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It's been obvious for some time that wide Receiver Devin Thomas has no place in the Shanahan plan. The Washington Redskins confirmed that today by releasing the 2008 draft pick.

Word was that the 'Skins front office tried to move him by trade last week. Finding no takers, apparently, they applied the ax.

Running back Keiland Williams was promoted off the practice squad to fill Thomas' spot.

Thomas was considered a raw talent when the Redskins made him their first selection on the NFL Draft. Though the pick came in the second round, he felt like a first round pick to Redskins fans who invested him and Malcolm Kelly with high hopes for a return to offensive glory. Both were criticized by Jim Zorn and Vinny Cerrato during training camp for being unconditioned and unprepared for the pros.

Thomas said he worked hard hard this season to earn the No. 2 wide receiver slot. Offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan echoed Zorn's statement that Thomas was not professional enough to rise through the ranks during practice to crack the line-up.

Thomas seemed befuddled by it all. By the time the regular season opened, he dropped to fifth on the depth chart and said the coaches were not working with him.

Brad Biggs story on National Football Post points to the issue:

"Sources told the National Football Post Thomas was rarely in good shape and that often led to minor injuries. He had suspect work ethic and marginal hands. Surely, someone will take a look at him. He’d be a no-risk investment but Thomas needs to become motivated to turn around his career."

What does this foretell about Malcolm Kelly, now on the injured reserve list?

Running back Keiland Williams, who returned to the practice squad this week, was elevated to the roster in Thomas' spot. Williams was the target out of the backfield for Donovan McNabb passes in the Dallas game.

One would expect that a guy off the practice squad Saturday would not have a big impact in Sunday's game. We've seen last week that doesn't apply with Mike Shanahan. His Saturday moves are becoming routine, sometimes with surprising impact on Sunday.

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Lost in the news about Clinton Portis' groin injury and what that means to the team, are the Washington Redskins' moves to shore up the running back position. Mike Shanahan and Bruce Allen have been pretty busy restocking the practice squad.

Stay with me now. This gets confusing.

Washington RB Javarris James to the practice squad Tuesday, hours after James was cut from the New England Patriots practice squad. The Indianapolis Colts signed James off the 'Skins practice squad to their team roster on Thursday. The Colts visit FedEx Field to play the Redskins Sunday, October 17.

James is a cousin of Edgerrin James. He comes from good stock, but he can't possible know enough about Washington's playbook to give the Colts any insight.

Quinn Porter is another matter.

Several news outlets report that the Redskins signed Porter to the practice squad this week, replacing James. The team's web site at redskins.com does not yet report that information, as I write this. Porter signed a rookie contract with the Green Bay Packers, Washington's opponent this Sunday, in April. The Packers placed him on injured reserve with a strained MCL in August, then released him with an injury settlement in late September.

Wait a minute. New Orleans Drew Brees has a strained MCL, but he's playing. Quinn Porter's strained MCL got him added to the IR list, then released by the Packers.

There is no reason why Porter shouldn't share what he knows about the Packers' playbook and game plan, but is he recovered enough to practice and play for the team? Will he stick around for more than a week?

RB Keiland Williams returned to the practice squad Wednesday and released LB Mike Balogun.

Here's what I like. All these moves involve young players. A year ago, the 'Skins would have recalled Larry Johnson or Willie Parker who could give the team more, right now, than any of the rookies mentioned in this story. That's a win-now-just-in-case move. Shanahan and Allen appear to be searching for new talent who might renew the team.

Love it.

Washington Redskins defensive lineman Albert Haynesworth lost his step-brother to a motorcycle accident Thursday night, the Redskins reported today. He has returned to Nashville to be with his family.

His status for Sunday's game against the Green Bay Packers is not certain. "I would never ask somebody if they’re going to play when a tragedy like that just happened," says Redskins head coach Mike Shanahan. "We’ll just let the course of time take care of itself and we’ll find out what’s going on."

We at Redskins Hog Heaven express our condolences to Haynesworth and his family.

