The Redskins offensive line has been getting a lot of attention lately — all of it negative. It will look a lot different this weekend, though, with LT Chris Samuels out for the season, backup OL Justin Geisinger out for the season and RT Jon Jansen out for at least one game. Stephon Heyer steps in for Samuels on the left side, Jason Fabini plays on the right side for Jansen and expect to see 3rd round pick Chad Rinehart activated for the first time. The team also signed tackle Devin Clark and guards Will Montgomery and D’Anthony Batiste for depth — they hope.
“No matter who’s out there, we’ve just got to get it done,” right guard Randy Thomas said. “We can’t make excuses and we can’t wait and hope it gets better, we can’t worry about what’s happened in the past, because we’ve just got to block ‘em up when the play gets called and keep on going. You hate to lose your guys, yeah, but you know injuries are part of this game. You can’t let that stop you.”
An agressive marketing campaign by the Redskins has put a bunch of their players in the lead of the fan voting portion of the Pro Bowl.
Saints QB Drew Brees received the most votes overall, followed by Jets QB Brett Favre and Giants QB Eli Manning. RB Clinton Portis (fourth) and TE Chris Cooley (10th, though second among tight ends behind the Cowboys’ Jason Witten) were in the top 10.
Other Redskins who led in voting at their positions are LB London Fletcher, FB Mike Sellers, T Chris Samuels, DT Cornelius Griffin, SS Chris Horton, FS LaRon Landry, special teams player Khary Campbell and PK Shaun Suisham, who leads the league in missed field goals.
Pro Bowl teams will be announced Dec. 16, with fan votes counting for one-third of the total, along with voting by coaches and players.
Let’s hope this ridiculous campaign by the team fails and players like LaRon Landry, Mike Sellers, Khary Campbell, Cornelius Griffin and — most especially — Shaun Suisham do not make the Pro Bowl. None of those players deserve to be in Hawaii and Suisham is lucky to still be employed by an NFL team. This crap is just typical of Dan Snyder’s Redskins — it’s all about selling. Marketing is where Dan Snyder made his money and it is clearly what he thinks is important. But marketing won’t win a playoff game and that’s the thing Snyder just doesn’t understand. Even if all these Redskins do make the Pro Bowl, Snyder won’t have convinced any knowledgable fans that those are the best NFC players at their positions. All he will have accomplished is convinced everyone that the Pro Bowl is a silly farce and that the Redskins are a silly franchise.
Dan Snyder’s Redskins: All sizzle, no steak. Go away, Dan. Seriously — just go away. You’re embarrassing.
Post columnist Leonard Shapiro writes sensibly that the Redskins and its head coach are a work in progress and shouldn’t necessarily be considered a failure if they can’t beat the NFL’s top teams. That’s a good point. I predicted 8-8 for the Redskins this season so I can’t be too upset with 7-6 right now, even if it is quite a fall from 6-2. What concerns me is not the win total, but whether or not Jim Zorn is learning from his mistakes [indeed, if he even thinks he's made any mistakes] and is capable of growing as a coach. We learned in his first season as a head coach, back in 1981, that Joe Gibbs was capable of admitting a mistake [relying on a pass-first offense that he had run in San Diego] and growing as a coach. He went on to build one of the most powerful and prolific offenses in NFL history, built around a bruising running game and a dominating offensive line. Gibbs changed and grew. Can Zorn do the same? We don’t know yet.
Here is what The Li’l General’s errand boy thinks of the Zorn-Portis dust-up:
“I think it’s frustration. I mean, go back to like the Giants opening game, when Clinton said some stuff then. I think it was frustration. I think we all get frustrated. And you’d like Clinton just, and I told him, just don’t frustrate to everybody. I told him, I said, ‘Clinton, I do a radio show.’ I said, ‘I’m like a punching bag on a Monday after we lose for two hours.’ I said, ”You know, you’ve just got to grin and bear it. That’s part of the deal.’
“It’s just the frustrating part, and then he’s got to go on the radio and then they ask him a bunch of questions and then sometimes you get caught and say things, but everything’s fine. I mean, Clinton’s out there practicing, busting his butt. You know, he’s working hard, he and Jim get along fine. The media makes it a lot bigger than it is, and the thing about it is, you know, we’re a team, and it’s all in one.”
Thanks for the thoughts, Vinny. Does Cerrato know anything about the situation? Who knows? He’ll comment, though, because he’s a radio personality now. Thank God for that!
Not practicing this morning: MLB London Fletcher, SS Chris Horton, RT Jon Jansen. CB Shawn Springs is on the field and practicing.
What do wide receivers actually do during practice? My initial guess: Run around a lot and catch the occasional pass. [If they're Devin Thomas and Malcolm Kelly, the catch the VERY occasional pass.] But Redskinsblog decided to ask an actual Redskins receiver, Antwaan Randle-El, what he does during practice.
So what, exactly, do you wide receivers do in practice?
“Run. Run, run, run. That’s all we do.”
Run the passing tree? Run routes? Are you learning something new each week?
“We’re not learning something new, per se, or something that we haven’t done. Sometimes we might get a defense we haven’t gone against, and we run routes against it, or we account for something new that they might be doing. But for the most part, we just run. We run, we run, we run.”
You run in position groups, one-on-one drills….
“One-on-one drills, individuals … you run in seven-on-seven drills, we run when it’s a run play. We run. That’s all we do.”
What changes from week to week for you guys? Anything?
“In terms of running? No, we just run.”
There you go. Wide receivers run a lot during practice. Knowledge is power, people. Knowledge is power.
Discuss it.
Possibly Related Posts:
- The Calder Cup
- Belanger inks one year deal with Caps
- Redskins Link Dump (8/9)
- Nats trade Christian Guzman to Rangers
- El-Bashir leaving Post Caps beat
FanSided
NFLMocks.com
Loading ...
