We’re all excited by the Eagles moves here in the last week. The team made impact acquisitions (Nnamdi Asomugha), solid acquisitions (Ronnie Brown), and even some smart gambles (Johnnie Lee Higgins). The Eagles added talent, experience, and guys hungry to win a Super Bowl. Heck, some of the players just want to win anything. Coming from Oakland has got to be weird. Analyst Brian Baldinger went up to Asomugha at Lehigh, shook his hand, and said “Welcome to the NFL”. Classic.

All these moves are great, but they don’t guarantee anything. We know from watching the Washington Redskins that winning the award for Best Offseason Moves doesn’t always translate to wins. Still, the moves will have impact. We’re a much different team than the Skins and the moves are quite different as well. Let’s talk about that.

I’m going to start with a quick list: Norv Turner, Mart Schottenheimer, Steve Spurrier, Joe Gibbs, Jim Zorn, and Mike Shanahan. These are the men who have coached the Skins since the late-90’s. None of them had a winning record in their time as coach. Clearly, I’m not counting Gibbs first stint in Washington. Much different organization back then.

Here’s a second list: Gus Frerotte, Trent Green, Brad Johnson, Tony Banks, Patrick Ramsey, Mark Brunell, Jason Campbell, and sadly Donovan McNabb. These are the primary starting QBs since the late-90’s.

Those two lists should tell you all you need to know about the Snyder era. It has been highly, highly dysfunctional. Change is the hallmark of his time as the Skins owner. Spurrier was going to save the organization. Then it was Gibbs. Then it was Shanahan, with McNabb as his veteran QB.

When it wasn’t coaches, it was players. Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, Jeff George, Laveranues Coles, Santana Moss, Jeremiah Trotter, and Mark Brunell were all “the answer” at some point. Heck, I probably left off a few guys. How crazy have things been? The Skins once traded Champ Bailey, an elite CB, for RB Clinton Portis. The Skins also threw in a 2nd round pick. They then gave Portis a huge contract. My head hurts just thinking about the stupidity of that deal.

Remember in Apocalypse Now when Captain Willard meets Colonel Kurtz? Willard says he was told that Kurtz’s methods were unsound.

“Well, are my methods unsound?”

“I don’t see any method, at all.”

That’s the Skins under Dan Snyder. No method, just madness.

There is no infrastructure. Who really runs the team? There have been a variety of personnel guys and GM types, but really the man in charge is Snyder. That would be fine if he was a football guy or if he listened to a wise advisor. That’s not the case. The man walking behind the man for most of the Snyder era was Vinny Cerrato. Since leaving the Skins he’s not exactly been fighting off NFL teams who were trying to hire him.

Players didn’t sign with the Skins to play for Norv Turner or Steve Spurrier or even Joe Gibbs. They came for the money. Their loyalty was to Snyder. He paid his stars big money. He developed friendships with them. When Schottenheimer was coach back in 2001, there was a mini-revolt. Bruce Smith and other veterans didn’t want any part of his old school practices. They had signed big deals and expected to be treated as the stars they were. The team started 0-5. Schottenheimer and the veterans finally got on the same page and the team finished 8-8. Marty was fired at the end of the season. Clearly, the players ran the show.

Things remained dysfunctional under Marty’s replacement, Steve Spurrier. My favorite Skins story of all time took place in 2003. Spurrier was sitting in on a Special Teams meeting. He started to criticize a player. Spurrier asked the player to respond. There was silence. Finally another player spoke up and told Spurrier that the other player had been cut that morning.

Can you imagine any other team in the NFL where a player would be cut midseason without the head coach knowing about it? One hand had no idea what the other was doing.

The Eagles and Skins are nothing alike. There is stability here. Reid has been coach since 1999. He got along very well with the previous GM, Tom Heckert. Reid gets along very well with current GM Howie Roseman. Owner Jeff Lurie lets his football guys run that side of the organization. He lets his business people run that side of the organization. Lurie approves of all major decisions, but never plays GM. He doesn’t second guess his GM and coach. He trusts them. And that enables them to trust him.

