I'm sorry, but I think he treats his players like crap. This is an example from this quite excellent La Canfora blog piece:
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This Archuleta thing is not going to end pretty, I fear (has there ever been amicable splits since Snyder took over? LaVar, Champ, Pierce, Coles - notice a pattern?).. This one has LaVar written all over it, only this time I don't see the player playing nice and leaving money on the table to get out. Has Adam had a poor season? We all know the answer. Now, who in the secondary has not?
I'm sorry but this smells personal to me, when you give Vernon Fox all the snaps after Troy Vincent goes down. They are making an example out of Archuleta, but Sean Taylor and Carlos Rogers - the recent top 10 picks - never get yanked for even a single play when they get burned repeatedly.
They wanted Arch Deluxe so badly they went crazy with the money. No one made them do that. For Williams to try to tell me he's looking at Vernon Fox for the future on the same day they don't give a snap to Rocky McIntosh - again - doesn't fly. Archuleta is paying for the sins of the entire defense. He's the fall guy. But with all they have invested in him, I would have thought Sunday, with Vincent going down, would have been the perfect chance to try to rebuild his confidence a bit and throw him back in there. Maybe build some good will for the future.
Nah. He rotted on the bench. Archuleta came thisclose to saying how he really feels to me Sunday, then thought better of it. But there are some very real issues between him and the coaching staff - he is not alone - and after three years of the defensive coaching staff jumping on players and being brutally frank in their assessments, you wonder if that starts to get old. Particularly when the coaches, and their schemes, no longer appear infallible.
These are grown men. Why treat them like crap?
It's our third season, and our defense has regressed, dramatically. He's run off players (Pierce and Clark, in particular), thinking he could replace them with backups or free agents. That hasn't worked out tremendously.
And then I come to this:
Which brings me to the lack of intensity. When multiple players of your defense concede after a huge loss that the opposing offense ran them over, played at a high tempo and wanted it more, you've got massive, gaping, crisis-level problems. Your D sets the tone, establishes your identity, and must bring a punishing attitude to work. This defense has nothing close to a swagger. I asked Williams about what I saw as a flat performance after the game, particularly the ridiculous 14, play 85 yard, 9 minute drive they gave up right after JC gave the Skins a 10-3 lead, and he said the team was fired up on the sidelines and was playing with emotion.
Sorry, that doesn't pass my eye test. And when guys like Griffin throw around phrases like "We laid down," you just might be cooked.
In 2004 I saw a defense that would run through walls for this coaching staff. They certainly have not played that way in a long, long time.
Have the players quit on Williams?
