In this series, I will be looking at the history of coaches, quarterbacks, rushers, and receivers for all 32 franchises. For coaches and quarterbacks, I will be looking at how much their franchise’s career records (regular season only) would change if we removed the games with that person. For rushers and receivers, I will note how many times that player was the team’s leading rusher/receiver over the course of their time with that franchise (regular plus postseason).
Previous Teams:
Dolphins
Cowboys
Bills
Eagles
Jets
Giants
Patriots
Joe Gibbs is the best coach in Redskins history, and it’s not very close. He went 124-60 as the team’s head coach in the ’80s and early ’90s, and then came back for a second stint at the age of 64. Even then, he wasn’t bad: Washington made the playoffs twice in four years, although his overall record was only 30-34.
But even with that second stint, Gibbs stands out as the best regular season coach the team has ever had (he’s also in the conversation for best playoff coach in NFL history, or at least NFC history). Washington has had an ugly run of football for about 20 years, but the franchise still has an above-.500 record all-time. That’s thanks to Gibbs: with him, the team is at 0.504, and without him, it’s at 0.474. Two other coaches were great for the franchise in shorter doses: George Allen had a great run in the ’70s, and Ray Flaherty had a lot of success with Hall of Fame QB Sammy Baugh.
Speaking of Baugh, which quarterbacks have helped/hurt the Redskins overall winning percentage the most? Keep in mind that for the quarterback record portion of this series, I am only looking at data from 1950 to 2018. That means most of Baugh’s career is excluded, because we don’t have quarterback starts data pre-1950. Since 1950, the Redskins have been a below-average franchise, winning 48.8% of their games. Take out Norm Snead — who also ranked last on the Eagles list — and that mark nearly jumps to 0.500. The top honor here goes to Joe Theismann, whose teams had a .621 winning percentage in games he started. The full list is below, and as always, I recommend sorting by games played to get a more complete picture:
The Redskins have a number of running backs play well in short bursts for the team. John Riggins, Clinton Portis, Stephen Davis, Larry Brown, and Terry Allen all were standouts in fantasy football for the Redskins for at least a year or two. Brown was the most dominant RB (and also league MVP) in 1972 and Allen was the NFL’s best fantasy running back in 1996. There were also four times a Redskin ranked as the 3rd most valuable fantasy RB based on my system: Davis in ’99, Riggins in ’83, and Brown in ’73 and ’70. And we can’t forget about Portis, who had strong years in ’05 and ’07, and led the team in rushing in 87% of his games. But it’s The Diesel who takes the cake here, leading the team in rushing in 78 games (postseason included).
Washington has been blessed with some very good wide receivers, too. Hall of Famer Art Monk unsurprisingly comes out on top, while a pair of former Jets in Santana Moss and Laveranues Coles were great in short stints for the team.
That’s it for the Washington version of this series. Please leave your thoughts in the comments.
