
Originally Posted by
WellsHTTR
This sums up what has been most painful for me watching this team since Shanahan took over. Why are things that seem so easy for other teams, so hard for us? For example, it was supposed to be years before the Colts contended after blowing up their roster, bringing a new staff, and changing their offensive and defensive schemes completely. And yet, they're winning. You can't put it all on Luck, who's having a good-but-not-great rookie season and has made his fair share of costly errors. What is it, then? Are they scheming better than we are? Were their previous drafts more fruitful? Maybe they had more talent to begin with? Hard to say. It's just tough seeing bad teams turn things around and leave us in the dust.
Generally, Shanahan deserves credit for changing the locker room culture, drafting well, and finding quality players in free agency, but he deserves blame for mishandling many of the guys who were already on our roster. Campbell was not so bad a quarterback as to justify letting Andy Reid hoodwink us into trading two draft picks for McNabb. Neither QB was particularly coachable, but at least Campbell was young. Haynesworth was an absolute disaster who, while not signed by Shanahan, clearly was a time bomb and should not have been accommodated. Hall... well, I have no idea what should have been done there. But I do think that Rogers' and Landry's desire to leave wasn't inevitable. Shanahan should have done more to make these guys want to stay here. They aren't the best at their positions, but can anyone say with a straight face that a plugging in a non-malcontent Rogers or Landry wouldn't hugely boost our ailing secondary?
My verdict is this: Shanahan's "win now" mentality from the moment he stepped in is now costing us in year 3 of his contract. Maybe Shanahan deserves a break for coming into a team with serious baggage that was unique to us. The Haynesworth and Hall contracts were horrible for the club, we lacked quality depth from years of bad drafting, and the culture was toxic. But imagine if in 2010 we had cut Haynesworth, cut/restructured Hall, eaten the cap hits entirely in that year, declined the McNabb trade, and used our 2nd and 4th picks in the 2010 draft for quality players? Of course, hindsight is 20/20. Still, the fanbase and the team would have been much better served by a strategy in year 1 that emphasized the importance of developing young talent and of jettisoning players with bloated contracts. We'd have several more home-drafted players and no cap penalty.