Atonement For $100 Million

Wait a minute, did Dan Snyder just do something, uh... right?

No one questions Snyder's passion. Just the big spending ways and overbearing ownership of the Redskins franchise he deeply loves.

Snyder bought the Redskins out of love. He made his fortune due to a charasmatic, tenacious, and aggressive demeanor. He’s a man deeply and personally intertwined in his ventures, singular in nature and personality. Snyder succeeds at business because he believes deeply in the bullshit you and I cannot muster any response to save a defeated sigh.

Where tenacity in the business world translates into dollar signs, in the world of pro sports tenacity from the top becomes meddling and equates to a divisive front office.

Business makes sports professional. But business doesn’t make professional sports profitable.

Pro sports operate in a rich world of values all its own. The most successful owners in the NFL stand in the background, nurturing continuity and consistency, allowing their football people, the coaches, GMs, and VPs, to take care of football decisions.

The success of any sports team is dependent on a combination of on-field and off-field factors, a concoction without measurable formula. Much of pro success depends on something as delicate and abstract as psychology, somewhere found in the balance between talent, teamwork, payroll, and trust.

Not that football people are masters of subtlety, but subtleties abound. Especially for the precarious position of the owner. In charge but not in charge. Aloof but not entirely distant.

Snyder is not a man of subtlety. And his actions especially in free agency have put him in the center of the Redskins struggles at the edge of the NFC playoff picture year in and year out. Struggles undoubtedly that wound Snyder deeply.

To salve those wounds he’s repeatedly gone to the checkbook. A cycle vicious, ongoing.

But with one humongous payday to one humongous defensive tackle, has Snyder perhaps finally gotten the big spender thing right? Is Albert Haynesworth and his 6’6” 320 lbs frame of football fury worth $100 million?

As my man Zac at Throwing Into Traffic states, Prince Albert to the Redskins makes sense by simple offseason math.

The Redskins were terrible at creating pressure last year. Haynesworth’s disruption of the pocket’s fleshy underbelly not only nets the big man an impressive sack total for a defensive tackle but creates opportunities for his teammates.

Tennessee ranked fifth in the league last year in sack total with 44 overall. Noting that only one player approached Haynesworth’s 8.5 sacks, the production was mainly spread around the defensive line, specifically 30.5 sacks by eight of Haynesworth’s fellow defensive linemen.

That number alone crushes the 24 sacks the entire Redskins defense netted last season. And much of the credit for that distributed total can go to the play of Haynesworth demanding double and triple teams (while often beating those double and triple teams for those 8.5 sacks, 22 hurries, and 7 tackles for loss).

So Haynesworth should shore up an awful pass rush and raise the level of play of his teammates around him.

But such simple offseason math usually doesn’t work out with such simplicity in reality.

Remember Shaun Rogers and Corey Williams to Cleveland last year? The Browns great Achilles heel in 2007 was an underperforming front seven, especially along the line. Despite a fine season from Rogers and a decent one from Williams, the Browns broke down just about everywhere else on the offense and defense. Injuries, regressions, poor adjustments, atrocious depth… 2008 was a debacle for Cleveland.

Haynesworth was central to a complex enigma of a team crafted by Jeff Fisher in Tennessee. A terrifying pressure defense that rarely blitzed their linebackers. A turf-churning ground offense that thumbed their noses at conventional field position wisdom. Daring and gambling, yet old school in values like building monstrous lines on both sides of the ball.

Prince Albert is bevy of complex moves and weight-room sculpted power as well as old school hustle. He's the face-stomping hood and the shocking maturity resulting from real remorse.

What Haynesworth will mean to a Redskins defense, or rather team, is of course as yet unclear. Washington is no backwater, playing second fiddle to the college game in its own humid backyard like the Titans do. The Beltway is always buzzing with overblown expectations. His teammates will no longer be the pick-up drivers like Kyle Vanden Bosch and Keith Bulluck. Instead, he'll take his locker room seat next to luminaries like London Fletcher-Baker and Clinton Portis.

One of the major differences in this signing for Snyder and for the Redskins is that no one can quibble that a defensive tackle deserves it more than Haynesworth. When Brandon Lloyd and Antwaan Randle El pulled down their huge Washington paydays, more accomplished and, yes, better receivers toiled in points such as Cincinnati and Arizona for remarkably lesser dollars. No one, however, has played the defensive tackle position quite like Prince Albert has for the last two-three seasons.

But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. At the same moment Snyder signs perhaps one of the best defensive free agents of the past few years, he hands another overlarge check to corner DeAngelo Hall.

In one morning, Snyder perhaps atones for the sins of free agency contracts past by maybe – just maybe – paying the right player the right ridiculous number, then turns around and throws cash at a greatly overvalued corner who flamed out the last time large guaranteed money was dumped in his lap.

It’s been awhile since Washington “won” the offseason Super Bowl. The jokes lingered the past couple seasons even as Snyder and the Redskins uncharacteristically stalked the sidelines during free agency’s big money early days. Something didn't feel right when the Jets and not Washington dropped money on damaged goods with a potential great payoff.

So here Washington is, front horse in the offseason race again. The weirdest part may be that when it comes to Haynesworth they may have gotten it right.