GM Scot McCloughan Is No Longer Involved In Washington's Decision Making

I’ve said this before, but lets just reiterate it here: Washington’s football team is an absolute mess. On Wednesday we learned from the Washington Post the team’s general manager, Scot McCloughan, is not in the building today and from ESPN that he is no longer involved with the team’s decision making and his future with the franchise is up in the air.

McCloughan wasn’t at the combine last week and his agent will reportedly meet with Washington on Wednesday to discuss his position with the team. The GM hasn’t even been involved in the decisions to give head coach Jay Gruden a contract extension, re-sign tight end Vernon Davis and use the franchise tag on Kirk Cousins.

While McCloughan did set the team’s free agent board and set up many of the team’s “personnel priorities,” he has not been involved in actually executing the plan. Meanwhile, reports persist that Washington is considering potential replacements for him. Eric Schaffer, the team’s general counsel and VP of football administration and team president Bruce Allen are handling negotiations with free agents.

Here’s my question: couldn’t the team have figured this out weeks ago? Free agency is starting, as are preparations for the 2017 NFL Draft, and Washington doesn’t have a general manager involved. It’s utterly ridiculous.

McCloughan was hired in January of 2015 and he’s helped turn the franchise around. But in the middle of a huge offseason for Washington — one in which they have about $40 million in salary cap space — he’s out of the mix. It feels like he’s being frozen out and this likely won’t end well.