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Rivera: It takes 3-5 years to build a culture


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49 minutes ago, naptownskinsfan said:

I said our running backs as a group are above average.  

True, paper isn't a reality, but this is year one of a badly needed culture reset and rebuild.  It's going to be ugly, and a lot of the guys along for the ride Week 1 this year may not be around in Year 3..  But we're going to come out on the other side better for it.

I don’t know. Maybe we have different definitions of “ugly.” Ugly to me was how our team performed the first half of last year - and especially under Gruden. 
 

I think our team will be better than that, not worlds better, but better and more competitive.

I don’t consider a 4 to 6 win season with one of the youngest - if not the youngest- rosters in the NFL is necessarily, “ugly.” 
 

I’d say that’s to be expected given how young our team is but, if our young players show progress and a lot of potential then, we’ll be excited about what they can do in 2021, 2022 and beyond.

I see no ugliness in that.

Edited by turtle28
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1 hour ago, turtle28 said:

I don’t know. Maybe we have different definitions of “ugly.” Ugly to me was how our team performed the first half of last year - and especially under Gruden. 
 

I think our team will be better than that, not worlds better, but better and more competitive.

I don’t consider a 4 to 6 win season with one of the youngest - if not the youngest- rosters in the NFL is necessarily, “ugly.” 
 

I’d say that’s to be expected given how young our team is but, if our young players show progress and a lot of potential then, we’ll be excited about what they can do in 2021, 2022 and beyond.

I see no ugliness in that.

I'm not calling you out on this, but just using it as an example.  

You just said a couple posts ago you were looking at 6-8 wins 

Now you've moved onto 4-6 wins, which in my opinion is much more reasonable.  But the average Redskins fan is probably hoping for anywhere from 5-7 wins this season.  

My prediction is 2-5 wins.  Lets say everything goes right, I could see +1.  If everything goes horribly wrong, we could see -1 or even -2 to that given our schedule.  

For the optimistic folks in the fanhood who see the upper tier of those wins, to see us get 2-4 wins is going to be considered an ugly season.  

For me, if we have 1-2 games, even if we see growth and development......that's an ugly season, and I was prepared for the worst and didn't get caught up in going higher.  

Given our fanbase, while many will know that a culture change is needed, I am not sure they know exactly what that entails, and that Year 1 is not going to be a rosy picture.  

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4 hours ago, naptownskinsfan said:

For the past decade, our winning percentage is .357.  The rosters have always been bad except for a couple of years.  

Rivera has a free pass this year to start installing the culture.  You start with this group, and you weed out the guys who aren't with the program.  In two years, I bet half of this roster will be gone.  By year 3, we are probably looking at .500 or greater.  

There is a lot of work to be done and many people are underestimating how long it's going to take.  

I understand, but I just have a different perspective.  I do think our roster is at least middle of the pack.  But really a roster only matters so much.  Some of the teams with the best talent still fail.  Even the best talent teams have personnel gaps.  All pro football players can play the game and deliver to a point.  It would be really hard to win a superbowl with average talent, but 8-8 shouldn't be unattainable with only average talent.

I'm not giving Rivera a free pass.  He is one of 32 people in the world that gets these jobs.  I expect him to have an immediate impact.  It isn't like he has nothing to work with.  There is talent on both sides of the ball.  I expect this team to look a lot different this year.

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23 hours ago, naptownskinsfan said:

I'm not calling you out on this, but just using it as an example.  

You just said a couple posts ago you were looking at 6-8 wins 

Now you've moved onto 4-6 wins, which in my opinion is much more reasonable.  But the average Redskins fan is probably hoping for anywhere from 5-7 wins this season.  

My prediction is 2-5 wins.  Lets say everything goes right, I could see +1.  If everything goes horribly wrong, we could see -1 or even -2 to that given our schedule.  

For the optimistic folks in the fanhood who see the upper tier of those wins, to see us get 2-4 wins is going to be considered an ugly season.  

For me, if we have 1-2 games, even if we see growth and development......that's an ugly season, and I was prepared for the worst and didn't get caught up in going higher.  

Given our fanbase, while many will know that a culture change is needed, I am not sure they know exactly what that entails, and that Year 1 is not going to be a rosy picture.  

