Reports of Chris Samuels' retirement have been slightly exagerrated. Maybe.

Although Samuels' injury -- combined with his pre-existing stenosis -- may eventually require the tackle to be put on injured reserve, thus ending his 2009 season, his current plan is to consult with specialists and explore his options before he makes a final decision regarding his future.

Samuels released the following statement through the team: "I will continue to seek medical advice. I hope to see where I am physically over the next couple months. At this time, I have not made a decision, but I love playing for the Redskins and hope to be back."

If I had to characterize the mood of the locker room today -- and I did, actually, when we were taping Redskins Nation for Comcast SportsNet -- I'd call it "frustrated." Not with each other, per se, and not with the coaches. Not with the media, either (Mike Sellers's mildly amusing quote notwithstanding).

They just seem frustrated with not winning. This is a team that is firmly convinced -- rightly or not -- that they're underperforming and failing to execute.

Redskins left tackle Chris Samuels was in Greenbelt, Maryland, yesterday, to help Governor Martin O'Malley launch a campaign to educate people about the state's Medical Assistance for Families program.

And, as is the way of such things, this provided a perfect time for Samuels to answer a few questions about football and his injury. Samuels confirmed Head Coach Jim Zorn's assessment Monday that he's out for this week's game, and said that he'd visit the doctor next week "kind of to reassess everything and just figure out what I want to do."

Since it was a health education event, it also seems like an appropriate time to address a question that I've heard repeatedly since Sunday's game: what, exactly, is a "stinger"?

This afternoon's special teams practice was unremarkable (to say the least). The high point was Keith Eloi nearly managing to catch six balls off the JUGS machine at once, and who knows -- if he had succeeded, it might've been worth writing about. As it stands, though, I'll just note that special teams practice happened and everyone made it off the field healthy.

In other news, we're coming up on the Welcome Home Luncheon, which I wrote about at length last year. It's a good event, and tickets are still available.

Last year's Welcome Home Luncheon was Malcolm Kelly's first, and he remembers being impressed by the crowd. "I remember how many people were there," he said yesterday, "just die hard fans. People that get excited over the smallest stuff just to be in the same vicinity with the Washington Redskins. It's really the fan base, more than anything. Those guys take a lot of pride in this team."

A long hot practice today, in full pads, and it looks like the largely injury-free run the Redskins were experiencing has come to an end. By the end of practice, Mike Williams, Casey Rabach, Stephon Heyer, and Randy Thomas were all either sitting out or drastically limited. (That's 3/5ths of the starting offensive line, for those of you keeping score at home, along with a presumptive backup.)

Anthony Montgomery, Carlos Rogers, and J.D. Skolnitsky were also still out from yesterday, and Roydell Williams doesn't look to be coming back any time soon after having a plate inserted into his fractured pinky.

Of the four offensive linemen, only Heyer seemed to be potentially serious, with Coach Jim Zorn telling the media after practice that "we're going to get that looked at, but everybody else- it's all muscular."

Oh, and Albert Haynesworth was back at practice, and he still appears to be completely dominating. As, for that matter, does rookie Brian Orakpo.

Orakpo matched up against Chris Samuels in some spirited 1-on-1 drills; Orakpo beat him cleanly with an inside move once, and seemed to overpower him the other time. Samuels disputed that after practice. "He got by me one time," Samuels said. "He is fast. He doesn't look like a rookie out there."

Fellow offensive lineman -- and sudden candidate to start at right tackle -- Jeremy Bridges offered a similar, even more effusive analysis of Orakpo. "He's got an outrageous hunger for the game," he told me, "and he's gonna be a great one. Watch number 98, man, he's gonna be great. He works very hard, and he's very humble. I speak highly of him. You don't get no mouth out of him: he's a rookie, he knows his place, and he gives 190% out on the field."

Well, as more and more professional athletes join Twitter (or have sponsored versions of themselves theoretically tweeting), Chris Samuels is going old-school with the Official Chris Samuels Website. Sure, it's a stylishly designed site, with fancy moving Flash interfaces, a consistent visual aesthetic, and endlessly looping music, but if it's not the 140-characters-or-less fad of the moment, I'm comfortable calling it old school.

For all the bells and whistles, it's also a bit bare bones at the moment. Samuels' upcoming events are listed, and you can view some amusing (if small) photos in the photo gallery. But the video blog is currently more a promise than an actuality, and the Shop Studio 60 store assures us -- in a cheery 8-bit Nintendo era font -- that it's coming soon.

Which is not to imply that the website is completely devoid of content: the Features section is up and running perfectly, linking to various articles written about Samuels over the years. And that's excellent, because otherwise I would likely never have come across last year's profile in Home & Design magazine, or this story in Boating Life.

And that would be sad. Excerpts after the jump.

Chris Samuels had another Pro Bowl season this year (his sixth), and helped block Clinton Portis to a stellar first eight games, but his season ended with a triceps injury in early December. That certainly didn't help the Redskins during their doomed late-season push, and now the team is in its offseason while the playoffs roll on.

I caught up with Samuels today in the training room while trainer Elliot Jermyn worked on his knee and arm, and talked to him about the offseason so far.

How's the rehab going? How do you feel?

"Well, I'm busting my butt every day, but the trainers, they're not doing a good job. [He and Jermyn laugh.] No, I'm just kidding. As you know, I tore my tricep, 50 percent of it off the bone-"

That sounds excruciating.

"It's tough, you know. Lot of pain. But right now it actually doesn't hurt and things are coming along fine. So I had my tricep repaired, my right knee repaired -- just a scope to clean it up or whatever -- so everything is starting to feel really good."