Welcome to the Magic Show

So, the Washington Football Team is the latest organization to ride the Ryan Fitzpatrick roller coaster. Team number 9 (9!) for the journeyman QB who specializes in absurdly hot starts and giant beards. The football team, and specifically Ron Rivera, recognized that the dream scenario of a bona fide franchise QB for the WFT was not possible this season for the 36th consecutive year. So, they did what any team that cannot fathom going backwards does, they signed a ‘bridge QB’. My question, and the only question that we should all be asking is: Where does this bridge go? 36 years of data says it gets you 36 years of not having a franchise QB.

You care about the WFT, that’s presumably why you’re still reading. You have followed the team and you know the data. Since 1991: No 11 win seasons, only 2 back to back winning years where the team went 9–7 & 8–7–1, 2 playoff wins. Why? Yes, terrible ownership. But how that ownership has manifested itself in on-field has been the never ending search for a legitimate franchise QB. The team has vacillated between short term journeymen with low ceilings and the occasional draft pick that has ended in the most bitter of divorces. That formula has led to perpetual mediocrity at best, outright disaster at worst. The simple truth is that having a legitimate, long term answer at quarterback affords a team an opportunity to be really good to great. Not having one means that at best, it’s scraps from the table in the form of fluky winning streaks when the division happens to be bad. Of course, having a franchise QB doesn’t guarantee success (Atlanta, New Orleans went 7–9 for 3 straight years with Drew Brees etc). But it does guarantee failure.

That brings me to Fitzpatrick. NFL teams simply do not think the way that I do (which is good probably). I would never do this. To me, the Washington Football Team just placed themselves in the worst possible position they could be in. They will not be bad and they will not be great for the 31st straight year. By not taking a QB at #2 in the 2020 draft and winning one of the worst divisions in sports history, the team set up their current predicament: No way to get a franchise QB without giving up huge money and draft capital. Drafting at 19, it’s likely that the team would have to trade up to get one of the coveted QBs. There are allegedly some superstars available via the trade market, that would have cost draft capital and heavy salary cap investment. By signing Ryan Fitzpatrick and likely starting him the majority of the games, they just insured they’ll be back in the exact same predicament next year.

Football fans and teams are reflexively conditioned to think short term. The axioms of ‘It’s a week to week league’ and ‘any given Sunday’ condition teams and fans to want instantaneous fixes and demand quick turnarounds. For the Washington Football Team, last year, the 1st of Ron Rivera at the helm, was a success story in many ways. It featured Rivera overcoming cancer, the one of the great comeback stories in the history of sports, and the team winning the NFC East in unlikely fashion. They hosted a playoff game and had the eventual Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers on the ropes with a QB that they signed in early December. It was a fun ride. Now, the bill comes due. The cost: another year without a real answer at quarterback without a tremendous allocation of resources. Now, Washington will likely be in the exact position a year from now where they will have to commit massive resources to acquire a potential answer that has eluded the organization for nearly 4 decades since Joe Theismann’s injury.

There is an argument to be made that having a veteran signal caller will help develop some of the young players on the offensive side of the ball. I buy that argument. Terry McLaurin, Antonio Gibson, and the young receivers the team has will surely benefit from Fitzpatrick’s ‘both teams in the game’ proclivities. They’ll get targets and put up some quality numbers. But, despite this point being valid, in no way does it come close to the big picture benefits that the organization would receive from actually having a long term top 10 guy at the position. The philosophical difference I have is that I would rather just eat it for a year and go 4–12 than go 8–8 or 7–9 IF my team does not have a QB. If you’re the Chargers, who selected Justin Herbert in the Top 5 and are in an infinitely better position than Washington, you now set about building around the most important and difficult to solve position in sports. Washington realized, after their attempt to acquire Matt Stafford fell short, there were no other realistic avenues for them to purse. So, they now dance with the bearded devil to prevent the bottom from falling out and awaken the looming presence of their tyrannical owner who has a pattern of ruining everything after lofty promises of being laissez faire with each new hero that has been brought aboard to rescue his sunken ship engulfed in flames.

There is a great episode of The Simpsons where the town of Springfield is voting on how to spend some money. A flim flam artist shows up and gets the people all ginned up about investing in a Monorail. He sells the town on the idea of being like other towns that bought monorails, Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook and it sure put them on the map! It’s a bridge to a better tomorrow! A cursory investigation revealed that those cities were wastelands that rapidly decayed after their purchase of the Monorail. So too is the concept of the bridge QB. Just for fun, let’s do the very scientific study of looking at what teams did the year after Ryan Fitzpatrick was in town slinging it and bridging the team to its undoubtedly brighter future:

Buffalo: 6–10 w/Fitz, 6–10 the next year! The bridge.

Tenn: 6–10 w/Fitz, 2–14 the next year! So much bridging.

Houston: 9–7 w/Fitz, 9–7 the next year w/Brian Hoyer. Kind of a bridge.

NYJ: 5–11 w/Fitz, 5–11 the next year! Bridge so hard.

TB: 5–11 w/Fitz starting 7 games, 7–9 next year. It’s a suspension bridge or something.

So, Ryan Fitpatrick joins Mark Brunnell, Case Keenum, Colt McCoy, Tony Banks, Donovan McNabb, Rex Grossman, Danny Wuerffel, Shane Matthews, John Freisz, and all the rest of the bridge/stopgap QBs in team history that have not bridged anything nor stopped any gaps. The team just kicked the can down the road on finding a real answer. They packed up their booth and will open it up again next offseason with the same predicament they are in now with the same limitations. The Washington Football Team just opted, purposefully, for mediocrity out of the fear of a controlled regression. They have decided to punt the most critical decision an organization can make until next year. The only thing that will likely change is the grace period Ron Rivera is enjoying will likely be over. Enjoy the press conferences though!