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Both Donovan McNabb's and Barack Obama's arrived in Washington amidst high hopes, great fanfare, greater expectations and enormous curiosity in the rest of the country about how their stories would play out.

No matter the success of either man in DC, they are bound to disappoint. It would take magic for McNabb or Obama to do all the things their fans expect of them.

Sunday fans of the Washington Redskins expected double digit wins this season for the team. Preseason forecasts of pundits who make their living following the team were more realistic--seven or eight wins.

Washington ended the first quarter of the season 2-2. The offensive line is holding up better than we thought. The wide receiver corps is as weak as we feared. The defense is up and down. Donovan McNabb keeps rolling on.

So why would McNabb quip after his big win against the Philadelphia Eagles that the Redskins offense wasn't doing enough to win in the second half of games? And why would he say that it was on him to improve?

Because McNabb needs to improve.

Redskins Hog Heaven's Greg Trippiedi charts every play of every game to understand what's going on with the team. Here's Greg's description of a fourth-quarter series in the Eagles game:

"McNabb -- and I don't feel like I'm criticizing here, though I may be -- seems to make some easy plays look hard.  There was a third down and three play in the fourth quarter, where we needed to extend a drive.  I would have run it from that distance, but Kyle Shanahan called a play action bootleg pass.  We do a lot of those, you know.  The Eagles brought double unblocked pressure off of the weakside.  McNabb wouldn't have a lot of time to throw this -- but he didn't need a lot of time.  Chris Cooley was the first read on a frontside drag/window route, and he was open.  McNabb stepped up to threaten the line of scrimmage with an impressively athletic change of direction, threw on the move, and bounced the ball in to Cooley.  Fourth down."

As Greg said, this is not to criticize McNabb, but to point out that the Shanahans are using him differently than Andy Reid did. McNabb has morphed into a system quarterback in a system that adds timing mechanisms to plays. So, he's not going to do the same magic here we imagined he did in Philly.

There is a transition penalty when players change teams and when teams change systems. McNabb and the Redskins are paying that cost now. The offense is more efficient than last year, but McNabb is completing fewer of his passes. Just 2.5 percent of his passes have gone for touchdowns. Four percent of Jason Campbell's pass plays went for touchdowns last year.

What fans see and like are McNabb's deep passes, because, you know, lack of deep passes was the sole reason why Washington was not an offense juggernaut last year.

Of course, there's more to it than that. But Sunday fans think quarterbacks and presidents are the root of everything. Therefore, if, or when, the Skins don't win the division, it will all be on McNabb. Hmmm.

McNabb's performance will get better. He will continue to steady the offense. Paul Bessire at The Prediction Machine projects that McNabb will throw 18 more touchdowns against 11 interceptions in the next 12 games. No one is calling for a rollback to Jason Campbell or Jim Zorn the way that some fans call for a return to the 4-3 defense. However, McNabb's performance right now is good for about eight wins. It won't cut it for 10 or 11 wins, much less the division title. To some fans, the fault will solely be with McNabb. 

Expectations tell more about us than about the player on the field.

Funny from Bleacher Report: Donovan McNabb Is Gone...So, Andy Reid, Why Are You Still Here?

Ryan Torain should be the Most Valuable Player of the Washington Redskins through four .

Now that I have your attention, I can point out that I'm not making any serious push for Torain to win that award above, or frankly, any other award.  Torain didn't play in two of four games this year (he wasn't even on the roster until Week 3), he can't pass block, and he hasn't been particularly valuable in any capacity, as most of his damage was done against a Philadelphia run defense that has performed on the wrong side of 'poor' this season.  Ryan Torain is not a particularly special player or one that is hard to find, granted that Torain was "discovered" in 2008 by Mike Shanahan, and was freely available as of this September.

He's also a player the Redskins cannot do without.

