“I think what you try to do as a player, or as a coach, you gotta get your best players on the field,” he told Larry Michael of Redskins Broadcast Network on Inside The Redskins. “And if there’s two of them at the tight end position you find a way to do it. Chris Cooley gives you, I think, a lot of advantages and mismatches against defenses as far as how they cover him. He’s good in the run game, so he can do some things to help you in the run game. You can line him up in different places and move him around to help create mismatches for other people. And then Fred [Davis], Fred’s a guy that got to play a lot last year because of injuries to Chris and I think Fred’s a guy that’s just kinda scratching the surface of what he could be. So I think you’ve gotta find a way to get both of them on the field at the same time and help your offense.”

That’s a pretty good challenge for a coach to face, I’d think.

http://p.castfire.com/1Ll7r/video/247421/redskins_2010-02-12-112356.895.m4v

Full transcript after the jump.
On Chris Cooley and Fred Davis:
“Oh, I’m very excited to work with these guys. Actually when mini-camp gets going — I haven’t had a chance to talk to Chris or Fred, but I’ve watched Chris from a distance, you know, coaching Tony Gonzalez in Kansas City, there are a few tight ends he’d like to follow and see how they did each week; Chris was one of them, so that started the process of me watching him way back when.”

On if his previous playing experience is an advantage as a coach:
“I think it helps me as a coach in that I know what some of the possible problems are gonna be, how to fix some things, just giving them little nuances or little tricks to kind of help them get better. Players like Chris and Fred you don’t come in and try to quote-remake ‘em or build ‘em from scratch. You just look at them, I’ve been evaluating them, trying to look at some little things that I can help them with improve their game, and then basically just try to start teaching them the mental aspect of playing the game within the game, as they say.”

On if he has a feeling that they [Cooley and Davis] are coachable players:
“I don’t have a feel for it, but when I watch them play, they play hard in all phases, they play with passion, they try to be physical. So normally if you have those traits and characteristics you’re generally going to be coachable, and I’ve heard nothing but good things about those guys. I knew Fred from a distance. I coached at UCLA a little bit when he was at USC, and I had Marcedes Lewis there, so I kind of watched Fred from across town so to speak. And then seeing him at the combine when I was at Kansas City. So I know a little bit about Fred. Like I said I’m excited about the opportunity to really work with both of them.”

On if having a young coaching staff is a benefit when trying to build relationships with the players:
“It can be. You know, I think where it helps is it helps bring energy to the team and keep things going when you hit that little bit of a lull in camp. But don’t ever underestimate, I’ve been around some of the older guys and they can match you with the energy level. But I think it does help with the relationships of the players, ’cause music, or video games, or whatever it is that they may be into you can relate to it a little bit.”

On his previous playing and coaching experience:
“I played at the University of Colorado. I played with the Los Angeles Rams — that’s a long time ago — for a few years and then I started coaching back at the University of Colorado. Coached at UCLA, been with the Kansas City Chiefs, coached tight ends, wide receivers, defensive line, so I’ve been on both sides of the ball and a couple different positions on offense. Tight end as a position, obviously having played it and coached this for as long as I have, I have a passion for it. I think that’s where you put your best athletes; you ask them to do the most. And like I said, I’m just looking forward to it. I think it’s going to be an exciting time to be a Redskins fan.”

On if he will play both tight ends at the same time:
“Oh, most definitely. I think what you try to do as a player, or as a coach, you gotta get your best players on the field. And if there’s two of them at the tight end position you find a way to do it. Chris Cooley gives you, I think, a lot of advantages and mismatches against defenses as far as how they cover him. He’s good in the run game, so he can do some things to help you in the run game. You can line him up in different places and move him around to help create mismatches for other people. And then Fred, Fred’s a guy that got to play a lot last year because of injuries to Chris and I think Fred’s a guy that’s just kinda scratching the surface of what he could be. So I think you’ve gotta find a way to get both of them on the field at the same time and help your offense.”

