The Redskins Blog

The First Fan-Created Uniform Of 2011

If it’s February, it must be time for the offseason ritual of posting fan-created uniforms! Last year was all about the rumored gold pants, which eventually became less “rumored” and more “actual pants,” and before that the black uniforms that never were.

The 2011 uniform conversation hasn’t developed that kind of specific narrative yet, but that didn’t stop reader Andrew DeFrank from suggesting a few changes.

(Obligatory note: these are FAN-CREATED RENDERINGS, and not authentic, official or anything like that.)

DeFrank doesn’t have any professional interest in this — at least not yet. He’s a fifteen year-old who’s a big fan of the Redskins and Paul Lukas’ UniWatch, and he created these using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and, he says, “templates made by designers much better than me.”

Which isn’t to say that he just haphazardly threw stuff together for no specific reason. Here’s the thinking on the jersey/pants/socks redesigns:

“Our asymmetrical striping on pants and jerseys (red, white) is nice, but we have symmetrical striping along our helmets and gold pants (and those are different!).” He notes that the asymmetrical striping issue was discussed on UniWatch and linked here, and goes on to explain “First off I matched up the striping. Along the pants, they are all now the same style, and along the jerseys, I changed up the striping a little. Now, the TV numbers are along the upper arm, leaving an extremely thin and irrelevant stripe below that. So, I moved the numbers to the shoulder, and now have the striping running along the upper arm, replacing those numbers. I also added the classic ‘spear’ logo along the stripes. I added the striping pattern to the socks to top it all off.”

The helmets are more drastically changed, and came from a totally different approach.
Read more »

On Watching Ex-Redskins In The Playoffs

The Redskins haven’t played a game of football in three weeks, but Conference Championship Sunday seemed like part of Bruce Allen’s mission to reconnect with the team’s alumni. If it wasn’t Shaun Suisham kicking the ball for the Steelers, it was Antwaan Randle El fielding punts for the same team. If it wasn’t Todd Collins coming off the bench in relief of Jay Cutler, it was Mark Brunell warming up to come off the bench in relief of Mark Sanchez.

Redskins fans have not exactly been enthused about seeing these familiar faces. A reader named Jacob Knicely, for example, tweeted this to my attention when Cutler headed to the bench: Read more »

Free Lance-Star Report: Albert Haynesworth Has Kept Himself Busy

It has always been easy to go for the fat joke with disgruntled Redskins defensive lineman Albert Haynesworth. His name, for examples, historically pairs well with the antecedent “Fat”. He is, in fact, a large man. Combine those two facts with the number of plays in 2009 that ended with him lying on the field, and it was all-too-short a route to fat jokes and lazy jokes and so on.

Then he goes and doesn’t show up for voluntary team activities, doesn’t show up for mandatory team activities, and it’s very easy to combine a little from column A with a little from column B and reach the conclusion that Haynesworth has spent the offseason hiding out somewhere drinking YooHoo through a funnel while stuffing his face with Moon Pies.

Not so fast, says Rich Campbell, Redskins beat writer for the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg. Campbell interviewed with Haynesworth’s trainer in Tennessee, and came away sounding somewhat startled. Writes Campbell: Read more »

Artis Hicks Addresses The Media

Pro Bowl linebacker London Fletcher and new offensive lineman Artis Hicks addressed the media today, and — as Rick Maese of the Washington Post tweeted — what the two guys said can pretty much be summarized as “We’re excited.” Or, in marginally more paraphrased detail: “The atmosphere in the building is optimistic, the new coaching staff is impressive, the transition to the 3-4 defense won’t be nearly as tricky as some people think, and we’re all excited.” It was not a press conference that’s going to wind up in a loop on SportsCenter, that’s for sure.

Despite that, it was the first time I’ve had a chance to hear Artis Hicks speak at length, and I figured it was worth noting some of the things he said actually in his own words. Like these, for example, which will probably speak to what every Redskins fan wants to hear:

On what to expect from the offense:
“I think we’re definitely gonna run the ball and set things up off of that. If you look back over the course of Shanahan offenses over the years in Denver, everything was based off of the run. It helped the quarterback out a lot when you’ve got a great running game. We’ve got some great running backs here, and if we can just do our part up front to give those guys some lanes, man, it will be a great year for us I think.”

Meanwhile, the refrain we’ve been hearing about Hicks since he signed is that he’s versatile and can play just about any offensive line position, so that’s the angle a lot of questions took. For example:
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Thursday, April 30: Redskins Glamour Shots

Minicamp starts tomorrow, which means that there are a lot of players in the building today, greeting each other and teasing one another for how big (or small) they’ve gotten over the last three months and all that sort of first-day-of-school stuff.

There’s no football work today, but — like the first day of a new semester in college, when you do nothing but review the syllabus for each class, or the first day on a new job where you just learn where the copier and coffee machine are — there’s plenty of administrative stuff to get squared away. In fact, there’s enough of that to make today feel like the official start of the 2009 preseason. Read more »

The Return (Again) Of Marcus Mason

So let’s see:

• 90 degree heat? Check.
• An expected onslaught of media? Check.
• Fans becoming infatuated with players who will probably never contribute in the regular season? Check.
• Running back Marcus Mason in a Redskins uniform? As of today, check.

Yep, it’s beginning to feel a lot like training camp around Redskins Park.

The Redskins were awarded Mason off waivers today, providing some depth at the running back position as we head into this weekend’s minicamp.