The Eagles are a team built through the draft. That has been the philosophy since Reid got here. Free agency is a tool, but it isn’t how you build a team. The 2011 Eagles are no different. This team isn’t being built through free agency. Holes are getting plugged. The core of this team came through the drafts of 2005-2011. Those guys are Eagles players. They were developed by Andy Reid. They know the Eagles way of doing things. The players have experience one losing season (2005) and one .500 season (2007). That’s it. They are used to winning.

Free agents coming in this summer aren’t here to save the team. They aren’t here to turn the team around. Asomugha would have to ask Dimitri Patterson for advice on how to handle playoff football. The players added are here to help push the Eagles from good/very good to great.

The Skins have had 3 winning seasons in the Snyder era. In 1999 they were 10-6. In 2005 they were 10-6. IN 2007 they were 9-7. The Skins were looking for players and coaches to come in and save the day. They needed the offseason moves to be what turned them from an average team to a good team. There was no patience. There was no building. The Skins wanted a quick fix.

Reid made it clear when he was hired that he wanted to build a “football program”. I’d never heard that phrase used in regard to the NFL at that time, but thought it was brilliant. Reid wanted to win, but also wanted to keep an eye on the future. There had to be a balance. Football is the ultimate team game. You can’t throw all your resources into a couple of star players. What if they bomb? What if they get hurt? You must build a team and mix in some big stars.

The Eagles have added a lot of big names in the last week, but remember what these guys are here to do: their job. No player is coming here to be the “it guy”. The Eagles aren’t trying to solve problems with star power. They are going to put the new players in positions to succeed. The players are part of a team. Asomugha makes life easier on the DL. Jason Babin and Cullen Jenkins should make life easier on Asomugha. Everything is part of a plan. These aren’t splashy moves to grab headlines. These moves make sense. They are designed to work on the field, not just as offseason headlines.

2011 is an anomaly. The Eagles felt they had a Super Bowl contender already. The team needed some pieces to put it over the top, thus the moves. The great thing about the moves is that the Eagles didn’t just blindly throw huge money at the players. Asomugha got a mega-deal (although less than was expected). The other players got reasonable deals. There will be no Haynesworth situations where the team feels obligated to keeping a player because they invested so much money in him. If the new players don’t perform well, the Eagles can cut them and move on. Some of the guys signing for just a year actually came here at a bargain rate. The bizarre nature of the 2011 offseason had a big hand in that.

Meanwhile in D.C., to Snyder’s credit, he seems to have finally seen the light somewhat. He’s backed off and is now letting Shanahan and Bruce Allen run the team. I don’t agree with all their decisions (John Beck…what the heck?), but they are running the team like an actual football organization for the first time in years.

The Eagles didn’t borrow the Skins playbook. The moves are getting headlines, but they really are nothing like what Washington did over the years. The Eagles were already winning. The foundation was already in place. The team has lots of picks in the upcoming draft. There is no “selling out to win now”. And you can bet no player will ever go behind Andy Reid’s back to talk to Jeff Lurie. They know better. Lots of new names and splashy moves were made, but this is still Andy Reid’s team. Big Red rules the roost. Or aerie.

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Out of curiosity I started jotting down starters added by WAS through free agency. I just did the first few years of the Snyder era. Wow.

1999 – QB Brad Johnson, FB Larry Centers, DE Marco Coleman

2000 – QB Jeff George, DE Bruce Smith, CB Deion Sanders, S Mark Carrier, S Sam Shade

2001 – QB Tony Banks, OG Ben Coleman, OG Dave Szott, PR Eric Metcalf

2002 – OG Brendan Stai, DE Renaldo Wynn, DT Darryl Gardner, MLB Jeremiah Trotter, LB Jessie Armstead

2003 – RB Trung Canidate, WR Laveranues Coles, OG Randy Thomas, DE Reagan Upshaw, RS Chad Morton

2004 – QB Mark Brunell, *RB Clinton Portis, OT Ray Brown, DT Cornelius Griffin, DE Phillip Daniels, LB Marcus Washington, CB Shawn Springs

Washington had some pretty good players of their own. Why the heck did they let Antonio Pierce leave? Keep guys like him and quit signing outsiders.