The Redskins Blog

An Added Benefit To The Reading Event For Kevin Barnes

So yesterday wasn’t just the Redskins Read-a-Million Celebration; it was also rookie CB Kevin Barnes‘s 23rd birthday, and B.J. Corriveau of the Charitable Foundation had the assembled kids serenade him with a bracing round of Happy Birthday.

You can see in the video how enthusiastic rookie OL (and — like Barnes — Maryland guy) Edwin Williams is when the kids get Barnes’s name correct, so I thought he might’ve coached them on it. “No,” he said, “I didn’t tell ‘em. I didn’t even tell ‘em MY name. They just said ‘Kevin.’”

Jeremy Jarmon had a different approach for introducing himself.
Sitting in front of his reading group, Jarmon focused in on the kids and said, “Do you know who I am?”

The kids obligingly chorused “Noooooooooooooooooo!”

“Good,” Jarmon said. “I’m head coach Jim Zorn.” The chaos of thirty-whatever skeptical kids ensued, much to Jarmon’s amusement.

“One kid looks at me,” he told me later, laughing, “and says, ‘You’re a lie!’”

The questions the kids had for the players during the Q&A were generally pretty entertaining. A quick sample….

Question: What’s Darrel Young‘s favorite food?

Answer: “I like steak, but I’m a chicken guy too.”

Question: Where’s Clinton Portis?

Answer: “Hopefully watching film, getting ready for next week.”

Question: What was the score of the Giants game?

Answer: “23-17, unfortunately.”

Question: How many people does Jeremy Jarmon eat to get that big?

Answer: “It’s according to how hungry I am and how mad you make me.”

Jarmon was pretty comfortable with the kids, actually, a fact that he shrugged off. “I have two sisters that are fourteen and a brother that’s twelve, so being around kids isn’t anything new to me. And I was involved with things like this in Lexington as well. Really, I’m just an older kid.”