You took my comment out of context. I said that they ”COULD” get 6-8 wins. I didn't say it was going to happen or that it was likely. All along my prediction is 4-6 wins but if things went perfectly - meaning everyone played to their highest abilities and we had little to no injuries - they could be around .500 Or..500. That's their ceiling but everything has to be perfect.

Everything went wrong last year and we won 3 games and Jay lost the team. I think it's unlikely with a run first coach like Rivera using our strength on offense most  - our RBs - and two great defensive minds to improve the D that we only win 3 games again. It's possible, but our team isn't worse than last year. Even if Chase Young is the only huge upgrade, that's still a huge upgrade at DE. 

Edited by turtle28
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4 minutes ago, turtle28 said:

You took my comment out of context. I said that they ”COULD” get 6-8 wins. I didn't say it was going to happen or that it was likely. All along my prediction is 4-6 wins but if things went perfectly - meaning everyone played to their highest abilities and we had little to no injuries - they could be around .500 Or..500. That's their ceiling but everything has to be perfect.

Everything went wrong last year and we won 3 games and Jay lost the team. I think it's unlikely with a run first coach like Rivera using our strength on offense most  - our RBs - and two great defensive minds to improve the D that we only win 3 games again. It's possible, but our team isn't worse than last year. Even if Chase Young is only huge upgrade, that's still a huge upgrade at DE. 

I know, I'm just using it as an example for all of fans.  I'm not getting on you for it.  

Everything still didn't go wrong, as we won three games.  We finished worse than the teams that we beat.  It's the first year in a new offense and scheme, a new defensive scheme and front, and a new culture, and there is not much proven talent on this roster.  I don't see where the expectation to get more wins than we did last year is coming from.  

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I forgot Guice is only 22 and we’re talking about a guy being injury prone when he legit could be right for the next 8 seasons and be talking about a 3rd deal if he legit takes care of his body. That’s crazy I really hope these guys pan out they had very good tape coming out of good programs.

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On 5/24/2020 at 10:38 PM, offbyone said:

I can understand this first year being a bad year, but after that I expect wins.

I expect 8 wins or more by year 2 and playoffs by year 3.  You guys and your low expectations kill me.  This is the nfl.  Teams go from crap to playoffs every year.  We don't have 5 years to wait.  Win!  

Uh...look at my post a little above you. I have the same timeline as you (I expect 7-9 next year though)

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I tend to agree that the roster is pretty weak, and perhaps more importantly, that it has a lot of holes. Where I disagree, though, is with the idea that it has to take a long time to revamp that roster.

The Niners are the obvious example, going from 4-12 and -93 PD to the Super Bowl. But you’ve got the 2016 Rams, who were 4-12 with a -170 PD and were in the playoffs the next year and the Super Bowl after two years. The 2012 Colts went from 2-14 and -187 PD to 11-5 and in the playoffs. The 2013 Chiefs went from 2-14 with a -214 PD to 11-5 and the playoffs, where they coincidentally enough lost to those turnaround Colts who were in the playoffs again. The 2016 Cowboys were 13-3 and in the playoffs with the 3rd best PD in the league, just a year after going 4-12 with a -99 PD. The 2017 Jaguars were on the brink of a Super Bowl after having been 3-13 a year earlier. It can be done. Some of those teams had a better established talent base than the Redskins currently do — but some of them really didn’t  

It will take a long time if you limit yourself to one means of talent acquisition, though. If all you’re willing to do is bring in young talent via the draft/UDFA route, then yes, it’s going to take a while to fill the roster’s holes. In fact, it will likely take forever, because by the time you can possibly get all the holes filled, your first group of draftees will be starting to hit FA. If you’re getting 3-4 impact players out of a draft, that’s a big win — which means it’s gonna take a heckuva long time to patch a roster with 8-10 legitimate holes at that rate.

It always suits a coach to try to lower fan expectations. Lower expectations = less chance of underachieving = more job security. So I understand why he’s been publicly trying to frame this as a very long-term rebuild. But I don’t want them waiting until years 3-5 to start even trying to win games, in terms of personnel acquisition. They need to start getting more aggressive. It takes time to put all the pieces together, and they’ve already basically wasted one whole offseason in terms of adding veteran players to the mix.

2022 should be an extremely realistic timeline for this team to have made major strides and start being competitive. They need to start making moves with maximizing the 2022 roster as their mission statement.