On coaching with Mike Shanahan:
“Yes, it is [one of the reasons he took the job]. There were other opportunities and ultimately what it came down to was an opportunity to work with Coach Shanahan. I’ve followed him since he was an assistant coach with the Broncos. Growing up in the Denver area I was very aware of him from when he was a head coach to the Raiders to when he went to San Francisco and did what he did as a coordinator and then when he came. And I’ve always been intrigued about what he could do from an offensive standpoint. You know, I think when you look back on Coach Shanahan’s career, his offenses have always been very effective, and I think the sign of a great coach is that he’s had a lot of different pieces. He’s had different quarterbacks, different running backs, yet his numbers have always been consistently high, so I’m really looking forward to having a chance to see how it is that he does what he does.”

Now we’ve got Chris Cooley on a fishing-expedition-slash-Reebok-modeling trip in a red Reebok sweatshirt and a whole bunch of NFL-branded hunting camo. I look forward to Albert Haynesworth ending up in the pages of Rolling Stone in a red safari outfit or something.

I only know ESPN Outdoors as “the programming that I ignore before football on Sunday mornings,” but apparently they’re a thriving entity with a web presence and everything, and their current top story is an account of this fishing trip/Reebok promotion with Cooley and Miami Dolphins quarterback Chad Pennington.

If that description doesn’t appeal to you, well, you’re not alone. Listening to people’s fishing stories is bad enough; I thought that reading about them might be even worse, and that mixing in a promotion for athletic gear would make it entirely unreadable. But here’s the thing:

Writer Kyle Carter does a good job managing these pitfalls with some well-placed humor and a keen sense of the absurdity of his assignment, and he actually winds up with an interesting and readable profile of Cooley and Pennington.

A couple excerpts:

It was just another group on its way to the lake to catch some fish (and promote a new clothing line) – a group willing to get up early in a city where there is no early (or late) to have a shot at catching fish.

and

He’s Chris Cooley the entertainer, a serious angler who really isn’t serious about anything – or maybe everything – in short bursts. He’s an “Animal House” character who spent 10 hours a day studying the art of making pottery after he was put on injured reserve this season because of a broken ankle. He’s a little hard to figure out.

The piece was written before the Conference Championship games, which explains how Cooley got time away from his reporting duties at OCNN for fishing, but it certainly makes Cooley look like a busy, busy guy.

Photo by Getty Images for Reebok; see more photos from the expedition here.

Because Chris Cooley is at the Super Bowl as a crusading reporter for OCNN, he’s going to wind up doing a lot of interviews. This is because the near-infinite number of sportstalk programs emanating from Miami this week need a near-infinite number of guests to fill all that airtime, and Cooley — a funny, articulate Pro Bowl tight end on a major market team with a new head coach and new general manager — makes for a pretty good get.

One of those interviews yesterday was with The Scott Van Pelt Show, on ESPN Radio. Van Pelt is a proud Maryland alum and a DC-area sports fan, but his national show isn’t aired on ESPN980 which (quite rightly) devotes the afternoon block to actual local programming.

Cooley talked about his favorite tight ends in the NFL (Jason Witten and Dallas Clark) and about OCNN (he’s having fun), but perhaps the most entertaining AND interesting segment was when he explained his first meeting with new head coach Mike Shanahan.

“I was very impressed when I initially met Coach Shanahan,” Cooley said. “I was really excited to meet him — I grew up a Denver Broncos fan, and was so excited when they won the Super Bowl. I mean, it was a high point in my life, watching John Elway win the Super Bowl. But it took me three or four trips into Redskins Park before I met him. His office was always closed, and so I kind of felt like I was stalking him a little bit.”

Van Pelt was a little surprised by this, and asked, “Can’t you just knock on the door and be like, ‘I’m the guy that’s gonna catch the ball’?”

Co-host Ryan Rucillo added, “A bunch.”

“‘Listen” news for you,’” Cooley said, as if he were addressing Shanahan. “‘Hundred catches this year, Mike. You’re gonna make that happen.’ No, I didn’t. I kinda slinked around a little bit, and then about the fourth time the door was open. And there’s a coffee machine right next to the coach’s office, and I just went in and casually got some coffee and pretended like that’s what I was really — ‘Oh, hey, you’re here! I was just grabbing some coffee. Uh, I guess you wanna talk? Wanna sit down for a minute, me and you?’

