I personally think one of the biggest things that this team lacks is a common purpose. A single goal, that all members as a team focus on to achieve. With George Allen he made it a focus of hating the Cowboys (Excellent piece yesterday about the rivalry between the Redskins and Cowboys highlighted this). With Gibbs it was a common hatred of all teams in the division ("Cowboy fans are the ugliest people in the world"). With Zorn, his purpose was "staying medium"?
Without a purpose, players will focus on their own stats, or the big hit, rather than gelling as a team. As Bruce Allen puts it "...the principles of football in my mind are simple, it's a team. It's 53 men, the entire staff, everybody in the building going in the same direction for one common goal, and that's to win." Well to me, it is more than just winning, but his sentiment is about the same. The reason I say it is more than just winning, is you need to have a more focused goal then just winning. A goal to hate everything about the teams in the same division, and focus on winning every single one of those games. If you win all 6 of those games, you just need to win a few of the other 10 games to make it to the playoffs. Plus sticking it to the Giants, Eagles, and especially the Cowboys is like a cherry on top.
Another focus that I have seen used, by Gibbs is saying that the media hates the Redskins, posting negative articles on the teams board, so that the common enemy is the media, so that they play with a chip on their shoulder. All in all, it boils down to 53 men having a common goal, that they are focused on throughout the season.
Thoughts?
HTTR!



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