Price Per Head Betting -- Very Strange Around Redskins, and Ready to Get Worse
As most Price Per Head bettors are aware, the Washington Redskins started Kirk Cousins at quarterback against the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday, as Robert Griffin III has been "shut down," and the best way to describe Cousins' effort would be to say that it was superb in the first half, but not so much in the second.
When the Redskins scored a touchdown with time running out, they went for a two-point conversion, which may have been quite surprising for many.
They failed, just as they have been failing all season.
A question for our WagerHome.com customers to ponder:
Will it get ugly in the off-season for Shanahan and the Redskins?
This is what we had been hearing this past week:
* Owner Dan Snyder would fire Shanahan except for the fact that there is a $13 million buyout involved with taking the ax to Shanahan and members of his staff, and he is very hesitant to do that.
* Robert Griffin III has told certain "sources," who in turn relayed it to reporters, that he fully expects to be playing for another coach next season.
* Oh by the way, Griffin is reportedly "furious" about being sat down for the final three games of the season. Supposedly he and Shanahan do not even acknowledge each other when they pass each other in the hallway at the Redskins' facility. That may surprise our PPH football bettors, but that's the way it is.
* Snyder and Griffin have a "special" relationship, to the point where Shanahan considered quitting late last year because it was getting in the way of his "authority."
* Kyle Shanahan, the offensive coordinator who has been given an extraordinary amount of power by his father, is ready to bail out to get away from Dad, with one of the reasons that he had "zero involvement" in the decision to bench Griffin and go with Cousins.
* Shanahan is said to have made the decision to bench Griffin as a way to force Snyder's hand, which would, as mentioned, mandate that the owner lay out money for the buyout.
That brings us to the matter of the two-point conversion the team went for near the conclusion of Sunday's game against Atlanta. It would seem an unusual move; one that was applauded by many players because it showed that the coach had "confidence" that they could make the play and get it done.
But it's probably a little different than that, as football sportsbook bettors at WagerHome.com may sense. .
A decision that daring is made by a coach who (a) Has so much confidence and security in his OWN position - not necessarily his team's - that he can do so without drawing the ire of his owner, or (b) Is interested in taking a dive and/or forcing his owner to make a move.
The answer may depend on whether there is any truth to the story that part of Shanahan's motivation for sitting Griffin was "an attempt by Shanahan to provoke Snyder to fire him this week to avoid such a benching of Griffin," as Mark Maske had written in the Washington Post earlier in the week.
After all, if Shanahan was ready to go that far, going for two when an extra point would have put his team into overtime would have been something mild.
There is probably little question that the act of keeping Griffin out of games itself isn't something that should prompt so much controversy among football bettors and fans. The season is effectively over; if the quarterback got hurt everyone would be kicking themselves and it does make sense to get him started in a full off-season of rehab. As for the way his teammates would look at him now, well, it's not as if Griffin asked for all this to happen.
Of course, we're a little more than a year removed from another strange decision in the nation's capital. No, we don't mean voting for Obamacare, but rather, the Washington Nationals sitting Stephen Strasburg for the playoffs. In that case, it was a team shutting down a starter so as not to overwork him before the games that really DID matter, after he got a $15 million bonus just so that he COULD help the team in games like that. Oh please, don't get us started....
Snyder, who doesn't necessarily have the reputation of being a hands-off owner, has stayed out of the area of personnel, and supposedly has that as part of his contract with Shanahan. You couldn't blame him, though, if he approved of the Griffin benching if only to preserve his quarterback for the next coach, whoever that is going to be.
Meanwhile, as the Redskins approach this week's game, where they are a 2.5-point underdog at WagerHome to the Dallas Cowboys (another beleaguered team with a coach under assault) this is looking more and more like an atmosphere that exists among some NBA teams, past and present, where the star player, more often than not, has the power to get the coach fired.
What do you think? Join with the community and let us know:
