In yesterday's links post, I wrote briefly about an Associated Press article that put forth the idea that not tackling in practice was leading to shoddy tackling in games. Here's a quick excerpt to give you the flavor of the thing, but it's really worth reading:

Sure, [not tackling in practice] keeps everybody healthy, but some Sundays can look pretty ragged. Many players get a chance to tackle at full speed only during exhibition games. It shows once the regular season begins.

"It shows a whole bunch," Redskins safeties coach Steve Jackson said. "That's one of the fundamental skills. A lot of people don't tackle now because of the salary cap. You lose a guy because of a tackling drill, you're the dumbest guy on the planet."

But one thing I noticed as I read it through is that most of the quotes come from people who definitely aren't missing tackles on Sundays: coaches. Since missed tackles have been a problem for the Redskins defense at points this year, I thought it would be worth asking some of those guys for their thoughts on this article's premise.

It's been another zany one here at Redskins Park. Defensive coordinator Greg Blache is no longer speaking to the media, for what Coach Zorn describes as "personal reasons" and "a needed break". Wide receiver Malcolm Kelly discussed a thumb injury, which Coach Zorn describes as "ongoing" and something that the receiver has played with. A scant two or three sentences later, Zorn talked about how Devin Thomas is "coming on." Thomas has looked good in practice -- better the last two weeks than he has in quite some time, honestly -- but saying that he's "coming on" feels a little premature at this point.

As I mentioned earlier, the team is watching some of the most unpleasant preseason football I can remember for motivation. And it turns out that the scout team defense has taken to color-coordinating their outfits as yet another motivational tool.

Linebacker Alfred Fincher decided to go with the mohawk look a few days into camp, as Brian Murphy at Homer McFanboy has exhaustively documented. I had asked Fincher about the cut -- "I was just trying to break up the monotony of camp and try to shake things up," he told me -- but then he got dinged up the next day and the whole thing started to seem like a bad omen for him, so I didn't follow up.

According to Murphy, half the team liked Fincher's look and the other half didn't. But when kicker Shaun Suisham and safety Kareem Moore were in the ice bath discussing Lendy Holmes's hairstyle the other day, the conversation quite naturally turned to the team's other notable haircut, and they came out solidly in favor.

"I had a Mohawk before," Moore was explaining. "In college. Mine was nice, though. I had the mohawk fade. Like it was high, but my sides were like they are now. And I had little designs on the side."

"Would that be a frohawk?" Suisham asked.

Moore paused for a second, thinking.

Here's what safeties coach Steve Jackson had to say about undrafted rookie safety Lendy Holmes when I talked to him back in May:

"He's very promising. Athletic guy. You wanna talk about ball skills, he's got excellent ball skills, and he's smart. It's gonna be good to see what he can do once we get the pads on, because everybody looks good in shorts. It's a talent show.

"But you wanna see the toughness and how a guy's gonna react when it's a hundred degrees outside and you've got guys who are bigger than you and faster than you that wanna knock you down, AND you've gotta remember your plays, AND you've gotta get out of there in one piece"

And here's what a bunch of other people around Redskins Park had to say about undrafted rookie safety Lendy Holmes over the last month or so: "What's up with his hair?"

Last year, the defensive backs had a bit of a rough time holding on to interceptions and, well, it certainly seemed like everyone noticed. Carlos Rogers definitely got the worst of it (see here, here and here for examples), but when DeAngelo Hall signed midseason and immediately picked off Tony Romo, it was definitely a change from what we'd been seeing.

The old joke is that if they could catch, they'd be playing at wide receiver, but ... the defense only had 13 picks last year, and that's exactly the sort of big play they're hoping to see more of in 2009. So every time a cornerback drops a ball in drills, he has to drop and give ten push-ups.

"You drop a ball, you do push-ups," Fred Smoot said. "Point-blank, that's where we going out there." But this wasn't just one of those things where Smoot was joking around about it after the fact -- it's also his idea. "I'm the oldest guy in the secondary," he explained. "I just feel like we dropped too many chances last year -- if we just pick off the ball we had chances to pick off, we'd've been top in the NFL. So now we gonna keep it going, and hopefully we'll hold on to all these balls."

Safety Kareem Moore had no doubt what the focus of last night's Cooley's Rally For The Cure event was. When he showed up in a lightly-checked pink shirt, the question had to be asked: did you wear pink on purpose?

And he seemed mildly offended that we even had to ask. "Of course," he said. "It's breast cancer, isn't it?"

It was indeed -- more specifically, it was about Relay For Life. And between the cost of admission and the lively charity auction, Relay For Life will be receiving more than $20,000 as a result of last night's event.

I saw Tanner Cooley at Redskins Park yesterday afternoon and asked him for information I could put up about the event; much of what he told me made it into yesterday's post on the subject. But when I asked him if he could specify what players would be there, he shrugged and said that he didn't have a whole lot of firm confirmations yet. Sometimes, that would be a cause for concern, but it didn't seem to be a problem last night.


In addition to Moore and (obviously) Chris Cooley, other players in attendance included Clinton Portis, Jason Campbell, Albert Haynesworth, Colt Brennan, Devin Thomas, Chris Horton, Renaldo Wynn, Reed Doughty, Justin Tryon, Todd Collins, Zac Atterberry, Anthony Alridge, Tyson Smith, and probably a few more that I'm forgetting, along with a few coaches and other assorted team officials. And every single one of them seemed legitimately pleased to be able to help Chris and Tanner's mother Nancy with her campaign.

Some of the guys helped simply by being there, and by being willing (as promised) to mingle with the fans, sign a few autographs, and posing for a few pictures. I saw Renaldo Wynn chat with the guys from Hogs Haven for what had to be 45 minutes, and he was far from the only one.

Then there were the guys who helped financially, by bidding for items in the auction. Colt Brennan, for example, bid on and won a Doug Williams autographed football. I asked him afterward if he had done it simply to drive the price up, and (again) got looked at like I was some sort of idiot. "Are you kidding? It's a DOUG. WILLIAMS. football. Redskins Super Bowl MVP, for two hundred dollars? That was the steal of the night."

And then there were the guys who helped by leading the auction. And I'll be honest: I had no idea so many of the players would prove to be capable auctioneers.