“But he was great. He’s extremely organized. And it was neat: he got in and the first thing we sat down and he said was, ‘Hey, I’ve watched so much film, I feel like I know you because of the film I’ve watched on you.’ And I thought that was really neat. I felt good about it.

“But it’s cool to see that he’s already in there working as hard as he is. Definitely the type of guy who knows how to run an organization. The guy that you can trust. He did a great job in Denver for a long time, and we’re really excited to have him. We’re really excited about the possibility of stability as well, ’cause we’ve been all over the map.”

Later in the segment — after Cooley had noted “They told me I looked like a fat little kid when I left the [NFL Scouting] Combine” — Van Pelt returned to the topic of new management at Redskins Park, which also revealed Cooley’s first meeting with new general manager Bruce Allen. Eventually.

“Do you feel like literally that that cloud has lifted,” Van Pelt asked, “with not only Shanahan but a GM in Bruce Gilbert?”

Cooley either didn’t hear or chose to ignore the slip, and started to answer. “Well, I hope so. It’s very hard as a player–”

“Bruce Gilbert works in radio,” Van Pelt corrected himself. “It’s Bruce Allen. Excuse me.” (Gilbert is the CEO of ESPN980 here in D.C.; later in the show, Van Pelt would castigate himself further for this mix-up: “I mentioned a guy who doesn’t even have our show on in the city I grew up in.”)

“You know what,” Cooley said. “On that note, I called him Butch for the first two weeks.”

“Oh good,” Van Pelt said.

“I went into his office,” Cooley explained, “and I almost said Butch and I had to correct myself. ‘Hey, Butch Allen’s a great guy.’”

But, for those of you who are more interested in the future of the franchise than in amusing verbal slips, Van Pelt returned to the question. “Is that legitimate? I mean, can that happen? Because it hasn’t for a long time, stability.”

“Well, I think so,” Cooley said. “And I think when you bring in someone like Bruce, and Mike, they have expectations of what they want. They’re coming in to a team not just to take a job. There’s definitely some demand there that says, ‘Hey this is our team.’ I would definitely assume that there’s quite a bit different that goes on in the front office, and I would assume that it’s in a positive manner.”

And they also addressed the omnipresent question of quarterback Jason Campbell.

“Your quarterback Jason Campbell,” said Rucillo, “we constantly talk about he’s in this system, now he’s in that system, on and on and on. Is this ever gonna get to the point where he can just be accepted and be comfortable and maybe be a guy where you don’t have to spend all offseason updating Washington Redskins quarterback rumors? I mean, I feel bad for the guy.”

Cooley chuckled. “It’s been tough for Jason. I mean, just to deal with what he’s had to deal with. He’s really started to step up and play throughout last year. I mean, he just took so many hits.”

“The O-line was so torn up,” Van Pelt interjected.

“And that’s the first step we have to take,” Cooley said. “I think as a quarterback, I think the first thing is Jason has to decide what he really wants to do, because it’s been tough. The way he’s been, I guess, ‘treated’ and what’s happened … it’s a business, of course, but … obviously last year we were trying to get someone else. A lot of it’s gonna be on Jason’s shoulders and what happens with him this offseason.

“I know he’s a guy that we want and he’s our initial answer, and he can definitely be the answer. He has every talent that you could hope for in a quarterback. He’s exceptional as an athlete.”

“So,” Rucillo suggested, “you’d be willing to say right here on the Scott Van Pelt show that you’ll stay in and protect all next season, no routes for you?”

“No,” Cooley said, “the cool thing is we’ve developed a new tight end to do that. His name’s Fred Davis. Pass protection extraordinaire. I’m thinking about losing about 25 pounds and saying, ‘Guess what: slot receiver. No more blocking.’”

Here’s what I like most about it:

• The faux-1970′s news promo is a format that really never gets old. (I’m sure it will get old eventually, but I’m not burned out yet. If you are too young to remember what these things were like — and, therefore, how on-point this parody is — the excellent TV blog Warming Glow has you covered.
• In a similar vein, the “tossing the phone” segment starting at about 0:44 is familiar in all the right ways.
• “Dude, I specifically asked for shirts smaller than Anderson Cooper’s shirts. Obviously he’s not the only one in this business that has guns.”
• As Mister Irrelevant has observed, this is the most entertaining thing Chris Cooley has done in some time, but I’m particularly pleased to see that at least three major themes from his blog have made it into the promo video intact: horses (thankfully unburned), NSFW pictures being taken of Cooley, and guy holding an umbrella over the players. (Thankfully, no longer part of my job duties.)

