Shanahan: The New Hope

Started writing at 10:33

Why not? This topic has been on my mind too. My alternative title for this entry was Redskins Wars To Be Good Again: Shanahan The New Hope, but I don't know if that would have gone over as well. I am optimistic about this move to hire Shanahan, although I was doubtful about how good he would be during midseason when I first heard potential rumors about it (and as Alex will say, he called this early in the season).

Snyder has made plenty of coaching hire splashes. Marty Schottenheimer, who was fired after 1 season (and should have been kept. He went 8-8 after starting 0-5, is a proven winner, and would have been better than any of the coaching hires after. Just a stupid firing in general). He was fired to lead to Steve Spurrier, the big disaster of great, failed potential. Then there was Joe Gibbs, who was just too old for the game but excited everyone because well, it's Joe Gibbs! And uh, Jim Zorn was never a good idea. I also learned today that Zorn was 54 when he was hired. I thought the dude was in his 40s. So he was inexperienced AND old; what the f was Snyder thinking?

Now Shanahan has some caution flags. He might be too powerful with personnel decisions and might not be that good at it. He's older, sure. He had his best days with Elway in the late 90s. BUT, here are the positives.

Unlike Gibbs, Shanahan is only a year removed from his coaching, where he was fired in a way where he needs to prove himself again. He spent the year studying game tape in his own office, visiting training camps to get new ideas on what would work best on the field (he's considering 3-4), and he still knows the current game. Gibbs was stuck in an 80s era, bless his heart.

Another problem with this decade has been the involvement of Snyder/Cerrato in GM decisions, leading to huge contracts for an old Bruce Smith, Adam Archuleta, Jeff George over Brad Johnson, picking three receivers in the 2nd round instead of seeking OL help, throwing players like Campbell under the bus, the latest huge contract for Haynesworth, etc. Cerrato is now gone (he was also gone for Marty's one year. Interesting), and Snyder seems to be taking a step back, hiring a GM for his first time ever in Bruce Allen. Seems like Shanahan/Allen are running the show. For what it's worth, Shanahan only had two losing seasons. I can definitely, definitely live with that from my team's coach.

That's mainly it. I'm gonna stop writing now too. 10:42pm.

Quick Write: Game Fastforward

First, I'm gonna try to write quicker posts from now on whenever I think of something to write about. This blog is just gonna be me typing and thinking so I hopefully don't overspend time on this. That's the goal. The reason why I haven't been committed to updating this in the past is because I want to write these long, epic ideas of blogs; instead, it might be more enjoyable for me and also for you, the rare reader of my writings, if I had more frequent, shorter blogs. But then again this is probably just gonna turn into a long "quick" ramble anyway. I should note I started typing at 10:20pm.

So the way we watch sports games (and tv) has certainly evolved with things like TIVO and generic recorded tv in general, and also with sports with things like the Red Zone Channel for NFL games. These things have been great. The Red Zone Channel is just an amazing thing. Normal TV is maybe two games for the early NFL Sunday games and then one game in the late afternoon, along with the night games. If you're in a town where your team isn't local (i.e. being a Skins fan in Houston or Chicago), chances are you won't see your team play on TV unless it's a big game. And if you're in a town with a poor team (i.e. most Houston and Chicago teams while I've been in said place), it's not as enjoyable. You have to go to places like BWW to watch more games and your own team. Red Zone combines all that. Takes all the exciting aspects of all the games on TV, and switches from one game to the next so that you can get all the important bits. It's a sports bar on your tv (or in my case, an online stream, since I don't have that channel).

Tivo is also great because you can record things you miss. One thing Kevin the RA did was start recording games, and then start watching it during the course of the game so that he could catch up to the ending by the time it was about to happen. Pretty cool, cause the one drawback about sports games is that you usually get ruined about the result if you don't watch it live, just because everyone around you knows scores, or you hear about it somehow.

Kevin watches it in a nice, compressed version. They should have this option for you, where the program automatically compresses the game, so that it skips over all dead time between plays, saving only important non-play scenarios like a coach challenging a play, skips the commercials, all that jazz. You get a provided short version of the game, WHILE it's still happening, so that you can catch up to the end. They can come up with a program that gauges when you should start watching the game and how to best catch it back up live, even if you might end up being 5 minutes late in the end.

See, for Kevin, he had to manually press fast forward (I think with TIVO, skip ahead 3o seconds, which can have its drawbacks). This program would do the job for you. Game Fastforward. It would be the best thing since the Red Zone Channel.