Vinny falls on his sword!!!!

Breaking news! Vinny Cerrato resigns from the Redkins!

He stays classy to the end: in his statement to the press, Vinny says,

“I’ve had the pleasure of working with some great coaches such as Joe Gibbs, Greg Blache and Sherman Lewis...”

Conspicuous by his absence in that list is the Redskins current head coach, Jim Zorn. Nice, Vinny. Does he think people won't remember that he hired Jim Zorn? What a tool.

DC sports radio is in a tizzy. Kevin Sheehan and Andy Pollin of ESPN 980 (a station owned by Dan Snyder) are speculating that someone will be announced today. Mike Shanahan is the name they are bandying about. I find this easy to believe: Snyder is a PR guy, and his classic move is to put a new hire in front of the press ASAP to take the focus for the duration of the news cycle. One assumes he waited until he had his guy, before telling Cerrato to take the fall.

It's funny listening to those guys. Sheehan actually said to Pollin on-air that (paraphrase) "For guys like you & me, today's announcement gives us a lot of pleasure." Sheehan's statement didn't seem motivated by personal animosity toward Cerrato: rather by despair over the last 10 Redskins seasons. How bad do you have to be that guys who try to be journalists (Sheehan's not a shock jock by any stretch) say with a straight face that your losing your job is cause for celebration?

So Snyder is going to announce a "name" guy today. (Always remember that Snyder's objective is to win the news cycle, not football games.) Let's say it's Shanahan. Shanahan is a fabulous coach, of course. But his track record in Denver was that he was not great at having "full control". He did not seem to be a great personnel guy. He was a fine offensive coach, really an unbelievable offensive coach, but his last 2 defenses where ranked 28th and 30th in points-allowed. His last 3 teams went .500.

On the other hand, Shanahan could be in a coma and still be a better football guy than that clown Cerrato. The Redkins got better today just getting that guy out of the building.

This may be hard for me to adjust to. It has been a source of pleasure to me, having the Redskins being so inept over the last decade. It will be odd if they suddenly become respectable. Of course, that hasn't happened yet. We'll see who they announce.