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Vinny Cerrato: Doofus In Chief By Steve Czaban on December 17, 2008 Sometimes people ask me: "So what's really so bad about Vinny Cerrato as the Redskins football operations guy?" Well, here's about the best summary anybody can give. And while I would love to take credit, I deflect fully to Dan Steinberg at the DC Sports Bog for fleshing this all out. (Note: Soon, we will have full HTML capablity here, and so I will then link to his site directly. Bear with us..) Steinberg has been on point in mocking the fact that Cerrato actually wastes two days a week hosting a radio show on our home station, ESPN980. In addition to the fact that it doesn't help the Redskins one iota in terms of acquiring talent, or winning games, Vinny apparently has the time to be a shill for the team on their subsidiary radio station. Of course, the Redskins bill the show as "Inside the Red Zone" purporting to give you "unfiltered" and high level analysis and insight into how the team operates. Well, if that's the case, then such "insight" is enough to make Redskin fans vomit in their mouth. Steinberg picks it up from here..... Here's the key point: Cerrato said drafting according to need can be a way to sink your team. "You can't just go take a need," was the exact quote. "The way that you can screw up your team is if you go draft a need, you're gonna get a bunch of guys at those positions but you're not gonna be happy with the results." And as an example, he pointed to the poor rookie seasons of two defensive ends who some Skins fans wanted: Miami's Phillip Merling, and Arizona's Calais Campbell. "I mean, it came down to Phillip Merling, people say that we maybe should have taken," Cerrato said. "He has seven tackles right now for Miami." Damning. Except it's not even close to accurate. When Cerrato said this, Merling actually had 23 tackles (17 solo) and a sack, according to NFL.com. For a defensive end who has started just two games, that's actually not too shabby. By way of comparison, Jason Taylor, who's banking $8 million and cost the team two draft picks, had 22 tackles (15 solo) and 1 sack at the time Cerrato offered this explanation, although Taylor did get three tackles and another half-sack yesterday. Andre Carter, the team's most productive end, had 30 tackles (18 solo) and 3 sacks at the time Cerrato was knocking Merling's production. "I think Calais has like 11 tackles," Cerrato said last week about another DE possibility. Not so. At the time, Calais Campbell had 19 tackles and a forced fumble. He added four more tackles yesterday, giving him 23 for the season, two fewer than Taylor. His one forced fumble is more than the entire Skins defensive line has contributed. I'm not saying whom Cerrato should have drafted, and I'm not saying Merling or Campbell are, or will be, stars. But if you're speaking directly to your fans, providing them with "inside information" while justifying your past decisions, and you falsify facts to this incredible a degree....well, even if you don't like drafting according to need, you might want to pick up a fact-checker next season. REACT: And there you go, folks. Vinny Cerrato! Take a bow, please. Read More at the Article Archive You can post a comment about this article on czabe.blogspot.com