No more big, splashy deals for marquee names and a king's ransom contract. It would be back to basics -- meat and potatoes moves for decent money to reassert the fundamentals the team had lacked for some years.
They signed a whole new defensive line in the course of a week before turning a glaring eye to their secondary unit, a group that allowed 35 passing touchdowns last season, the most in football. Step 1 complete, then. Step 2 -- how to incorporate a number of different men into a single team, and, most importantly, how to translate their winning spirit and history into winning play.
It's not something that comes easily, and it certainly isn't a science.
"You can't just bring it in," said cornerback Chris Culliver, one of McCloughan's additions this offseason.
"It's a repetition thing. You have to be out there every day. You have to be out there. It's not just you wake up out the bed and just get to hop out and everything's perfect."
Team building is a thing as intricate and organic as nation building. The main pieces can be added and a philosophy taught, but the majority of actual work to that end must come from within. It's a natural process.
Teaching lessons and personal directives help, but all good leadership comes by example and imitation. It was that winning example that McCloughan sought to add to the mix to be imitated. Culliver, nose tackle Terrance Knighton, and safety Dashon Goldson all have championship game experience with the 49ers, Broncos, and Seahawks, respectively.
A fair amount of old-fashioned luck doesn't hurt, either.
"It's hard to win, it's hard to win in this business," Culliver said. "It's kind of like a saying coach [Jim] Harbaugh used to say, 'Everything pretty much has to go perfect for us to win the game.' And if it do, it do. You know, if it's a tight game about two points, three games, and if it goes in our favor, then it does."
But the Redskins still face a roster, of which the majority have not won consistently. The task at hand is to fundamentally change the attitudes and habits of those players to those of their newest additions.
The hard part of which will be to keep doing it, for an extended amount of time.
"Just giving the guys the outlooks and just breaking down -- I can go on and on," Culliver said of his and others' newfound role. "You're doing good early in the first quarter or something like that, but you know, just because you did good early in the first quarter, the game's not over."
It's true not only of actual games, but practices and workouts, too.
"You have got to keep competing, keep being patient, keep obviously focused and using your technique and things like that," he added.
"Just keep working, you know?"
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