We'll get to the part where kicker Shaun Suisham WAS happy in a bit, but this story starts elsewhere: Suisham had read on some obscure blog somewhere that Hunter Smith had no intention of throwing him the ball on the touchdown play that ultimately went to Mike Sellers, and he was not pleased.

"I talked to Hunter about that, because I wasn't happy," Suisham told me today, trying very hard to look stern and serious. "I left him a voicemail. My wife told me it was on the website. After further discussion, he says he was joking, and he was hoping the tone came through in the article. So we settled that, and I'm okay with it now."

Hey, maybe you heard somewhere that punter Hunter Smith threw a touchdown pass yesterday? It's true!

You've probably also heard by now that Smith was a multiple-position threat at Sherman High School, including quarterback -- "I was a better receiver than anything, and went to college as that," he said after the game, before settling into much more standard athlete-speak. "I just count myself as a punter who happened to be healthy enough to be on the field and threw a ball."

But you may not have realized that -- because the play started in field goal formation --kicker Shaun Suisham was running a route as a receiver on the play. Which is not to say that he was a valid check-down option, of course.

When I wrote about new Redskins punter Sam Paulescu yesterday, I mentioned just how lively the position has been over the last two years, but I don't think I gave the basic numbers: Paulescu, assuming he punts the ball on Sunday, will be the fourth guy to that for the Redskins this season, and the sixth in the last two. I also recapped much of the bloggable zaniness of the last five guys who punted the ball, and speculated that we'd find out more about Paulescu's quirks today.

In a brief conversation today, though, Paulescu seems largely free of obvious quirks. Where Glenn Pakulak talked about the nomadic lifestyle of the journeyman punter and his side gig as a bartender, Paulescu sounded pretty darn goal-oriented when I asked what he'd been doing during the season.

Head coach Jim Zorn was full of praise for kicker Shaun Suisham during his post-practice press briefing today. Asked if the holder last year was hurting Suisham's percentages, Zorn said, "A kicker has to go out and kick, whoever is holding. If I held and the ball was flat on the tee - he has still got to hit it, right? But there is a rhythm. He has worked very hard and he has concentrated on the rhythm of the kick. I think his holder has given him more and more confidence, but he has done it. He has developed the rhythm, the steadiness, he is more patient, and he is not so much attacking the ball early. He saw a lot of different types of rhythms last year. He is much smoother and I think that is what happens to a kicker. He has found his rhythm."

Also finding his rhythm kicking today? Chris Cooley. The start of practice was delayed by the shooting of the team photo, which also required an extra uniform change. "I had extra time because I brought out my extra gear for practice before the photo," Cooley explained, "so when everyone else had to change, you could just consider this my early warm-up."



Cooley did well, especially in the early efforts you see in the video. (Later, he had a miss that came off the tee low and fast and nearly clocked Ethan Albright in the head.) "I hit from 40 yards with some coaching from Shaun," he told me, "but I used to be solid from 50. When Koz [former Redskins TE Brian Kozlowski] was here, we would play the kicking games a lot. We were out punting and kicking field goals all the time so I actually got pretty good. But I haven't kicked at all lately."

As I mentioned this morning, Glenn Pakulak is back in the building (and still totally enthused to be here, too: "Alive for another week," he said today).

But don't rule Hunter Smith out just yet. "We're just taking it day-to-day," Smith said, "see how it feels. It's significantly better than it was this time last week, but I couldn't make any promises on playing or not."

Smith was exceedingly frustrated about not having been able to contribute last week -- "It was difficult," he said bluntly. "I don't like it. I wanna be out there helping our team, but like I said, at the same time, I wanna be well when I come back." -- but he was complimentary of Pakulak's work in relief.

A few weeks ago, someone requested "poutine" from the folks who make lunch here. It's a Canadian food, french fries plus gravy plus cheese curds, and I wound up running around talking to the players about who (Shaun Suisham) might want such a thing (Shaun Suisham).

Well, for her "Lunch With Lindsay" segment this week, NBC-4's Lindsay Czarniak sat down with Suisham, and guess what dish she managed to to concoct for him.