Edited by e16bball
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2 hours ago, Thaiphoon said:

Uh...look at my post a little above you. I have the same timeline as you (I expect 7-9 next year though)

Yes I think your analysis is reasonable.  I just don't expect this year to be a throw away year. 

And I also don't agree with the general sentiment in this thread about our roster analysis.  Our roster is not great but neither is it bad.  I believe we are middle of the road in the nfl talent wise.  There is a significant amount of young talent.  If Rivera thought our roster was so bad he should have made some signings this offseason.  As you point out in your post, the roster essentially turns over in 3 years.  With that in mind, you can never take a year off to evaluate because the roster turn over never takes a year off.   

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2 hours ago, e16bball said:

I tend to agree that the roster is pretty weak, and perhaps more importantly, that it has a lot of holes. Where I disagree, though, is with the idea that it has to take a long time to revamp that roster.

The Niners are the obvious example, going from 4-12 and -93 PD to the Super Bowl. But you’ve got the 2016 Rams, who were 4-12 with a -170 PD and were in the playoffs the next year and the Super Bowl after two years. The 2012 Colts went from 2-14 and -187 PD to 11-5 and in the playoffs. The 2013 Chiefs went from 2-14 with a -214 PD to 11-5 and the playoffs, where they coincidentally enough lost to those turnaround Colts who were in the playoffs again. The 2016 Cowboys were 13-3 and in the playoffs with the 3rd best PD in the league, just a year after going 4-12 with a -99 PD. The 2017 Jaguars were on the brink of a Super Bowl after having been 3-13 a year earlier. It can be done. Some of those teams had a better established talent base than the Redskins currently do — but some of them really didn’t  

It will take a long time if you limit yourself to one means of talent acquisition, though. If all you’re willing to do is bring in young talent via the draft/UDFA route, then yes, it’s going to take a while to fill the roster’s holes. In fact, it will likely take forever, because by the time you can possibly get all the holes filled, your first group of draftees will be starting to hit FA. If you’re getting 3-4 impact players out of a draft, that’s a big win — which means it’s gonna take a heckuva long time to patch a roster with 8-10 legitimate holes at that rate.

It always suits a coach to try to lower fan expectations. Lower expectations = less chance of underachieving = more job security. So I understand why he’s been publicly trying to frame this as a very long-term rebuild. But I don’t want them waiting until years 3-5 to start even trying to win games, in terms of personnel acquisition. They need to start getting more aggressive. It takes time to put all the pieces together, and they’ve already basically wasted one whole offseason in terms of adding veteran players to the mix.

2022 should be an extremely realistic timeline for this team to have made major strides and start being competitive. They need to start making moves with maximizing the 2022 roster as their mission statement.

You have good points.  But to be fair, those teams you mentioned had far better rosters than we did, most had better situations at QB than we do at the time, and most importantly, didn't have a decade of incompetence to make up for, which allowed the roster to be in this situation.  

So installing a new culture, new offensive system and new defensive scheme and system, it's going to take some time and why we all should be comfortable writing off year one.  I think it's going to take longer, but I won't fault anyone who expecting 6-8 wins in 2021.  

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3 hours ago, naptownskinsfan said:

You have good points.  But to be fair, those teams you mentioned had far better rosters than we did, most had better situations at QB than we do at the time, and most importantly, didn't have a decade of incompetence to make up for, which allowed the roster to be in this situation.  

So installing a new culture, new offensive system and new defensive scheme and system, it's going to take some time and why we all should be comfortable writing off year one.  I think it's going to take longer, but I won't fault anyone who expecting 6-8 wins in 2021.  

I don't know that Jared Goff was considered to be a better option at QB then Haskins is when Sean McVay went to the Rams. His previous/rookie season certainly didn't show that. No one knew what to expect from Jimmy G when he came back from his ACL tear last year and he really hadn't shown much before last season and even last season was up and down for him but his running game and D bailed him out a lot.

I will say this to slightly disagree with @e16bball’s the 49ers did not make a lot of FA acquisitions to build their team, nor did the Colts to turn their team around in 2012. The49ers mostly built that Super Bowl team in the draft, same with the Chiefs.

I think people really need to open up their eyes to the fact that almost every good and great team is built almost entirely through the draft, with those young players developing and growing into a great team over several seasons.

Edited by turtle28
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