This morning’s practice was much crisper than yesterday’s. The offense — especially the quarterbacks and wideouts — looked markedly better, and a lot fewer passes hit the ground. Trent Williams is in at starting left tackle, and Lorenzo Alexander is doing a predictably remarkable job fitting in at linebacker.

But, hey, who cares about all that football stuff, let’s talk about Albert Haynesworth some more!

Haynesworth again did not pass his conditioning test this morning, so he wasn’t at practice again today. Again he came out with defensive coordinator Jim Haslett for some work on terminology and the like. It was at that point that the media horde assembled — you can get a little sense of it from the picture above — and took pictures of Haynesworth and Haslett chatting. Fans alternated between shouting encouragement and criticism at Haynesworth, and then the defensive tackle walked back into the facility, followed by the media crew. (Which is where this AP photo is actually from.)

But one concrete thing came out of all this: head strength and conditioning coach Ray Wright addressed the media and explained the conditioning test that Haynesworth has been taking in simple terms, explained what Haynesworth has missed, and what he expects from the future.

So let’s lay all the speculation and concern to rest with a quick Q&A format, using Wright’s quotes as our main information source.
So what’s the test?

“The test is two 300 yard shuttles,” Wright said. “The first rep has to be in 70 seconds or better; you get three and a half minutes after, and then he has to run the second rep — that position, O-line/D-line — would have to run it in 73 seconds. 73 seconds for the second one, and that’s the end of the test.”

Wait, shuttles? What are they?

Here’s Wright: “Straight-line run 25 yards, touch your foot on the line, run back, touch your foot on the line. So it’s six times, 300 yards.”

Seems straightforward enough. But I keep reading these reports that he had to run three yesterday! What’s up with that?!?!?

“He didn’t have to do three,” Wright explained. “He ran the first rep and then he had to use the restroom. You get three and a half minutes [as a break] and he was gone close to ten.” Wright said that he suggested that Haynesworth not try to run it again and instead save it for today, but Haynesworth insisted on trying.

Would Albert have passed the test if he hadn’t taken such a long break?

“He might’ve.”

Would he have had to start over if he had gotten the break done in the allotted 3:30?

“No,” Wright said. “He could’ve gone and eaten a hamburger; if he came back in three and a half minutes, he was ready to run.”

Has everyone on the team passed the test?

“It’s actually not a test for everybody on the team,” Wright said, and went on to explain that anyone who was under 50% attendance at offseason work was notified that there would be a test if they finished under 50%. That said, everyone on the team has completed this drill. Wright explained this seeming contradiction: “We ran it as a workout. You guys call it a test but we just use it — we have about fifteen or twenty different workouts, so one of our workouts during the offseason was that ‘test’. Same times and everything.”

But it’s gonna get harder every time he runs it, right? Because his legs are getting tired?

“No,” Wright said, “I disagree. I think what he’s doing is he’s learning how to run. There’s a pace you have to have, a certain tempo each 25 yards. And I expect him to pass it pretty soon. I don’t know when, and I can’t give you tomorrow or two days, but once he familiarizes himself with it, I mean, I think he’ll pass.”

Wait a second. I’m a longtime reader of this blog. Is this the same conditioning test that Randy Thomas’s brother-in-law tried to run last offseason?

Why, yes, it is — although Thomas claimed that offensive and defensive lineman had to finish the first rep in 67, not 70, which would be even tougher. You have an excellent memory, and thanks for sticking with us.

Remind me, how’d that wind up for Thomas’s brother-in-law?

Poorly. Here’s Thomas describing the results to me. “He really embarrassed me, because I put him through the whole offseason workouts. He wants to walk on somewhere, but he walked off today. Today, he really discouraged me, because I thought he was at least getting worked out.”

Wow. So the conditioning test is no joke?

That was, in fact, the title of that blog post. I guess I could reuse it now, though.

And when does Haynesworth run again?

Tomorrow morning. And I devoutly hope he passes, because I am totally sick of this entire saga.

Usually when I post these press conferences, it’s not because I think it was such a fascinating experience that it deserves rewatching. I think of it as … as a Redskins community service, for lack of a better phrase. A chance for people who don’t trust transcribed quotes or excerpts to see how it actually went down.

That’s not the case with this one. Joe Bugel’s retirement presser was something to behold, a football lifer speaking from the heart without notes or a microphone, and it was a legitimately riveting spectacle.

“I think I’m ready to block for Joe Bugel,” the Washington Post’s Rick Maese tweeted after about ten minutes of Bugel’s speech, to general agreement.

