ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Are Washington football fans are still celebrating the playoff win Saturday night?
Washington, D.C., fans, that is — along with those in Washington state.
Are Redskins fans, as well as Seahawks fans, feeling good about Seattle’s impressive 31-17 win over the Carolina Panthers in the NFC divisional playoff game? After all, any port in a storm, right?
Why would Redskins fans get any satisfaction over a Seahawks win? Because the man who supposedly helped build the roster of the defending Super Bowl champions was introduced Friday as the alleged new architect of Washington Redskins personnel.
Scot McCloughan — a “senior personnel executive” with Seattle — was reportedly the man responsible for drafting Russell Wilson, Richard Sherman, Bruce Irvin, Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright, if you are keeping score.
Of course, the general manager who may have had a small role in building the Seahawks — John Schneider — was the Redskins’ vice president of player personnel in 2001, so they already had the guy in the building who had hired the guy they introduced Friday in the building, and let him leave.
That, though, is living in the past. That’s not the Redskins way — at least not the last 20 years or so.
The past before that, though, comes right out of the playbook for fresh starts at Redskins Park.
“Seeing all the tradition, seeing the World Championships, seeing the Hall of Fame football players and seeing the stadium sold out and just rabid fans, it all fell into place for me right now,” McCloughan said at Redskins Park on Friday during his introductory press conference.
Bless him, he mentioned five world championships — acknowledging the two this franchise won when it first arrived in Washington in 1937 and again in 1942, recognizing the NFL didn’t begin with the first Super Bowl.
But, when asked how difficult it would be to “infuse his philosophy into the organization, McCloughan answered, “The past is the past.”
His philosophy, I would assume, being winning.
One year to the day, Jay Gruden said the same thing when he was hired as Washington’s new coach.
“We’ve got to forget about the past and look toward the future every day,” Gruden said.
I’ll bet Jay Gruden remembers every single excruciating day of this past year.
McCloughan, 34, read from other excerpts from the Redskins Park fresh start playbook — hitting the most important note, how much Redskins owner Dan Snyder wants to win.
He talked about “sitting down with Mr. Snyder for about five, six hours face-to-face and just seeing the passion he had in his eyes — the passion for the fanbase, the passion for winning, and if he said it one time he said it 20 times, that’s all that matters is winning games here.
“The one thing with Dan which is incredible was just the fact that whatever it takes to win, let’s do it, let’s do it no matter what,” McCloughan said. “They deserve it — the fans deserve it, the players deserve it, he deserves it. You know, just to see — when you see a guy’s eyes light up like that and just see not aggression, but you see him just get excited like a little kid, it was cool as crud, you know?”
Again, one year to the day, Gruden read from the same script.
“I know that interviewing with Dan Snyder and Bruce Allen and everybody here that the passion for excellence is there,” Gruden said. “All they want do is win and they’re going to provide me with every avenue to win. I don’t know what happened last year and I don’t care what happened last year. All I care about next year is moving forward. I am going to provide the players with every avenue, like I said, for them to succeed and be great. So moving forward, we’re going to forget about the past and look forward to the future every day.”
McCloughan told you what he believes you can look forward to.
“I’m going to outwork the next guy no matter what,” he said. “I’m going to have great communication with everybody in the building that matters in personnel and in coaching, and when we make decisions, we’ll make them as a group. We’ll take ownership for the players and we’re going to get better.”
If we are to believe the experts, he did that in San Francisco, where he was the general manager, and he did it in Seattle, helping to build the team that manhandled the Panthers on Saturday night and may be on their way to a second consecutive Super Bowl championship.
If we are to believe McCloughan, that is the future in Washington, D.C.
• Thom Loverro is co-host of “The Sports Fix,” noon to 2 p.m. daily on ESPN 980 and espn980.com.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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