The Redskins Blog

Monday, March 16: Feel The Excitement Of Offseason Conditioning

The offseason conditioning program starts today. What this means, basically, is that the players come in and do non-football workouts — running, weight-training, stuff like that — as a group, instead of on their own. No practices, no drills, just the soft-launch of the season.

But players are back in the building, which starts to build excitement for the season, so the media is back as well, at least for today.

And how could they not be, when there are opportunities for exciting player Q&A sessions! For example, Casey Rabach. He’s generally known as a good talker, an entertaining interview, and a quick-witted soundbite, so he was pulled into the media room for this scintillating and informative exchange: Read more »

Monday, February 9: Redskins Make Burgers On TV

If you are a dedicated viewer of the NFL Players Association‘s reality TV series Helmets Off, but you DVRed this week’s episode and wish to remain spoiler-free as to who wins the Redskins linemen’s burger competition that aired this past Saturday, STOP READING NOW.

If you’re more like me and had never heard of Helmets Off, let alone the Redskins linemen’s burger competition, here’s some quick background: the show is in its fifth season, and is described by the NFLPA’s marketing materials as “a series of reality television shows featuring some of the most talented stars in the National Football League.” The show airs on Comcast SportsNet (or Fox Sports, depending on where you live), so check their website for airdates and times.

Anyhow, the first I heard of the burger contest — held at the Good Stuff Eatery in DC — was a month or so back, when the winner shouted across the locker room, “Hey, I won the burger contest!” Read more »

Redskins Talk Pets

Over the course of the season, I found myself in more conversations with players about their pets than I could reasonably have expected, but somehow it never seemed to fully cohere into a complete post for the blog. There was always something more important going on.

Well, it’s the offseason now, and there’s not very much going on at all, so now it coheres just fine, thanks.

Most of the guys have dogs, which you’d probably expect. What you might not expect is that the dog owners break down into two general categories, neither of whom gets too excited about discussing their dogs: you’ve got the people with big dogs, who are afraid of being lumped in with Michael Vick, and you’ve got the people with little dogs, who blame the dogs largely on their wives or girlfriends.

Rock Cartwright falls pretty squarely into the second category, with a toy poodle named Tyke (“He’s actually a great dog,” Cartwright says, when I look surprised. “He’s not hyper at all, and he likes to cuddle all the time.”)

Khary Campbell and his wife have a three pound Yorkie. Anthony Montgomery splits the difference — he has a pit bull and his girlfriend has a five pound Yorkie.

“The Yorkie is the aggressive one, believe it or not,” Montgomery says. “The Yorkie is jealous and possessive. If me and my girlfriend are rubbing the pit bull the Yorkie goes crazy. He attacks the pit bull, biting him.”

So they don’t get along? “Oh, no, they play all the time. And if we’re outside and they run up on some dogs, he tries protect the pit bull.” Read more »