Practice has been rescheduled this morning because of weather, and that always confuses my schedule of posts. So I'm starting this Veterans Day off with some links. Since most of these have nothing to do with Veterans Day, though, I'll open with this link to a Mental Floss compilation of videos of dogs welcoming soldiers home (via @Unsilent).



More Redskins-centric links below.

None of these links have anything to DO with Guy Fawkes day, but still.


One of the things that's the most frustrating about watching -- and trying to write about -- Redskins practice is that the team, like so many other NFL teams, doesn't actually tackle. It makes it incredibly hard to judge how successful a play actually is, and how good defensive coverage actually is. A guy may get there every time in the game just like he does in practice ... but in the game, you have to actually finish the play, and THAT doesn't always happen.

Joseph White of the Associated Press thinks there might be a correlation there. (On the Redskins side of things, Chris Chase at Shutdown Corner seems to think this applies to DeAngelo Hall.) It's certainly an interesting argument.

More links....

It's only Tuesday, and it's already been a heck of a week for DeAngelo Hall. Yesterday, he found time to discuss his old team and he reportedly added some more punt returning to his responsibilities. Today, he updated his blog --

We have to regroup as a team and hopefully this bye week helped guys clear their heads and come back ready to finish the season strong. We still have a lot to play for and one of the most important things is PRIDE! Pride in ourselves, Pride for this organization, and pride for our fans! I can tell you this much they always say a wounded animal is an even more dangerous animal. I think we've been licking our wounds for a while now, but it's time to fight back!

-- and launched his online store.

You can get the T-shirt pictured on the left there -- and plenty of other stuff for Redskins and Virginia Tech fans -- but unfortunately not the custom Redskins Beats By Dre headphones. You can see a slightly closer-up picture of them after the jump, though, which is almost as cool and vastly cheaper.

I sometimes think that -- despite the paintball and the roller coasters and all that -- it doesn't quite come across just what an interesting character linebacker Rocky McIntosh can be.

Fortunately, the magic of internet videos will help alleviate that concern. Here's the new welcome video for Rocky's website, in which he attempts to convey how much he loves football. And goofy dancing and Scrabble, but mainly football.

Many of these were originally intended to be some links for Thursday afternoon. Oh well.


The injury to Chris Cooley is bad for a lot of reasons, not least because he's the second Pro Bowl player the Redskins have lost to injury this season. But if there's one small good thing that's come out of it, it's been the way Chris and his brother Tanner have been handling this turn of events on their blog.

Usually, you hear that an athlete got surgery for one ailment or another and all sounds much, much easier than it is for us everyday folks. Tanner's recounting of Chris's day of surgery clearly showed how that isn't the case: the same fluorescent-lit hospital rooms, the same hospital gown, the same nervous meals in the hospital cafeteria. It doesn't have the comedy value of Cooley pumping gas in full uniform or bizarro appeal of the Cooley's burning a horse, but it really may be the most interesting thing the Cooleys have posted yet.

Also, today: a Comcast video showing what Chris is up to, and the excerpt from Redskins Nation in which head coach Jim Zorn talks about watching Chris's surgery.

More links....

In case you missed it (despite my 75,000 word interview with Rachel Nichols on the subject), here's the E:60 piece on Chris Cooley from last night. I thought it was really well done, as was the USFL 30 For 30 that followed. Good night for ESPN.

No one knows quite what to expect from new Redskins play-caller Sherman Lewis. He's been in the building for two weeks, hasn't called a play for something like five years, and -- you may have heard! -- was calling bingo numbers not all that long ago.

(Sidenote for everyone who wants to make totally hilarious bingo/playcalling jokes: as I mentioned yesterday on Twitter, only certain numbers can be applied to each letter. You can find a full list here, but suffice it to say that B78 is NOT actually a legit bingo call. For even more about the culture of bingo, may I direct you to Dan Steinberg's incredibly long -- and entertaining -- feature on the subject from the Washington City Paper. End sidenote.)

ANYHOW, Rich Campbell -- Redskins beat writer for the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg -- got in touch with two of Lewis's former players: ex-Vikings wide receiver (and current ESPN analyst) Cris Carter, and ex-Packers wide receiver (and current Comcast SportsNet analyst) Antonio Freeman.

And the picture they paint of Lewis's playcalling certainly sound ... well, promising, given the Redskins early-season woes. I highly recommend reading the whole article, but here are a couple of notable excerpts:

• Metromix Washington D.C. got a chance to talk to the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders about their rigorous practice regimen. There's also a photo gallery, if you prefer that sort of thing.

• Clinton Portis is launching the Clinton Portis Foundation.

For those of you wondering what it's like in the facility during these rough stretches -- when the team can't seem to find a groove and all the media wants to ask the players about is a coaching change -- there are a couple of excellent pieces out there on the internets today.

Former Redskins Ross Tucker, now writing for SI.com (that's his 2002 Redskins headshot over to the right), has the more detailed look at how coaching uncertainty adversely affects players.

One would think that there would be a palpable buzz in an NFL locker room before a prime time game on national TV. A heightened sense of anticipation, at the very least. Instead, our locker room was the flattest I had ever encountered in all my years of football, and everyone in there, from coaches to players to the equipment and training staffs, looked as if they had seen a ghost.

They hadn't, of course. All they had seen was the report several hours earlier that our owner, Jerry Jones, had discreetly met with Bill Parcells at an airport the week before. Everyone on that 2002 Dallas Cowboy team already knew head coach Dave Campo was on the hot seat that year. But the news of the secret rendezvous between Jones and Parcells essentially meant Campo's seat was no longer hot. It was burning.

It's a terrific inside look, but it can be summarized in a pretty short sentence: eventually, a coach on the hot seat loses the locker room.