NFL Update

As NFL teams approach training camp, hope is usually high. No games have been lost, a plan is in place and, if players stay healthy, success (broadly defined) is on the horizon.

But disarray already haunts the Carolina Panthers and the Washington Redskins after the puzzling events of Monday. The Panthers fired general manager Dave Gettleman eight days before they open camp; the Redskins essentially launched an attack on their own quarterback, implying he was asking for too much in failed contract talks.

First, the Panthers. A playoff team three of the last four years and runner-up Super Bowl 50 – they missed in 2017 – they fired Gettleman ostensibly because he was seen as divisive, brusque and unpopular with the players because of his personnel decisions. Two players – linebacker Thomas Davis and tight end Greg Olsen – want new contracts that Gettleman was unlikely to grant, and both are well-liked by owner Jerry Richardson.

The likely successor? Well, it would have been Brandon Beane, Gettleman’s former assistant, but the Panthers allowed him to leave in May to become GM of the Buffalo Bills.

As for the Redskins? Give them a chance and they behave like the Redskins. Over the past two off-seasons they’ve had the opportunity to do a long-term deal with quarterback Kirk Cousins and did not. They used the franchise tag on Cousins, which dictated a salary of nearly $20 million last season and about $24 million for the coming season.
Neither number is friendly to the salary cap.

If it were not creating enough uncertainty about the future, the club president, Bruce Allen, issued a statement on Monday detailing the team’s past offers to Cousins, offers that were not accepted (and were not exactly market makers).

That, frankly, is shameful. You paint your quarterback, your team leader as greedy? You run the risk of losing him for nothing at the end of the year or having to use the franchise tag one last time at about $34.5 million? You would pay in straight cash $78.5 million over three years to a player you don’t seem to really want in the long run? (Note: This blogger was employed by the Redskins from 2009-2011).

Few teams ever divulge contract specifics, much less ones that were not accepted or not acceptable. After the previous debacle, in which the team dismissed general manager Scot McCloughan and then, through an anonymous source, painted him as a drunk, a team that rarely can find its way – two playoff appearances over the last nine seasons – has lost it again.