I generally can’t stand consultants.  They get called in when there is an issue, say whatever it is the person who is paying them wants to hear, collects ridiculous sums of money, and then disappears without having solved anything but helped whoever hired them look like they were doing something.  My favorite consulting story involves a consultant telling the company that hired them that they needed to hire her full-time and pay her a lot of money.  Of course they did, and the rest is a history chock full of ridiculous overspending and horrible management.  So when your favorite football team hires a consultant mid-season to help with the offense?  Oy.

The Redskins hired Sherm Lewis, a long-time assistant coach who has been out of a job for 5 years, to be a “fresh set of eyes” for the offense.  They might as well have fired Jim Zorn on the spot and been done with it.  The team has done this twice before under Dan Snyder: they hired Bill Arnsbarger to help Norv Turner (fired in mid-season the next year) and hired Joe Bugel and Foge Fazio to help Steve Spurrier (resigned at the end of the year).  Of course, both Bugel and Fazio were then brought on full-time.

So what does this mean?  It means Zorn is done, end of the year at latest.  The loss this week to the Panthers still hasn’t happened, but it will, and that will be kiss of death.  Jason Campbell will be gone after the season, along with a lot of high-cost and aged players like Portis and Chris Samuels.  The Redskins will go into full-blown rebuild mode.  They will be a bottom tier franchise for at least 2 years.  But hey, this consultant just might come in and make all that go away.

Whatever.  Consultants are only good at one thing: covering management’s ass.  “Look, we tried everything we could!  We paid $170,000 to consultants to help replace an $80,000 employee who wanted too much money!  We’re leaders!  We’re smart!”

Oy.