Can the Redskins win the NFC East? Hell if I know. I mean, they haven’t done it much lately, nor have they won a heck of a lot of games in recent seasons. They have a rookie quarterback who’s never thrown a real pass, who will be relying on a couple receivers who have never worn a Redskins uniform in a real game.
On the other hand, strange things happen every NFL season. Plus, it’s mid-June. Space goblins could capture Michael Vick, Eli Manning and Tony Romo next month and replace them with pickled turnips. (Yes, it’s possible a pickled turnip would be more clutch than Romo, but that’s a different argument.)
In other words, can the Redskins win the NFC East? There are only two real answers: “I mean, I guess so,” or “That’s a clown question, bro.”
But it’s June, and the NFL Network needs content, so they asked Warren Sapp and Heath Evans if the Redskins could win the NFC East.
“Oh, they will definitely compete, but they will not contend, not at all,” Sapp said, in much the same way you might tell your kid that he can definitely have dessert, but he can’t have anything to eat after dinner, not at all.
“They’ll compete, but they won’t contend,” Sapp later said, in case you missed it.
And believe it or not, he made a better case than Evans.
“I say not a chance, and here’s why,” Evans said. “When you’re talking about Mike Shanahan as a head coach, here’s what you’ve got. As a head coach, two Super Bowl wins. As an offensive coordinator, ’94 with the Niners, another Super Bowl. These coaches get stuck in their ways. They want to do things their way.”
(And thus, the proof of Shanahan’s deficiencies is the fact that he’s won three Super Bowls.)
“When you look at the success that other young quarterbacks have had — look at Tebow last year, look at Cam Newton — their offensive coordinators made them comfortable,” Evans went on. “My time with Tom Brady, my time with Drew Brees, Sean Payton and Bill Belichick, what do you like, what don’t you like? What do you want to do and won’t don’t you want to do? That is huge.
“And so when you talk about the comfortability [sic] factor for a young quarterback, this offense, the way Mike Shanahan is coaching offense, it’s not gonna be conducive to RGIII being comfortable down-in and down-out,” Evans decided, based apparently on the ratio of the temperature in Topeka to the weight of the strawberry-rhubarb pies at a supermarket in Fort Wayne.
“Cam Newton, Tim Tebow. These guys got comfortable. And then if you look at the NFC East,” he went on, “think about the pass rushers this young man’s gonna be facing. Every team in that division has two guys he’s gonna be running from his life (sic). Maybe three....This is a tough, tough division.”
And so there you go. Not a chance.