The reason that he had so much success against Philadelphia is because there's a common thread in all recent victories against the Eagles.  The Eagles defensive coaching staff -- from Jim Johnson to Sean McDermott -- respects the abilities of WR Santana Moss perhaps a bit too much.  We beat them in Philadelphia in 2008, and Moss was coming off a 130 yard day against the Dallas Cowboys.  So the Eagles will scheme to take Moss away, who they believe to be our most dangerous player.  It always comes back to bite them.  But hey, Moss didn't have a catch in this game, so it's not that their intended defensive scheme was unsuccessful.

Their desire to contain Moss resulted in three long coverage breakdowns in their secondary where Anthony Armstrong (twice), and Fred Davis got downfield largely uncovered against the zone coverage preference the Eagles play.  It was also a big reason we were able to dictate to them in our stretch running game, but when you put on the tape, it was clear that aside from any mistakes and timidness that Philly's LBs had in this game, we just outexecuted them for four quarters on the lines.  The last time we had a rushing attack this dominant, we were playing at the Linc back in 2008.

Torain's emergence is not to say that Portis' groin injury doesn't make him a significant loss.  Torain is not good enough to replace Clinton Portis in the line-up.  But one thing that will happen due to Portis' injury is that this team is going to start to more closely resemble a Mike Shanahan coached football team where there is no lead back, and there is great productivity out of relative unknowns.  I know this because I see our run blockers finally getting after the opposing team's fronts with an aggressiveness I haven't seen in years, and, well, all of our backs are relative unknowns.  Hence, productive running from unknowns is more of an observation than a prediction.

Still, even with that aggressiveness and dominance up front, there were only 17 offensive points scored in this game.  Donovan McNabb has been a liability in our last two games, one that we've had to overcome rather than win due to his play.  McNabb made a number of good plays in this game, two with his feet whenever Philadelphia's contain broke down, and he correctly diagnosed man coverage with no deep safety and beat an Eagles blitz to go up 14-0 in the first quarter.  Those were the good plays.  They were greatly exceeded by the poor plays.  It's a rare luxury to be able to run 2/3 of the time in the modern game, but we were able to.  I'd give McNabb an A- in this game at avoiding sacks, but a C- for the other facets of his game.  He hit the first deep throw to Anthony Armstrong, but his read on that play was easily defined (if not by the coverage, then certainly by Moss falling down).  It's not his fault that Armstrong didn't score on that play, sometimes, the turf monster will get you.

McNabb -- and I don't feel like I'm criticizing here, though I may be -- seems to make some easy plays look hard.  There was a third down and three play in the fourth quarter, where we needed to extend a drive.  I would have run it from that distance, but Kyle Shanahan called a play action bootleg pass.  We do a lot of those, you know.  The Eagles brought double unblocked pressure off of the weakside.  McNabb wouldn't have a lot of time to throw this -- but he didn't need a lot of time.  Chris Cooley was the first read on a frontside drag/window route, and he was open.  McNabb stepped up to threaten the line of scrimmage with an impressively athletic change of direction, threw on the move, and bounced the ball in to Cooley.  Fourth down.

That's not a particularly difficult throw to make.  Only an incredibly skilled passer could have made the move McNabb did and still delivered the ball, and I don't doubt that McNabb could deliver that ball 5 out of every 10 times.  But it's a drive ender on what should have been a routine conversion.

If you look at McNabb's numbers for the season, they are really pretty good.  Most of his attempts came in the Texans (woo!) and Rams games, and while McNabb might be hard pressed to throw for 15 offensive touchdowns this year (on pace for just 12 in 16 games), he's going to throw more TDs than INTs, and he's completing 58% of his passes, which is only about two completions below expectation, and he's brought a bunch of big plays, throwing for 7.9 yards per attempt with a lot of the same talent that Jason Campbell threw for just 7.1 yards per attempt.  McNabb has only been sacked 6 times in 4 games, and that's mostly because of McNabb's sense of timing of plays.  He's a ball holder, by nature, but the action doesn't appear to be unnecessary, and this system offers excellent timing mechanisms to plays, where as McNabb was more on his own in Philly.  If this is the "system quarterback" version of Donovan McNabb, I'm pretty happy with it, all things considered.  We've had just eight negative plays in the passing game in four games (6 sacks, 2 INTs), which is great efficiency.

