totally Blame RG3, Blame the Roster Construction

I’ll admit it: I’m shocked by the Redskins 2013 season. It’s been awful. A disgraceful display. But we should have seen this coming. Minus RG3, the Redskins are actually fielding the same players as their horrendous 5-11 2011 team.

Mike Shanahan is in year 4 of his tenure. 2010 and 2011 were bad years, 2012 was a good year. The biggest variation in roster construction is the quarterback. RG3 was not on the team before 2012. In 2012 he was great, in 2013, people think he should be benched.

There are two key questions at play that determine the Redskins future.

1. Is this season’s RG3 an aberration due to a lack of off-season training and a recovering ACL?
2. Is the rest of the Redskins’ roster good enough to win long term?

Looking at the numbers, the answer to #2 is clearly no.

The 2013 Redskins are a model of consistent roster construction. Not only is this a nearly identical roster to the successful 2012 team, but 26 of the 35 key players on this squad were on the 5-11 2011 team. 13 of 35 players were on the 2010 squad as well. In short, Shanahan has had his guys here for at least 3 years. It’s a shame that his guys just aren’t as good as the rest of the NFL.

If you look at a year by year comparison of the roster, the Redskins have the same exact starting O-Line and Linebackers, the same top two corners, and nearly the same D-Line as 2011. Even the back-up tight-ends are the same! Without going in to too much detail, the safety position has been a revolving door of ineptitude. Alfred Morris and Pierre Garcon are clear improvements over their 2011 counterparts. 

	2010	2011	2012	2013
Quarterback	McNabb Grossman	Grossman Beck	RG3 Cousins	RG3
RB/FB	Portis Torain D. Young Sellers	Helu Royster Hightower D. Young	Morris Royster Young Helu (IR)	Morris Helu Royster Young
WR	S. Moss NFL Exiles	Moss Hankerson Robinson Gaffney Stallworth N. Paul	Garcon Morgan Moss Hankerson Robinson	Garcon Morgan Moss Hankerson Robinson
TE	Cooley Davis Paulsen	Cooley Davis Paulsen	Cooley Davis Paulsen N. Paul	Reed Davis Paulsen N. Paul
OLINE	Brown/Heyer Dockery Lichtensteiger Montgomery Williams	Brown/Polumbus Chester Lichtensteiger Montgomery Williams	Polumbus Chester Lichtensteiger Montgomery Williams	Polumbus Chester Lichtensteiger Montgomery Williams
DLINE	Haynesworth Carricker Daniels/Holiday Golston	Cofield Bowen Carricker Baker (IR)	Cofield Bowen Carricker Jenkins Golston Baker	Cofield Bowen Carricker (IR) Jenkins Baker Golston
LB	Carter Fletcher Riley Orakpo	Kerrigan Fletcher Riley Orakpo	Kerrigan Fletcher Riley Orakpo	Kerrigan Fletcher Riley Orakpo
CB	Hall Rogers More NFL Exiles	Hall Wilson Exiles	Hall Wilson Exiles	Hall Wilson Amerson
Safety	L. Landry Doughty K. Moore	Atogwe Landry Doughty Gomes	Gomes Doughty Williams	Rambo Merriwhether Doughty Biggers

Source: Wikipedia. Bolded players are three 3 year vets, bold and italic are 4+ year Redskins vets.

If you have the same roster as 2011, you’d expect the same results. That is indeed what we see. The quarterback independent statistics are extremely similar from 2011-2013. Everything is between mid-level and terrible. Football Outsiders has yet to develop team metrics for linebackers and defensive backs, so these stats don’t tell the whole story. But what we see is that except for pass-rush, everything between 2011 and 2013 is mediocre to bad. The clear change between 2011, 2012, and 2013 is the QB performance.

	2010	2011	2012	2013
Record	6-10	5-11	10-6	3-8
Overall Offense	25	19	6	19
Overall Defense	26	14	17	24
Pass Protection	21	15	23	13
Run Blocking	24	10	8	15
Pass Rush	29	9	25	7
Run D-Line Ranking	27	22	17	10
Pass Defense (YDS)	31	12	30	26
QBR	27	24	5	29

Sources: NFL.com for pass defense, Espn.com for QBR, Football Outsiders for the rest.

If 2011 was 5-11 with poor QB play and 2012 10-6 was with excellent QB play, a best case expectation was something in between. A few things were inevitable.

• The league was going to catch-up somewhat to last year’s innovative Redskins offense.
•  An offense that relied on QB mobility would be more difficult to run after the QB had knee surgery.
•  At best, RG3 would perform as well as last year. There was a limited chance of improvement since he couldn’t practice over the summer. Rust was likely.

As a result, if the Redskins were going to improve, the improvement was going to have to come from the rest of the roster. Without draft picks and with an $18 million cap penalty, the Redskins were forced to use the same roster that finished 5-11 in 2011. 

The other implication is that RG3 doesn’t have a chance with this roster as currently constructed. The Redskins have had the same players getting their QB killed for years (just try spending three hours watching RG3 get killed each weekend). Griffin also does not have a great receiver outside of Garcon. Even if RG3 was fully healthy, the Redskins are too often behind because they have had the same characters play consistently terrible on defense for years.

Unfortunately for Redskins fans, with a losing core roster and a rusty QB, the road to respectability let alone a Super Bowl is a long one. Hopefully a real off-season for RG3 and actual cap space to buy some new players can bring the Redskins back to relevance next season.