Mason, a local product from Potomac, Maryland, has always been a fan-favorite story and was something of a preseason star last year, toting the ball 66 times for an NFL-leading 317 yards. Not quite enough to inspire Colt Brennan levels of fan devotion, but certainly respectable, and I still field at least one question every week about why he’s not here.

For the moment, at least, those questions can be put to bed.

And as Mason returns (again), it seems an appropriate time to look back at an excellent 2007 profile of him in — of all places — the Potomac Almanac, the free newspaper that gave me my first job (delivery boy!) twenty years ago. Fittingly entitled “The Return of a King”, it recounts Mason’s rise from Montgomery County superstar to college star, and eventually to an undrafted role as a Washington Redskin. An excerpt: Read more »

Wednesday, April 8: Another Linebacker Enters The Discussion

After the news last week that the Redskins would be looking at DE Chris Wilson as a potential solution at strongside linebaker alongside incumbents H.B. Blades and Alfred Fincher, the team announced today that they had signed free agent linebacker Robert Thomas into the mix.

What Thomas brings to the position battle is experience. Unlike Wilson, who would be moved from another position; Blades, who is entering just his third season; and Fincher, who has thus far been a journeyman and special teams standout, Thomas has eight years in the league and was a first-round selection of the St. Louis Rams.

Admittedly, his statistics from last season don’t seem too promising — just one tackle in only two games played — but here’s one small fact about them that offers some hope: Read more »

Greg Blache Talks Winning, Frogs, and Strongside Linebackers

Redskins defensive coordinator spoke to a group of students at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, today — yes, that’s the school from Remember The Titans, and Blache remembered recruiting players from there back when he was a college coach — as part of the Redskins’ partnership with the National Guard.

The speech focused on leadership, teaching, and other positive messages; Gary Fitzgerald has done an excellent job covering it over on Redskins.com, and I recommend his article. For my part, I was mainly interested in any of Coach Blache’s characteristically unusual turns of phrase, and on that score, I was a little disappointed.

Blache stayed on-message the entire time — “Coaching is teaching,” he said, “My specialty is teaching. My guys have their test on national TV every Sunday” — and largely delivered that message without entertaining stories about hunting and what-not. Mostly. Except for the story he said he tells his players about how dealing with criticism is like a frog climbing a water tower.

I’m paraphrasing, but essentially the story dealt with a whole bunch of “little green frogs clinging to a water tower.” As they all tried to climb up, people at the bottom shouted how they couldn’t possibly make it up — and sure enough, one by one they fell off. Except for one frog who finally made it up, and when the people asked how he had pulled that off, didn’t give any answer.

“The only frog to make it to the top was deaf,” Blache said. “He couldn’t hear all of the people telling him he could not do it. Sometimes who you’re around, your friends, you have to be deaf. So many people try to pull you down because they don’t believe in you or they’re afraid of success.”

It’s no “south end of a northbound skunk,” but it was a nice little story, and the Blachiest element of his (very good) talk.

Even more interesting, though, was the Redskins personnel news that came out in the post-speech Q&A. Read more »

Monday, March 23: Paintball With Rocky McIntosh

When Rocky McIntosh invited me to go paintballing with him and his friends on Saturday, a few thoughts went through my mind.

First, I wondered how good an idea this was. There’s a brief history of Redskins and paintball, and between Redskins players being badly outnumbered in a charity tournament and the team’s 2007 first round pick missing minicamp with a paintball injury to the groin, not much of it can be considered very good.

Second, I found myself wondering exactly why Rocky McIntosh — who has become a regular on this blog for his holiday antics, his office antics, and his refusal to give Intern Bridgette a straight answer to basic interview questions– was described to me as a non-talker. Really.

When I first started working here, different people would offer advice for what to expect from the various players and coaches. Not much of that advice was consistent from one person to the next, but the one thing everyone agreed on was that McIntosh was a quiet guy who really kept to himself. This opinion seemed to be borne out when McIntosh went so far as to disguise himself as Khary Campbell in an attempt to avoid the media, so this outgoing version of Rocky McIntosh is continually surprising.

And third, I wondered what I was supposed to do with the 25 pound weight vest he had handed me.

What I did NOT wonder, although as it turns out I maybe should have, were who his friends were. If you had asked me at the time, I’d have said that I assumed it was Rocky’s peers — presumably not other players, otherwise he would’ve mentioned it, but friends of about his age, background, and so on.

I can safely say that I wouldn’t have come up with the actual answer: Read more »

Renaldo Wynn Agrees To Terms

He hasn’t signed the contract yet, but former Redskins DE Renaldo Wynn has definitely agreed to terms with the team, and is expected to officially sign sometime soon.

Wynn, not unlike fellow returnee Derrick Dockery, is someone that everyone here speaks highly of. People still talk about his car show (as in the video above), his restaurant reviews, his leadership abilities, and his ties to Northern Virginia and the Loudoun County area — all of which are on display in this terrific Washington Post profile from 2007.

Wynn said his blue-collar upbringing has made him appreciate the wealth that playing in the NFL has brought him. That translates into charity work in Northern Virginia.

“My main thing is to try to give back to the community and help families,” he said. “Last year my wife and I came up with the idea for Adopt a Child. We bus in children less fortunate than we are, bus in whole families, actually, and give each child $100 gift cards for Target to buy whatever they want for Christmas. We give the parents $100, too, because we want to make sure the kids get what they want instead of buying something for their parents.” He said last year he and his wife gave gift cards to about 200 people and that about 15 other Redskins came out to Target the day of the shopping spree to help the children pick out the gifts.

“The players loved it,” he said.

Read more »