But our passing TD rank has tanked since last year: almost 4.0% for Jason Campbell in 2009, and just 2.5% for McNabb in 2010, and scoring per game is down as well (despite having just 7 rushing TDs all of last year).  With the offense generating big plays at a much better rate than last year, it's interesting to point out that the reason all of our efficiency measures are up isn't because of any increased offensive production, it's because we've become more fundamentally sound and have limited our mistakes.  Right now, the passing game is big downfield plays, and little else.  Third down efficiency was improved against Philadelphia, this is likely just a product of regression to the mean.  The Redskins converted 6 of 12 third down passing attempts, which includes one McNabb scramble.  We'll probably be closer to this figure for the season than to what the troublesome figure of the first three games was.

All of this up to this point is fodder for the big point of this article: we need to be able to run the ball, still.  Look, a lot of offenses in the NFL can get away with just highly efficient passing games, and running essentially to kill the clock.  I hope to someday be in that class with Indianapolis and San Diego.  This Redskins team needs it's ground efficiency in order to win the NFC East.  We can go 7-9 on the back of our big play passing game.  10-6 is going to require a systematic efficiency to grabbing four to seven yard chunks on the ground.  Right now, we're an average rushing team, up from league-worst since Ryan Torain entered the lineup.  We can do better than that, I believe, even with our most efficient per-play runner sidelined for 4-6 weeks.

***

It's going to be a new era in Redskins' football next Sunday, which means it's hard to make a prediction for the Packers game.  The defense is going to give up passing yards in chunks.  We know this to be true.  Think about Aaron Rodgers' performance against the Bears.  That's the kind of performance we can expect to see against us.  We'll limit big plays, and they are going to go up and down the field against us.  If we can run the ball on their defense, and there's no reason to believe we can't, we can control the game and hold a lead for most of the game, even if the scoring totals get into the 20s and 30s per side.  I think it will be a lot like the Texans game.  At some point, we're going to ask the defense to stop Aaron Rodgers and win the game for us.  I really want to believe in them, but I'm going to cop out and suggest that no, we won't stop Rodgers at any point, but we'll be bailed out by a strip-sack-recovery trifecta by Brian Orakpo in the final minute and a half, saving victory.

Offensive Line Performance against the Eagles

Stephon Heyer showed in this game both how far he has come as a player (did you remember Trent Cole playing in this game?), and why we'd be foolish to buy into him as a long term solution (2 false starts, 1 holding penalty to take a TD away from us and the second false start give Philly a final possession).  I do think he doesn't make those mistakes at right tackle, but again, when we need him at left tackle, even if you can get him up to speed mentally and get a great game out of him, he still makes team killing mistakes in the fourth quarter and red zone.

Will Montgomery played RG in the second half of this game and was surprisingly not a complete disaster.

Casey Rabach had his best game of the season as a run blocker and a pass protector.  He usually plays pretty well against the Eagles: it's the Cowboys and Giants who have his number.

Artis Hicks had a good first half, but did not appear in the second half.  Derrick Dockery appeared only on special teams.

Kory Lichtensteiger did not have a good game, with multiple blown blocks and mediocre results in the rushing game.

Jammal Brown had a strong game in run blocking.  His pass protection was a mixed bag, which is an improvement.

Every problem that the Redskins defense encountered against the Rams a week ago showed up on film against the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 4.  Coincidently, the Redskins changed their defensive look going into this game, going with a lot of four man fronts without changing the essence of the defense.  For the second week in a row, they made a personnel change, with Lorenzo Alexander in the starting lineup for Andre Carter, and then bumping up Chris Wilson to play Alexander's former role in the defense.  They created a new look for Carter, which meant he would line up as a third down lineman in the nickel formation: a traditional defensive end in the 2-4-5 look.

