Since that fateful April day in 1999, when Dan Snyder bought the Washington Redskins after outbidding Jack Kent Cooke’s son by more than $120 million, the Washington Redskins have been a laughingstock of the league. Four playoff appearances aren’t terrible, but the revolving door of coaches, the attempted controlling of the media and an inability to draft, develop, sign, keep or hold a starting quarterback makes the team a laughingstock. The news that Kirk Cousins would start the 2015 surprised no one, except maybe Robert Griffin III, who seems to live happily in his own little world, and makes Cousins the next-ex quarterback of the team. He’ll be in mediocre company. Since Snyder bough the team 16 years ago, 16 quarterbacks have started a game. Here they are, ranked.
1. Brad Johnson (17-10)
(AP)
“I think that decision is made from up top,” Brad Johnson said after getting benched with a winning record late in the 2000 season. “It’s obvious.”And thus, the quarterback summed up the next 16 years of the franchise, especially when Snyder’s hand-picked replacement Jeff George went 1-4, led to Norv Turner’s firing and sent Washington down a path of football misery that was set in motion the instant Daniel Snyder signed the papers to become team owner.
Johnson was the last fine Redskins quarterback. Allthe former FSU football and basketball player did for Washington was lead the team to its first playoff appearance since the Joe Gibbs era (in 1999), winning one game and losing another due to a botched field-goal snap. Then in 2000, the Redskins were the most heavily hyped team in NFL history with Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, Mark Carrier, Dana Stubblefield, Big Daddy Wilkinson, LaVar Arrington and Champ Bailey figuring to provide a stout defense to go along with a team that was within a play of last year’s NFC championship, Johnson somehow got pulled at 6-3. Jeff George was installed, Turner was canned with a winning 7-6 record and by the time Johnson got another start, the ‘Skins were 7-8 and out of playoff contention. He would go on to win a Super Bowl with the Bucs two years later.
Super Bowl champs. (USA TODAY Sports Images)
2. Mark Brunell (15-18)
Joe Gibbs 2.0 is unfairly besmirched. He coached four bad teams, took two to the playoffs, almost won both wild-card games and, oh yeah, brought that final team to the playoffs after his best player was murdered in the middle of the season. And behind that success was Brunell, who was in his mid-30s by the time he hit DC, but still had a beautiful arm that could place the ball directly in Santana Moss’ numbers, like he did in the Monday Night Miracle in Dallas in 2005.
3. Todd Collins (3-0)
Starter Jason Campbell was sporting a 5-7 record when he got hurt early in a Thursday night game against the Bears in 2007. Enter Todd Collins, who turned that 0-0 game into a Redskins win and then won the next three, basically going 4-0 with the ‘Skins to give Washington a 9-7 record and a playoff berth. That team ended on a four-game win streak and it would have been five if there hadn’t been terrible late-game officiating at the end of the Bills game, which was played days after Sean Taylor’s death.
4. RG3 (14-19)
(USA TODAY Sports Images)
How bad have things been in Washington? The guy they’re currently trying to run out of town has been the fourth-best quarterback of the past 16 years. Though most remember his rookie season as being sublime, RG3 actually started out 3-6. It wasn’t until Thanksgiving that the Redskins found their groove and it resulted in a playoff berth. But an injury that looked completely immobilizing in a Baltimore Ravens game ousted Griffin from that game, leading Kirk Cousins to have to win a game of his own during that stretch. So that 2012 playoff run and reserved Offensive Rookie of the Year honors are enough to outweigh the stench of his final year with Shanahan and first with Gruden. And, I’m not gonna lie, the slogans didn’t help either.
5. Jason Campbell (20-32)
You won’t find many true Redskins fans who will have anything bad to say about Jason Campbell. He played for a slew of coaches and different offensive coordinators thus never having a chance to enjoy the stability needed to become an established NFL quarterback.
(Getty Images)
But here’s a crazy stat: Campbell played 52 games for the Redskins, the most of any QB in the Snyder era. Here are some players who have played in more than 52 games during the same time period: Sam Shade, H.B. Blades, Todd Yoder, Rod Gardner, Nick Sundberg, Ladell Betts, Khary Campbell, Fred Davis, Lemar Marshall, Will Montgomery, Eddie Mason, Kevin Mitchell, David Terrell, Ade Jimoh, Niles Paul, Barry Cofield, Rob Jackson and Bruce Smith. Pathethic.
