One of the main points of the Stop Shuler Manifesto is that the Redskins are finally getting things right, and having Heath Shuler back in town could screw all that up. Yes, we know, it’s not really deep stuff, like proposing to give the workers the control of the means of production or anything. Nonetheless, today, after watching the Redskins fall to 2-5 and not have any aspect of the team look good, we’re starting to wonder if there is a slight flaw in our theory. Maybe the Redskins aren’t any better off now than when Shuler was on the team. Except for two seasons (1999 & 2005), the team has pretty much looked bad for the last 14 years. Perhaps Shuler was just one of many things that went wrong, like Norv Turner, Steve Spurrier, Deion Sanders, Jeff George, Michael Westbrook, Tony Banks, and so on and so on.

A reporter once asked us if, we were Charlie Casserly back in 1994, what would we do? You could say "take Trent Dilfer" — he at least was competent to win Super Bowl, even if he didn’t contribute much. You could say "trade the pick" — but who knows what you would get. We said, "draft Peyton Manning." Now, we’re pretty sure you can’t pick a guy and wait four years for him to graduate (we know that the Celtics did a similar thing with Larry Bird, drafting him his junior year and waiting a year until he was able to play), but it would have been the right move, with the benefit of hindsight. Watching Manning take apart the Redskins (and appear in about 96 commercials) today, it does make us wonder.

Or, we suppose, we could decide to believe that EVERYTHING that has gone wrong with the Redskins since 1994 is Heath Shuler’s fault, and maybe even start talking about "The Shuler Curse."

We’ll have to sleep on it.