This was a different front that the Eagles had to block than anything they had studied on tape to this point, but the results were essentially the same.  After four games, I'm ready to make a fairly declarative statement: The Redskins personnel is no better suited to the 4-3 than the 3-4 right now.  As a unit, they are caught somewhere in the middle of a defensive change right now, but going back is going to be no less painful than progressing towards a 3-4.  The problems with the defense are problems with the defense independent of what front you think they should be running, and whether you philosophically believe that a 4-3 is the quickest and most efficient way to get pressure on the QB, or whether you believe that the old model of lining up and hitting your opponent in the mouth is outdated, it's high time we all just meet in the middle.  The Redskins defense has issues.  It might be a worse defense overall than last year (there's still a lot of football left and the results have been too similar to make any statements one way or the other), but this isn't a 4-3 or a 3-4 issue.  The biggest difference is that we are now matching our defensive personnel to the offensive personnel, and man for a man, their are mismatches.

The biggest mismatch in this game for Philadelphia was LeSean McCoy on Rocky McIntosh in the passing game.  If you were excited that Brian Westbrook finally left the division after all these years of torching the Redskins, I can't say I blame you, but I have bad news.  LeSean McCoy is a back in the same mold with the same skill set and same rare natural ability that Westbrook had.  He had 174 yards of total offense on just 28 touches.  The good news: his 4.0 YPC average today was his worst showing of the season and dropped his YPC average for the year all the way to 5.5.  The bad news, of course, is that McCoy is already the most dynamic weapon in the NFC East, and is probably one of the best five backs in football after Adrian Peterson, Chris Johnson, and Frank Gore.  After that, I would put McCoy up against anyone in football at that position, including Maurice Jones-Drew.

McIntosh was helpless in this match-up, as he was burned all over the field.  More helpless was the Redskins defensive scheme against replacement FB Owen Schmitt, who was mostly uncovered by the Redskins zone schemes.  Best I can tell, when he went to the flat, one of the three cornerbacks was responsible for him, but didn't offer him the proper amount of respect with all the attention on Philadelphia's receivers, who were absolutely silent in this game: part of this was good coverage, but there was also an element of missed opportunities on Kolb.  Kolb played well overall, I thought, but wasn't really looking at the Redskins defense in terms of match-ups.  He was just trying to read if they were backing off and letting him go underneath, or if they were playing aggressive and forcing him to get the ball off on a timing throw.  This caused a couple of situations down the field where the Redskins poorly covered a receiver on a deeper route (15-25 yards).  Because Kolb wasn't diagnosing the coverage, he couldn't take advantage of these mistakes in pass coverage, even though his passing day was largely still efficient because he was "taking what the defense gave him."

All great quarterbacks diagnose the coverage that the defense is playing, but in Kolb's defense, Michael Vick didn't exactly have a great read on our coverage schemes either.  Vick properly diagnosed a cover two coverage for a throw down the seam to Brent Celek, but he just missed the throw.  Three plays later he went down and would not return.

The numbers by both Philadelphia QBs are a function less of the power of the Philly offense and more of what the Redskins were willing to give up.  In a sense, we dictated to the Eagles what we were going to let them do, which is why their backs have 60% of their total receiving yardage.  But it would help just a bit if we would actually be aware of their response to conservative game planning and actually wrapped up and tackled their backs in the open field.  This was a poor tackling game for the Redskins.  I'm not dissatisfied by the gameplan, but the execution of the plan was poor, and had the Eagles been a little more aggressive as an offense, we probably would have lost this game.

For one thing, blitzing the quarterback simply wasn't a big part of this gameplan.  We played mostly cover two defense, something we hadn't done since week one against Dallas.  We did not get as much pressure on the quarterbacks as I am used to seeing over the last 20 Redskin games.  Orakpo would have been silent in this game if he wasn't getting held by Jason Peters once a quarter.  Kedric Golston had his best game in the new defense, and Adam Carriker continues to play at a high level (though clearly, he brought something extra when playing the Rams).  Ma'ake Kemoeatu did not play many snaps in this game -- it was the first time that Albert Haynesworth was on the field more than him.  Haynesworth played a great game, taking advantage of the one on ones Philadelphia was blocking him with, though it wasn't a loaf-free day for big 92.  It was also his best game as a Redskin under Mike Shanahan.  Andre Carter actually had the lone sack in this game, after losing his starting job.  Chris Wilson made multiple nice plays, his best probably when he took on a double team at the nose/stand up A-gap 'backer position on a draw, and didn't move a foot, bouncing the play outside.  Haynesworth was held multiple times by Philly's OL.

The corners, Rogers and Hall, continue to play at a high level.  It took a few games, but Rogers is trusting his reads again and flying around and blanketing receivers, shutting down an entire side of the field...at least outside the numbers.  He still needs to remember to take off the oven mitts before the game starts, however.  Hall is reverting to form a bit in his coverage tendencies -- I just don't think you can expect a passive player to fly up and pop receivers and backs for a whole season -- but I still think he's having the best overall season of his NFL career.  Hall is an interesting project as a cover 2 corner.  He tried it in Oakland and was horrible at it.  This year, I actually think he's looked better playing cover 2 than any other coverage we have called.  One of the reasons that Kevin Kolb missed a wide open DeSean Jackson on a corner route on the last drive is because Hall disguised it as man coverage underneath, pulling off to the flat after a flustered, rushed Kolb had already decided that his underneath receiver was the open throw.  Jackson, of course, was wide open, but Kolb would have needed to extend the play to have seen it.

Phillip Buchanon's play left a lot to be desired in this game.  Buchanon has been good (not great) this year for us, but his coverage in this game was notably soft and he had little desire to make tackles after the catch.  His speed is an asset, but it's his only skill.  Kareem Moore was much better in this game, I thought.  I saw a little bit of a ballhawk in him, and Philly never challenged him in the second half.  However, between Buchanon, Landry, McIntosh, and to a lesser extent, Fletcher, there were plenty of holes in the zone for Philly to attack.  We might, ultimately, have benefitted from leaving their backs open underneath, or at least we might have if we could tackle a bit.  That's one place this defense absolutely excelled under Blache where it's struggling under Haslett: tackling.

A number of times, we tried to pass receivers off in the zone coverage, only for no one to be there to pass them off to.  Outside of Rogers, and maybe Fletcher, players just don't seem to grasp the idea of team defense.  These players still really want to play like individuals, and don't want to read an entire field full of receivers.  There's a lot of reading in our coverages, and I don't know how capable the current guys on the team are at these.  In the nickel defensive package, you have about three guys who are always in the right place (Rogers, Fletcher, Alexander), and then six guys who are just a mystery as to what you can depend on them for.  One player who is markedly better in space than last season is Brian Orakpo, but he's in coverage, far, far less. He's out there to hunt quarterbacks.

It's hard to see any improvement on the horizon in the coverage units.  Too many of the team's most indispensable defensive backs with the largest contracts (Landry, Hall, Buchanon) seem uncommitted to really excelling as a pass coverage team.  These players are unquestionably committed to stopping the run and laying out people with highlight reel hits, but you can clearly see why a team that was built around Shawn Springs and Sean Taylor and Ryan Clark and Marcus Washington was able to accomplish what they did on defense as a unit, and the vast contrast between that group and the equally talented Carlos Rogers, LaRon Landry, DeAngelo Hall, and Rocky McIntosh lead group which doesn't appear to share a similar set of defensive values.  It's a clearly similar level of physical toughness without the same mental toughness.

So you can understand why analyzing this group is so frustrating.  Two coordinators and three secondary coaches have now failed to make this group of first rounders into any semblance of a successful zone pass defense.  Sure if Carlos Rogers could catch, if LaRon Landry could cover, and if DeAngelo Hall would play without lapses in concentration, we could cover for our vast flaws as a team defense, but all of these things are necessary evils of having these guys as starters in your pass defense.

