Peyton, Payton and Payton

If your name is Peyton or Payton, this past week has been one of great excitement, great shock and great sadness.

At the beginning of the week, quarterback Peyton Manning chose to bring his talents to Colorado when he agreed to sign with the Denver Broncos. This decision put to rest weeks of speculation as well as a year of whether Peyton would play football again. He will play football again, but not in Indy. Now the only thing left to speculate is whether he can return to his old form. We will need a few months before we will know the answer.

And just when we thought NFL news couldn’t get any bigger than Peyton Manning choosing a team, NFL fans received a real surprise by midweek. Commissioner Roger Goodell handed out punishment in the so-called “bounty” scandal. Effective April 1, New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton will be suspended for one year because of his involvement in and knowledge of the scandal. Sheriff Goodell didn’t stop there. Saints general manager Mickey Loomis was suspended for eight games, and Saints assistant head coach Joe Vitt was suspended for six games—all suspensions are without pay. Gregg Williams, the alleged mastermind behind the scandal, was suspended indefinitely. Williams was the Saints’ defensive coordinator from 2009 to 2011 and now holds the same position with the St. Louis Rams.

These suspensions now leave the Saints in upheaval. Before this scandal hit, the big off-season news out of New Orleans was the fact that the team was struggling to ink a deal with quarterback Drew Brees. Although the news of signing Brees becomes back-burner in comparison, the urgency of signing him is even more important if the Saints want to salvage any type of competitive season.

Finally, in a third story pertaining to Payton, the legal community lost a legend last week when lawyer John Payton, president and director–counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, died on March 22 after a brief illness. Payton was a fierce advocate for civil rights and a leader in the legal community, working on such high-profile items as the University of Michigan’s admissions case.

RGIII: Talk About Real QB Pressure

Full disclosure: I am a lifelong Washington Redskins fan. I’ve supported the team in good times and bad, with the latter being the most recent and most daunting, and I will continue to support this team.

Still, I was a little hesitant when team owner Dan Snyder and the Redskins made a deal with St. Louis last week to move up in the draft, trading three first-round and a second-round pick to the Rams to get a shot at drafting Baylor quarterback Robert Griffin III with the second overall pick.

Much of the talk on local sports radio has been “RGIII had better pan out or else,” or “Look at all the Redskins gave up for him, he’d better be a stud right away.” In other words, the pressure is on RGIII to perform immediately.

I took another tact. My immediate thoughts were: “That poor kid. We’re going to ruin him!” (For that very same reason, I am equally happy that we didn’t get a chance to tarnish Peyton Manning.)

Naturally, it makes more sense to build through the draft instead of chasing after other teams’ discards. In recent years, the Redskins have done a lot of the latter, without a lot of success to show for it.   

Washington of late is where football careers come to die. Furthermore, from a PR point of view, the Redskins have not been the most prudent or honest organization in recent years.

Just ask Donovan McNabb who went from starter to second string to third string to gone in the span of a very bizarre year, which included an inexplicable benching for Rex Grossman that later turned into a PR nightmare when head coach Mike Shanahan tried to explain his decision. Depending on which reason you believe, both of which were put forth by Shanahan, Donovan either did not understand the mechanics of the offense or was too out of shape to run the offense.

You also can ask quarterback Jason Campbell who was bashed for being inconsistent even though he played under two coaches and two offensive systems in four years with the Redskins. He’s now a Raider.

Or ask Rex Grossman and John Beck who handled the under center follies this past season. According to one veteran NFL scout, neither QB is qualified to start in the league—nor should Beck be playing at this level at all.

I know it’s easy to dismiss a former player’s unkind words as bitterness, but some of the stories we’ve heard from former Redskins have been echoed in this community for years. Cornerback Carlos Rogers, who spent his first six seasons with the Redskins before landing with the 49ers, didn’t mince words during a Sirius XM NFL Radio show in November. In discussing the Redskins’ dysfunction, Rogers said, “There’s so much drama, so much outside stuff. You give up a play, you give up a touchdown, you’ve got to worry about whether you’re starting this week or if it’s the next corner up. It’s things like that.”

In that same interview, Rogers also said that instead of building through the draft and taking care of their own, the Redskins would seek out high-priced free agents, many of whom never worked out.

“They brought in so many guys and gave them all the money and lifted them up and let guys go that they drafted and had been there…. Of course, you’re going to need free agents and some spots you need to fill. But you need to take care of your guys. Take care of home and not let them go. That’s how you build,” Rogers said.

And I haven’t even gotten to former Redskins defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and his alleged “pay’em to slay’em” system.   

Need further proof of the craziness that is the Redskins? To read an A to Z guide on the Redskins and some of their not-so-fabulous moves, check out Dave McKenna’s 2010 City Paper article The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder. From a PR point of view, the Redskins are still trying to live down this story.

What’s challenging for RGIII is the fact that he is coming into a quarterback situation that has been unsettled since the early 1990s and the days of Mark Rypien, the Redskins’ last Super Bowl quarterback. There has been a steady rotation of quarterbacks since then, including the likes of Mark Brunell, Shane Matthews, Heath Shuler, Gus Frerotte, Brad Johnson and a handful of others I can’t remember. In other words, Redskins fans are thirsty and we need relief now.

RGIII appears to be a good kid with a good head on his shoulders. If for some reason he doesn’t reach his full potential in Washington, I wouldn’t be so quick to blame it on a lack of arm strength, accuracy or skill at playing the position. I believe it would require deeper investigation, starting with the Redskins organization itself.