Rich Campbell of the Free Lance-Star was even more blunt: “Listening to Bugel right now is as close as we’ll get to hearing an NFL locker room speech first hand.”

Even Bugel’s players agreed. Sort of.

“Nah,” original Hog George Starke said, “he used a different language in the meetings for us. He had a different way of talking to us. He had a certain amount of style [with his cursing], I think he had his own style. He’s a blue collar guy from Pittsburgh, and it’s a good thing.”

“That was very, very mild,” Randy Thomas agreed. “I think he was respecting, ’cause a lot of women were in the meeting room, but he would’ve gave us a little bit. Even that speech had me kinda fired up. I was almost like we were gonna go to practice or something.”

At the very least, though, Thomas and the other players weren’t surprised by the terms Bugel did use. For example, when discussing owner Daniel M. Snyder, Bugel was emphatic in declaring his love for the man. Like, really emphatic. “I learned a long time ago from some great coaches,” he said, “they said, ‘Never be ashamed to look somebody in the face, and tell them you love them.’”

Thomas had heard that before. “He would tell us he loves us in the meetings,” Thomas said. “So we’re not not used to … we know Buges. You guys were kinda like, ‘oh, okay, this is a little Buges,’ but nah. That’s just … there’s a lot more to Buges.”

One of those things, apparently, was a dedication to loyalty, passion, and friends. Bugel brought it up himself, discussing his return to the Redskins in 2004. “We always used these three rules: loyalty, passion, and friends,” he said. “That has never changed in our philosophy here – loyalty, passion, and friends.”

And each of his players echoed it, not as if they were parroting something they’d learned by rote but as if it was something that had become ingrained in them by listening to Bugel.

Here’s Randy Thomas, getting sidetracked on a question about Bugel cursing: “He was all about friends, passion, loyalty. I mean, he really stressed that. And he loves family.”

Chris Samuels brought it up while discussing the differences between the press conference today and a typical Bugel team meeting. “[We] actually saw the sensitive side of Buges today,” he said, “so that was a good thing. But you guys really didn’t get the real taste of Buges.” I joked that he didn’t talk about love quite that much in a film session, and Samuels was quick to correct me. “Oh, he says love. ‘Passion, loyalty, and friends‘ and ‘I love you guys,’ but he never really tears up that much. It’s more brutal than that.”

Derrick Dockery was right onboard with that, describing a team meeting with Bugel as like the press conference “but more swear words. He’s very passionate about what he does, and he’s loyal, and he’s a great friend, man.”

Bugel owned up to the swearing thing during the press conference itself. “I’m not an easy guy to get along with,” he said. “I don’t have a big vocabulary and they will tell you that. I know every swear word you want to know – every one. “

Asked about the specifics of Bugel’s cursing, Randy Thomas could just shake his head in awe. “His wife has to have the same mouth,” Thomas said, with a certain amount of admiration. “I mean, they have to be compatible, know what I mean? Just imagine them two at breakfast? Beep beep beep cereal? Beep beep?”

“I’m gonna miss the feisty little guy,” Thomas added later, and also, more wistfully, “I sure wish he had one more year.”

Bugel, for his part, seemed at peace with his decision, if a little melancholy and reflective. “It’s tough to walk away,” he said. “After 32 years it’s been a privilege to coach in the National Football League – FIFTEEN of them as a Redskin. I love this organization. I will always love this organization. We have a lot of fond memories.”

Tomorrow, after a seemingly endless stretch of downtime, training camp starts back up. Once upon a time in the misty NFL past, “training camp” meant exactly what it sounds like: a bunch of out-of-shape players would show up, many having worked non-football jobs during the offseason, and the coaching staff would use a grueling camp to whip them into shape.

That’s not so much the case now. Between organized offseason team workouts, non-team-related but still organized workouts, and individual workouts, players now show up to camp in shape and use the training camp to get into game shape. But teams still need to be sure that players are prepared to go through the rigors of training camp (no matter how in shape they appear), which is why there is a conditioning test that everyone has to pass before training camp.

The conditioning test made its way into the spotlight last year when Coach Zorn talked about how then-rookie wide receivers Devin Thomas and Malcolm Kelly had not been able to pass it.

“If you can’t pass that physical test that we give, then something’s not right,” Zorn said at the time according to the Washington Post. “So I’ve been kind of jabbing at them with that. . . . I wish I could take the test just to show everybody that I was in good shape. It’s sort of a pride issue.”

Zorn isn’t the only one who wanted to take the test.


This is Randy Thomas‘s brother-in-law Brian.

The 21 year-old has been in town for much of the summer, working out with Thomas with the hope of walking on to the football team at his junior college. “That’s my dream,” he told me. That’s my goal. I’ve been given an advantage because I’ve been working out in the NFL atmosphere instead of the junior college atmosphere.”