At this point, I'm just not sure what coaching can do for our pass defense.  We get fantastic pressure on quarterbacks with just a four man rush.  We may just need 2 or 3 new players on the back end, and a re-vamped bench for defensive backs.  The difference in this game against Philadelphia wasn't an improvement, it was that the Rams offense played us a lot tougher and a lot more aggressively than the Eagles did.  The Rams' offense looked better than the Eagles' did.

Defensive Plus/Minus

1. Carlos Rogers +3 (+3/-0)
2. LaRon Landry +3 (+3/-0)
3. DeAngelo Hall +1 (+2/-1)
4. Chris Wilson +1 (+1/-0)
5. Kedric Golston +1 (+2/-1)
6. Albert Haynesworth +1 (+2/-1)
7. Kareem Moore +1 (+1/-0)
8. Brian Orakpo +1 (+1/-0)
9. London Fletcher +1 (+2/-1)
10. Andre Carter +1 (+1/-0)
11. Adam Carriker +1 (+1/-0)
12. Lorenzo Alexander 0 (+2/-2)
13. Phillip Buchanon -2 (+0/-2)
14. Rocky McIntosh -2 (+2/-4)

What's this? What's this? Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder will be profiled on TV? Tonight? Our Dan Snyder?

Yup. Our Danny Snyder.

Dan Steinberg previewed tonight's 12-minute profile of Snyder on ESPN's video magazine E:60. The interview occurs in Snyder's Potomac, Maryland, home and will feature Redskins artifacts one might find in any fan's home, only nicer and more of them.

Snyder reached a low point last season along with the fortunes of the Redskins. His two-pronged response was to flush team management for better people and to flush his old handlers for competent public relations.

Apparently, that guy is Redskins senior vice president Tony Wyllie, hired in May 2010. Mr. Wyllie has been busy, because the challenge has been so large. Steinberg summarized the activity:

"This profile continues a recent trend in which Snyder has been considerably more visible. Just since training camp began, he's spoken at charity events, appeared on ESPN 980, sat down with two writers from Hogs Haven, gone live on CNBC, appeared in a Papa John's TV spot with Dallas owner Jerry Jones and another spot for NFL gear with his wife, scored the cover of Montgomery Life magazine and been profiled at length in Forbes magazine."

That Papa John commercial shows a smiling, friendly Daniel Snyder. The NFL Gear shows Snyder to be just one of the guys...in trouble with his woman like the rest of us. Snyder shows a flair for commercials. He should work on that. By the way, I'm sure that's Tanya (Mrs. Daniel) Snyder sitting with the man in that NFL Gear commercial.

I've been as critical of Snyder as anyone has. More so last year when his failings as an executive leader did the most damage to the Redskins. In any business, leadership counts most when the group is in crises. The Redskins lost the season before it began.

Snyder's initiative was to be expected. Wyllie has shown as much shrewdness on the p.r. front as Mike Shanahan has on the football side of the house.

The show comes at a good time, after a big win over the Eagles. More wins will help. So will a more accessible owner. Jerry Jones is as controversial as Snyder is. Where Jones is out front and accountable to Cowboys fans for his decisions, Snyder has been reclusive. That's only hurts Snyder.

Fans were prepared to think that an organizational mess was the source of last season's ticket scandal. That's when Snyder should have come forward to say that shouldn't have happened and I'm going to fix it. Instead, he sent the team's lawyer. Everything went downhill from there.

Daniel Snyder does not own the Redskins. He owns the franchise rights to sell us Redskins stuff. He's not dealing with customer loyalty. He's messing with fan allegiance. That makes him a semi-public official. He's accountable. Owning the franchise does not convey a right to mismanage the team. That applies to every owner of all old-line sports team embedded in their community's DNA.

The road to recovery for Snyder and the Redskins may be the story of the year.

"E:60" airs Tuesdays at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN from October 5 through November 9, 2010.

Related stories

Redeeming Daniel Snyder's Rep
Daniel Snyder Faces His Fans and Survives
What makes Daniel Snyder Tick?
Redskins.com, Snyder Featured on E:60 (with preview clip)
LaVar Arrington, A moment of clarity about Dan Snyder, and me