Between serving poutine and conducting the interview in a hockey rink, I think it's safe to say that Czarniak has now outdone me in the category of "falling back on Canadian stereotypes". Good interview, though, and the first one I've seen where Suisham really conveys just how much keeping the Redskins gig means to him.

Despite the absence of Albert Haynesworth, Kareem Moore, Carlos Rogers, and Randy Thomas from this afternoon's practice, the big news was the kicking competition. Each of the two competitors for the placekicker position attempted seven field goals of varying lengths and in various simulated pressure situations. Shaun Suisham made six and missed one; Dave Rayner made five and missed two.

This was, frankly, a pretty inconclusive result. Here's head coach Jim Zorn on the subject after practice: "It was good," he said of the competition. "They both made most of their field goals. I thought it was interesting to see the rhythm and the timing. There are some things that will show up, I think. They're competing hard. Again, we hope they get some kicks in the game so that we can see more. It will be a last minute decision as we go along here because it's not clear."

Meanwhile, these fourteen kicks were such a big deal that the media was allowed to stay out on the sidelines a bit later than usual so they could watch, and the two kickers were swarmed as they came off the field after practice.

Problem was, what was presented to the media as something decisive and interesting didn't have quite the same cachet for the kickers themselves.

The crowdsourcing trend has finally hit Redskins Park, in a somewhat unexpected spot: the dining room. Before last week, there was a line of chafing dishes containing an assortment of different main dishes, sides, starches, followed by a sandwich platter and usually a wrap or two, and a salad bar.

At some point this preseason, though, the catering company decided that it was time to solicit some opinions from their customers and a dry-erase board went up with the title "Requests From The Chef". The suggestions have ranged from the quotidian ("chicken parmesan"; "flounder") to the more exotic ("oxtail stew") to the non-food-related ("rest"). I was curious about the oxtail stew, but had no way of narrowing down who would be interested in something like that.

But when "poutine" was written on the board one day, I could immediately narrow it down. Poutine -- french fries covered with beef gravy and cheese curds -- is a distinctly Canadian dish, so I knew we were looking at the Canadian Contingent: actual Canadian Shaun Suisham, and former CFL players Dominique Dorsey and Chris Wilson.

Dorsey had never even tried poutine. "I looked at it, and I was like, 'What is that?' People keep telling me to try it, but...." He trailed off. During his time in Canada, he stuck to tastes of home. "I just ate the regular stuff they had up there: KFC, Popeyes, and all that good stuff. I never branched off too much," he said. "I know my limits."

After practice, certain guys swear by the ice tubs. These are exactly what they sound like: big Rubbermaid tubs filled with cold water and ice that sit outside the facility. Guys soak in them to help with injury prevention and recovery, usually still in their uniform pants and t-shirts along with neoprene covers on their toes.

(While some guys swear by the ice tubs, other guys emphatically don't. One guy who doesn't is Clinton Portis -- "It's too cold," Portis says. "It hurts." -- and another is Fred Smoot. "I don't take it," Smoot says. "Have you seen me in there? I'm from Mississippi, right? You know, I'm a southern guy, I don't deal well with ice. That's why they ran me from Minnesota. I'm a warm climate guy." Although even Smoot has been known to get in on very rare occasions.)

Whether by coincidence or climate-related inevitability, the guys who have played in Canada are ice tub regulars: Shaun Suisham, Chris Wilson, and Domonique Dorsey. Suisham is in there enough that even the Associated Press has written about it (in the same story that correctly notes that he sounds just like actor Owen Wilson).

Ice tub conversations can run the gamut from sincere to mocking, as you'd expect, but every so often you hear one that is genuinely surprising, amusing, and even thought-provoking. This particular episode of the Suisham And Wilson Happy Ice Tub Funtime Show started on Saturday when the duo was sitting in one tub, with people giving Suisham a hard time for his lack of work in the Ravens game.

"Hey," he said, "last time we played the Ravens in preseason, I got my first unnecessary roughness fine." No one seemed to believe him.

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.