Yesterday marked the culmination of that advantage: on the last day Brian could be at the facility, Thomas wanted him to go through that same conditioning test. “It’s a 300 yard shuttle,” Thomas told me, “25 yards and back six times. Linemen, we get 67 seconds. I gave him 70.”

So Thomas, along with fellow linemen D’Anthony Batiste and Mike Willliams, took Brian out to the practice fields yesterday morning and put him through his paces.

I caught up with them afterward to see how it went.

“He really embarrassed me,” Thomas said, “because I put him through the whole offseason workouts.”

I winced. That successful?

Thomas shook his head. “He wants to walk on somewhere, but he walked off today. Today, he really discouraged me, because I thought he was at least getting worked out.”

Brian had been standing by, still looking sweaty and fatigued. “I finished the first one,” he pointed out.

“It’s the recovery,” Batiste said. “You can do the first one, but your recovery is shot.”

“He passed the first one in the handicap time of 70,” Thomas clarified. “He came in at 69 seconds. But the second one took him a hundred seconds. That’s pretty embarrassing.”

“When I started off running the first one, it felt kinda good. You know, you gotta run down there and back: that’s one. I got to four of those, then … the gas tank ran out. Then I started running on fumes.” Brian looks completely taken aback at how difficult the test was, so I asked him if he had thought he was ready.

“All night, I was thinking, ‘I can really do this stuff. I can really make it in sixty-five.’ But I’m telling you, it’s … whew.”

Brian may not be in NFL shape, but he’s in better shape than, say, me. “If had tried to run that without working out, I probably would’ve died. I would’ve considered myself, like, 70% in shape. I wasn’t all the way in shape before the training. This morning, I thought I was most of the way in shape.”

And now?

“Now I feel like crap.”

It was Thomas, though, who made it clear just how tough the test can be. He told me that he’s exempt from the test as a ten-year vet, so I sort of confidently said something like, “But you could do it, yeah?”

He looked at me for a second and shook his head. “No.”

No?

“Nope.” He pointed over at his brother-in-law. “One thing [Brian] did, he did finish. So we know he got heart. But I wanted to show him that it ain’t no joke.”

The kind folks over at Redskins Broadcast Network — Rebecca Mejia and Jordan Beane — caught this video of Mike Williams interviewing Thomas about his cousin’s conditioning test.

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I stayed at Redskins Park for the Brian Orakpo press conference yesterday, so I missed the reported mobbing of Jason Campbell by the local media. It sounded like quite the scene, with Campbell surrounded and fielding endless questions in his characteristic classy manner, and his teammates staying rock solid in support of him. Kelli Johnson’s piece for Comcast SportsNet gives a good overview of that angle on things.

By the time I arrived at the Lowes Island Club golf course for the Jason Campbell Leukemia Golf Classic, the players had scattered across 36 holes of golf and were just generally having a good time hacking away at the ball and enjoying the warm weather.

As the name suggests, the tournament benefits the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and from that standpoint yesterday was an unmitigated success. The event raised over $225,000 for the group, a marked jump from last year’s successful effort. Campbell, by all accounts, actually helps to plan the event, attending meetings and working with the group, not just lending his name.

There were two things worthy of special note yesterday.

One of them is vastly more important than the other, so that’s where I’ll start.The young man next to Jason Campbell in this picture is Sey-J — prounounced “C.J.” — Landsdowne, and he, not Campbell, was the guest of honor at the event.

Sey-J has been battling leukemia for the past three years, according to his father, Seymour. When it was first diagnosed, he underwent a battery of medical procedures — chemotherapy, radiation, all of that — and was fortunate enough to see his illness go into remission. He returned to school, to playing, to all the things that make a nine-year old happy.

Ten months later, it returned with a vengeance. Doctors gave Sey-J little chance to rally again. Again, the procedures — including a bone marrow transplant — followed this time by an experimental treatment arranged by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

“I don’t know your faith,” Seymour told me, “but what happened next I can only call an act of god.”

Sey-J recovered, returning home ahead of schedule. “They told him the list of things he had to do to be allowed home,” Seymour said, “being able to feed himself and other things like that. And he asked me to come in and work with him until he could do them. We weren’t expected to be able to go home until January at the earliest; we came home on December 22nd, in time for Christmas.”

Campbell had visited Sey-J at his home when he was ill, cementing his status as the kid’s favorite player, a status that he has happily worked to maintain — in the run-up to yesterday’s event JC took Sey-J mini-golfing.