My hopes for this whole OCNN thing remain high.

In the meantime, here courtesy of Redlasso is Chris Cooley, discussing his childhood Denver Broncos fandom with FOX-5′s Dave Feldman. Hopefully this will help tide you over until 2:00.

It’s been awhile since Todd Yoder had two touchdowns in a season. “In a season?” he said. “Tampa, my fourth year, actually, two in the same game — in this stadium. Washington.”

The date was October 12, 2003. Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” was climbing the charts. The Red Sox and Yankees were in the middle of a heated ALCS, which the Yankees would eventually win, thus prolonging the story of the Red Sox “curse” and launching seven years of non-stop Yankees/Red Sox coverage on ESPN.

And young Todd Yoder came to FedExField with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and caught the first two touchdown passes of his career from Brad Johnson, ending with 28 yards and two touchdowns. From the ESPN game recap:

The unlikeliest hero was tight end Todd Yoder, who got wide open for his first two NFL touchdowns after starter Ken Dilger left in the first half with a sprained right ankle. Yoder, known more for his special teams play, also set up another touchdown by dragging Champ Bailey and David Terrell past the first-down marker on a third-and-8 deep in Washington territory.

Today, he recorded his second touchdown of this season — and his second in two games — as he continues his development into one of the main redzone targets of the 2009 Washington Redskins.

Or not.

“Actually, it’s kinda funny, that play,” Yoder said. “Really I’m supposed to help block down and seal the edge, and I really didn’t have anybody to block, ’cause [my guy was] the guy that spiked across the front. And I was just like, ‘Well, might as well just get over here and get open,’ and he found me.”

He added, “It was just kind of a bootleg play; it just happened that I kinda was able to come out of it and Jason [Campbell] found me. I’m really not even the primary target on that, and I just think me and him got a little chemistry going now where he finds me and sees me and throws me the ball.”

And — as he’s previously noted on this blog — he attributes much of this recent success to his mohawked hair. “It’s definitely” the mohawk, he reiterated today, “so we’re gonna keep it and we’re gonna ride it out. We’re gonna see where it goes.”

I suggested that other players on the team might benefit from a similar power haircut, and Yoder seemed skeptical. ” I don’t know if anybody else’ll rock the mohawk,” he said, “but I’m definitely gonna get my barber — who is Chris Cooley — to maybe re-trim it up, and we might dye it again. You never know.”

Wait a second. Your barber? “Yeah,” Yoder said. “Chris Cooley’s my barber. He mohawked it; you can see the straightness of it.”

So there you have it: Todd Yoder’s offensive explosion is directly attributable to Chris Cooley’s skills. At shaving hair in a straight line, but still.

Here’s the good news about Chris Cooley: he’s still got his sense of humor. He showed up in the offices at Redskins Park today riding this contraption, which he compared to a Razor scooter.

http://serve.a-widget.com/service/getWidgetSwf.kickAction

A bystander observed that it was awesome and asked if he could buy one. “Sure,” Cooley said, “Just go to InjuredGuyScooters.com.”

“Really?” the bystander asked.

“No,” Cooley said, and scootered off.

(The actual website is scootaboutkneescooters.com, which doesn’t go the Razor scooter route, instead describing the device as “an alternative to crutches or walker for individuals who want to remain active and continue working or going to school, even with foot or ankle injuries.”)
I ran into Colt Brennan not too much later. Brennan had surgery that left him on crutches for awhile, but I never saw him with a scooter, a fact that was not lost on the injured quarterback.

“Well, obviously,” he said, “you know, Redskins have their priorities around here: make sure that when Chris Cooley’s hurt, he gets a scooter to roll around on.”

And would you have wanted one?

“Yes,” Brennan said firmly. “Oh yeah.”

