The Redskins Blog

A Similarity Between Brian Orakpo And Dexter Manley

This image jumped out at me as I watched part 5 of Brothers Of The Legacy earlier today. It’s from Super Bowl XXII, a moment of Dexter Manley trying to get past Broncos tackle David Studdard to (I’m guessing) kill and possibly eat John Elway. Studdard is doing his job in the sense that he’s stopping Manley, but he’s not really doing it in an officially sanctioned manner.

“The holding that Studdard is doing to Dexter Manley is criminal,” Sam Huff says on the radio call. “If I was Dexter, I’d punch him right in the mouth.”

The reason that it caught my attention, of course, is because I felt like I had seen it several dozen times in 2010 — which, in a sense, I had. I knew I was thinking of Brian Orakpo, but he was held enough this season that they all start to run together. Was it the game-winning hold against Dallas? One of the ones against Houston? Maybe Philly?

Fortunately, Orakpo was held so much that it was written about over and over and over and over again, and eventually I found the image I was looking for, down at the bottom of a DC Sports Bog post about the time Orakpo was blatantly held in the Tampa game:

I think you can see where it might’ve jogged my memory.

Somehow, I don’t think this is what Orakpo meant when he namechecked Dexter Manley after being drafted. (For the optimistic crowd, I can point out that Orakpo is heading into his third year; in Manley’s third year, he had the first of a four-year string of double-digit sacks. Hopefully Orakpo will mirror him in that, not just in being bearhugged by offensive linemen.)