Redskins Free Agent Contracts vs. League

[sportscurmudgeon]

I do not think the Redskins/Dan Snyder are "responsible for" the huge FA contracts of the past year or two.

The Redskins did not "invent" the idea of throwing big bucks at free agents in the salary cap era. What the Redskins did first - with not a whole lot of success - was to throw big bucks at a lot of free agents such that they are in the perpetual mode of renegotiating those deals to get under the cap for next year so they can spend again. Perhaps, 2008 is a break in that cycle [my preference] or perhaps they just needed to really reload for a wild and crazy ride in the 2009 marketplace...

The Redskins didn't invent huge NFL salaries either. In the 1980s, three teams outspent the rest of the league by a HUGE margin every year. Those teams were the Redskins, the 49ers and the Cowboys. Not all that surprisingly, those three teams dominated the playoff action for much of the decade of the 1980s. When the salary cap went into effect, some contracts had to be grandfathered in order that some teams did not have to dismantle themselves. The team that was the most outrageously over the cap was the Cowboys under Jerry Jones. Danny Boy Snyder wasn't even on the NFL radar when that happened so he can't possibly be "responsble for" the elevated salaries.