When Fred Davis made a catch during the game Monday night, I mentioned on Twitter that he “really loves to jump in the air for no discernible reason, doesn’t he?” A couple of people agreed with me, and that was that. But the question sort of nagged at me: why DOES Davis seem to jump in the air every time he catches the ball, regardless of field position, down, distance, or any other details like that.

On Tuesday, I finally bit the bullet and asked him, and I’ve got some good news and some bad news.
The good news is that Davis is keenly aware of the bad habit — he started laughing before I even finished the question — and so are his coaches. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They say ‘You shouldn’t do that,’” he said. “They say, ‘Just stay on the ground.’”

But Davis doesn’t stay on the ground. He leaps, especially when large men in the opposing jersey are running at him, and the bad news is that even he doesn’t seem to know quite why. He tried several reasons, though.

• First: “Man. I don’t know, man. When you haven’t been playing for awhile, sometimes you get outta shape a little bit. I feel kinda outta shape right now.”
• Next: “I mean, it usually worked in college, but you’ve gotta set it up more. I haven’t really been setting it up.”
• Third: “There’s a way you can do it, though, when they dive at your legs. But they ain’t diving at me; they’re trying to hit me high. So I gotta stop doing that until they start hitting me low.”

In the end, though, it was his final reason that rang the truest: “I didn’t set it up or anything,” he said again. “I just jumped, I don’t know why. I don’t know why I did it.”

The last bit of good news, though, is that Davis — as promised — was in today, working with tight ends coach Scott Wachenheim while the rest of the players were away for the first day of their bye week. Between that and the word from head coach Jim Zorn that Chris Cooley may be back in four weeks, this was a surprisingly good day for news about the Redskins tight ends.

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.”

http://p.castfire.com/1Ll7r/video/180073/redskins_2009-10-23-164854.flv

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.”
Suisham explained the change he made to Cooley’s kicking mechanics like this: “He was leanin’ back a little bit and pulling his toe up as he leaned back, so it’s important for him — because he’s got a strong enough leg — that, if he keep his head down and stay straight down the field, the ball’ll stay straighter for him.”

At this point, Suisham pretty much has a side gig teaching random celebrity non-kickers how to kick, having done the same thing with Alex Ovechkin and his Capitals teammates. I asked Suisham which of his all-pro pupils was the better kicker, and he was nearly paralyzed with indecision.

“Ovechkin, he was two for three,” Suisham started. “Conditions could’ve been different — he was on a game field, pressure could’ve been heightened at FedExField, Chris is out at practice.”

Suisham paused, thought for a second. “So this is Russia vs. USA with a Canadian making a decision? Okay … Well,” he said, “I gotta say, if somebody had to go in the game, I would put Cooley in.”

The backtracking began almost immediately. “But, just because I’m such a hockey fan, I’m really tempted to say Ovechkin. If I had to make a personnel decision today, Cooley would be kicking.”

Cooley, as you’d expect, had no such doubts; his view on the subject was cloudless and clear. “I saw a couple of Ovechkin’s kicks,” Cooley said, “and I don’t think that they were great, but he’s a pretty good athlete and I think if he kicked for a half hour while we were messing around, he’d probably be about the same as me.”

When you watch Cooley and Suisham take turns kicking, it is IMMEDIATELY clear which one of them makes his living that way. Suisham’s kicks come off the tee much faster, straighter, and with more accuracy (as you’d hope, frankly). But Cooley’s a top-notch professional athlete as well, which led me to wonder if just anyone on the team could kick field goals in a pinch.

“I think everyone looks at me like I’m silly that I’d even be trying to do that,” Cooley said, “which I think is funny, because it’s a blast. But it’s not easy to hit a 40-yard field goal, so I don’t know if other guys could do it.”

This time it was Suisham who had the much more specific answer. “Mike Sellers thinks he’s a soccer-style kicker,” Suisham said, “but he needs to just give in and convert to toe-kicking the ball. Reed Doughty’s got potential — not as big a leg as Cooley, but kicks a straighter ball. [Ex-Redskins] Ryan Boschetti used to think he was good, and used to bet me all the time, but he was awful. I used to enjoy our bets, because they worked out in my favor. Hunter Smith could kick a field goal.”

“Let’s put it this way,” Cooley said, after some further reflection. “I think that I’m a better kicker than Shaun could be a tight end.”