6. Tony Banks (8-6)
Back in 2001, the Redskins started 0-5 including a historically bad 9-7 Monday night loss to the 0-4 Cowboys in what was said to be one of the worst MNF games in history. (And this was still when MNF meant something.) That whole season was starte dby George once again, but luckily, Marty Schottenheimer’s backbone made him insert Banks to lead a mediocre football team and an 0-5 start turned into a 5-5 record and then eventually, an 8-8 mark to close. And what did Schottenheimer receive for working such magic with a mediocre team? His walking papers.
7. Patrick Ramsey (10-14)
(AP)
The first of the “we’ve found our guy” draft picks, Ramsey never had a winning season of starts (and never started more than 11 games in a season). But this where memory can get tricky. I seem to recall a moment when there was true excitement about Ramsey, but there must not have been. I geuss playing for Steve Spurrier for two years would have dragged down Peyton Manning too. After a brief struggle under Gibbs, Ramsey was pulled for Mark Brunell.
8. Kirk Cousins (2-7)
I’m not a Kirk Cousins true believer. I have no idea what to think about the upcoming season. What I do know is that:
a) Those GIFs being used to mock him on the Internet are taken out of context (one has him throwing a terrible INT to a Cardinals defender — what people don’t see is that there are 30 seconds left in the game and the Redskins have no timeouts, so forcing a ball was the only way to go.)
pic.twitter.com/AbrF5PQzAO
— Cian Fahey (@Cianaf) August 31, 2015
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b) Same thing with the 2-7 record. All those losses came in the past two seasons. In 2013, the Shanahans had pulled the plug on the season. In 2014, Cousins was cleaning up the mess left by the RG3 and Jay Gruden beef. Anybody would go 1-7 under that. His biggest game was in 2012, when he made one start to beat the Browns to help the team’s playoff journey, as well as some great play against Baltimore (after RG3 got hurt) to help win that game too.
9. Rex Grossman (6-10)
Rexy had the decidedly un-Sexy rexy-ord of 6-10 and was exactly who we thought he was: That guy who was equally awful on the Bears, except for that one year he somehow brought the team to the Super Bowl where they had the shame of losing a playoff game to a team quarterbacked by Peyton Manning.
10. Colt McCoy (1-3)
(AP)
Few on this list have a win as memorable as Colt going down to Dallas to upset the Cowboys on Monday Night Football last year. It was almost enough to make you forget about those other three starts.
11. Shane Matthews (3-4)
12. Tim Hasselbeck (1-4)
13. Danny Wuerffel (2-2)
Ahh, the Spurrierettes. While the ol’ ball coach was looking over game tape while practing his golf swing without a club, these three cast-offs were showing why they’d been cast off in the first place. But Spurrier, certain he could resurrect his prized pupil in Wuerffel, the prolific quarterback who led him to a national title at Florida, barely could get away from the golf course long enough to try.
(USA TODAY Sports Images)
The ‘Skins have had eight coaches in the Snyder era and, with the exception of Gibbs at No. 1 and Zorn at No. 8, you could list those coaches pretty much any way. Me? I’d have Spurrier higher that most because you can’t really be a bad coach if you couldn’t care less.
14. Jeff George (1-7)
I bet he still gets a Holiday card from Dan Snyder.
15. Donovan McNabb (5-8)
(USA TODAY Sports Images)
It’s never a good sign when a team in your own division, who has to play you twice each year, decides to basically give you their quarterback. The only people who couldn’t see this debacle coming was the Redskins’ front office, who gladly embraced McNabb and then, when he was sporting a mediocre 4-4 record, xtended him to a mega-deal hours before McNabb lost to his old team 59-28 on Monday Night Football. Other quarterbacks might have been worse, but no quarterback has come into Washington with a ton of negative expectations and lived up to them so well.
16. John Beck (0-3)
Without John Beck, there is no RG3. For as hilarious the Jim Zorn era was in Washington, Mike Shanahan actually started worse, going 11-21 in his first two seasons compared to 12-20 for Zorn. So when the combo of Rex Grossman and Beck didn’t lead to any magic, the Redskins has to trade away everybody to get a serviceable quarterback, who was otherworldly for 17 games. And then his true colors came out.
(USA TODAY Sports Images)