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interesting article on the Skins color system of evaluation from Dan Steinberg...
If you’ve listened to Scot McCloughan’s radio and television appearances this summer — and I think I’ve heard them all — you’ll have noticed how he sometimes talks about players as reds and blues. Reds are good, solid, reliable contributors. Blues are superstars. Every team wants many blues, of course, and they’re the ones who will attract the most headlines. But McCloughan is obsessed with amassing reds.
“When you start building a good roster, it’s not about [stockpiling] the blues — which are the Pro Bowl players, and everybody has a couple of them — but it’s the reds who are the core players, that are quality starters or quality backups, that are good [special] teams players,” McCloughan said on ESPN 980 during the first week of Redskins training camp. “That’s how you build your roster. And a lot of that comes from the person — who he is — not the talent that he has.”
It turns out there are more than reds and blues in this system; there are also yellows and greens and purples. And it turns out this system isn’t some slapdash Washington production; it’s something borrowed from Hall of Fame NFL executive Ron Wolf, for whom McCloughan once worked in Green Bay.
[McCloughan says backup tackle Nsekhe could start for half the NFL’s teams]
It also turns out this system is an undercurrent of Washington’s entire pro-based personnel system. College players are rated by numbers, but pro players are assigned colors. When Redskins execs call up information about a player, the page is colored based on the player’s current ranking. Players also can get either an up or down arrow, showing whether they’re ascending or descending the color chart. (“A young guy, say Preston Smith, say he’s a red; we’ll put an arrow up, in my opinion, because he has a chance to be a blue at some point,” McCloughan explained.)
And McCloughan constantly keeps these colors in mind when assessing his team. He said he wants a roster with at least 35 players at the red level or higher. He said the Redskins have added probably 10 red players over the past year. And he said he needs another 10 red players to get this roster where it needs to be.
“Because the reds, it’s not just a quality starter, but it’s depth,” McCloughan said on 980. “And you’re going to have injuries, like we’ve already had now, and we had last year. That’s part of the business. But it’s always a work in progress.”
[Redskins mailbag: Does Cousins resent his deal? Could Murphy move again?]
Asked to name the team’s blue players, he ticked off Trent Williams, DeSean Jackson, Kirk Cousins and Josh Norman, adding that there were a couple more.
“But the blues are gonna come in hopefully through the draft process,” he said, explaining how his 49ers found blue players like Frank Gore, Patrick Willis and Joe Staley. Jackson and Norman, on the other hand, came to Washington via free agency.
(Cousins being a blue player suggests he’s a guy who should be part of the future, despite the franchise tag he’ll play under this season. But McCloughan didn’t want to talk about that.
“It’s just it’s a big business, as you guys are well aware,” he said. “And we just couldn’t come to terms, but right now, I’m not worried about that anymore. I’m worried about this team.”)
McCloughan, of course, started talking about this system before he even took over the team’s personnel department. He even mentioned it during his introductory news conference.
“Everybody wants to shoot for blues, but there’s only a handful of blues every year,” he said then. “You shoot for the reds in rounds two, three, four and five [of the draft]. If you start getting reds in the sixth and seventh rounds, that’s when you’re making your heyday, because they’re making the roster and helping you on game day.”
The GM said this week that depending on injuries and roster needs, there might be a couple purples — the lowest color category — on this team’s final roster. But he will keep the goal of 35 reds-and-higher, even though “that’s hard to do.”
“It’s about the culture,” he said on SiriusXM NFL Radio. “And we’re building the culture where, listen, you’ve got your blues that are gonna be Pro Bowlers, like Trent Williams and that kind of stuff. But we’re gonna build with the reds. And that’s what we’re getting.”
If you’ve listened to Scot McCloughan’s radio and television appearances this summer — and I think I’ve heard them all — you’ll have noticed how he sometimes talks about players as reds and blues. Reds are good, solid, reliable contributors. Blues are superstars. Every team wants many blues, of course, and they’re the ones who will attract the most headlines. But McCloughan is obsessed with amassing reds.
“When you start building a good roster, it’s not about [stockpiling] the blues — which are the Pro Bowl players, and everybody has a couple of them — but it’s the reds who are the core players, that are quality starters or quality backups, that are good [special] teams players,” McCloughan said on ESPN 980 during the first week of Redskins training camp. “That’s how you build your roster. And a lot of that comes from the person — who he is — not the talent that he has.”
It turns out there are more than reds and blues in this system; there are also yellows and greens and purples. And it turns out this system isn’t some slapdash Washington production; it’s something borrowed from Hall of Fame NFL executive Ron Wolf, for whom McCloughan once worked in Green Bay.
[McCloughan says backup tackle Nsekhe could start for half the NFL’s teams]
It also turns out this system is an undercurrent of Washington’s entire pro-based personnel system. College players are rated by numbers, but pro players are assigned colors. When Redskins execs call up information about a player, the page is colored based on the player’s current ranking. Players also can get either an up or down arrow, showing whether they’re ascending or descending the color chart. (“A young guy, say Preston Smith, say he’s a red; we’ll put an arrow up, in my opinion, because he has a chance to be a blue at some point,” McCloughan explained.)
And McCloughan constantly keeps these colors in mind when assessing his team. He said he wants a roster with at least 35 players at the red level or higher. He said the Redskins have added probably 10 red players over the past year. And he said he needs another 10 red players to get this roster where it needs to be.
“Because the reds, it’s not just a quality starter, but it’s depth,” McCloughan said on 980. “And you’re going to have injuries, like we’ve already had now, and we had last year. That’s part of the business. But it’s always a work in progress.”
[Redskins mailbag: Does Cousins resent his deal? Could Murphy move again?]
Asked to name the team’s blue players, he ticked off Trent Williams, DeSean Jackson, Kirk Cousins and Josh Norman, adding that there were a couple more.
“But the blues are gonna come in hopefully through the draft process,” he said, explaining how his 49ers found blue players like Frank Gore, Patrick Willis and Joe Staley. Jackson and Norman, on the other hand, came to Washington via free agency.
(Cousins being a blue player suggests he’s a guy who should be part of the future, despite the franchise tag he’ll play under this season. But McCloughan didn’t want to talk about that.
“It’s just it’s a big business, as you guys are well aware,” he said. “And we just couldn’t come to terms, but right now, I’m not worried about that anymore. I’m worried about this team.”)
McCloughan, of course, started talking about this system before he even took over the team’s personnel department. He even mentioned it during his introductory news conference.
“Everybody wants to shoot for blues, but there’s only a handful of blues every year,” he said then. “You shoot for the reds in rounds two, three, four and five [of the draft]. If you start getting reds in the sixth and seventh rounds, that’s when you’re making your heyday, because they’re making the roster and helping you on game day.”
The GM said this week that depending on injuries and roster needs, there might be a couple purples — the lowest color category — on this team’s final roster. But he will keep the goal of 35 reds-and-higher, even though “that’s hard to do.”
“It’s about the culture,” he said on SiriusXM NFL Radio. “And we’re building the culture where, listen, you’ve got your blues that are gonna be Pro Bowlers, like Trent Williams and that kind of stuff. But we’re gonna build with the reds. And that’s what we’re getting.”