One thing I’ve learned about events like this is that every time I start thinking it’s about the amusing stories and seeing the players out of their element, I meet someone like Sey-J who kills off my cynical opportunism for a bit.

That said, I spent the afternoon in a golf cart, riding along with Campbell’s girlfriend, Mercedes Lindsey, as she shot photos of the various groups on the course, so there was certainly plenty of opportunity to see the players out of their element as well.

Which brings me to the second, much less important, thing worthy of special note. Here’s Clinton Portis, golfing — or, as I like to call it, A Study In Plaids.

The most exciting part of Portis’s game is not his swing — “It’s all right,” he noted, although he seemed willing to take tips from the rest of his foursome — but his socks.

“I got ‘em cheap from Wal-Mart,” he said.

Rock Cartwright is an avid golfer who found himself deeply frustrated that the team behind him — the eventual winners of that course — was stocked with a ringer: course pro Colleen Yaeger. “That’s just ridiculous,” he said, shaking his head.

Chris Cooley, meanwhile, demonstrated an ability to drive the heck out of the ball — something in the neighborhood of 350 yards the one time I was watching. When the rest of his foursome failed to make the most of the impressive opening drive in the scramble-style golf they were playing, Cooley suggested that the team take one final mulligan to earn an eagle on the hole. His partners were hesitant, and Cooley rolled his eyes. “You score that as an eagle or I’m going to punch you in the stomach,” he said. His partners ignored him and scored it as a birdie.

The scouting report on Chris Horton was pretty straightforward: great putting, not so much on the driving. But if you’re somehow up against the combination of Cooley’s drives and Horton’s putting, watch out.

In the end, it was a good day for Jason Campbell. His foursome — not the one with the golf pro — won their course, building on his first-place finish in Brian Mitchell’s tournament and third-place finish in Bruce Smith’s. His Redskins teammates showed up to his event and proclaimed their support to the media.

And when someone took the mic after the silent auction and made the claim that he had been responsible for the Jets trading up in Saturday’s NFL Draft to select Mark Sanchez just to guarantee that Campbell would be able to host this event again and into the future, the crowd went nuts and Campbell was able to just sit back with a genuine smile.

From one perspective, it doesn’t mean that much, but from another, it was a perfect way for the quarterback — after all these weeks of rumor and stress — to head into the weekend of the team’s first mini-camp.

A few more pictures, mostly courtesy of Mercedes Lindsey:

Randy Thomas negotiates a bunker as Derrick Dockery looks on.

Lorenzo Alexander gets a ride.

Colt Brennan in his golf whites.

Antwaan Randle El and Larry Michael run a live auction.

Ladell Betts and Fred Smoot kick back after a tough day of golf.

I spent a few good minutes sitting with Carlos Rogers while he mulled over his Favorite Snack Food — “Ain’t potato chips … maybe donuts? … there’s a lot of good snacks … those Little Debbie things, too ….” — before ultimately settling on donuts. It was riveting, but not nearly as riveting as watching Rogers and fellow cornerback Justin Tryon debate whether or not “God” was a viable choice for Person You’ve Never Met That You Would Like To Spend Time With.

“I’m putting God,” Tryon maintained.

“Aw, come on,” said Rogers.

“It is!”

“You don’t want to meet him too soon, though.”

“Well … no.”

“What about another football player you looked up to? Deion?”

“I met Deion. Met Darrell Green.”

“Some musician?”

“Nah. Man, I don’t know.”

I left them sitting in a contemplative silence, quietly debating the relative merits of God versus Darrell Green. (Tryon told me afterward that he eventually settled on Serena Williams, which seemed like a reasonable choice.)

Intern Bridgette found Derrick Dockery and Randy Thomas sitting in the same place not too much later, also filling out their surveys. She figured on a quick video interview about the survey topics, and instead wound up with this latest installment of the ongoing Randy And Doc Show. Since Dockery’s return, the two have been largely inseparable, constantly riffing on whatever topic comes to mind; here, it’s on post-football careers, losing weight, and the ugliest offensive linemen.

Here’s a quick excerpt; the full video is after the jump.

Dockery: “We [he and Chris Samuels] keep in contact at least once a week. He’s doin’ well, working hard. I think he told me he lost about twenty pounds. Do you believe that? Twenty pounds?

Thomas: “Well, he had a lot to lose, though. You know? If I was 350, I could lose thirty pounds in a week. If you’ve got a lot to lose, you can lose it. If he was lean and lose twenty, I’d be like, ‘Damn, that’s good.’ He’s fat.”

Dockery: “Very harsh.”

Thomas: “Well, he ain’t here, so…”

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Even so, I didn’t realize quite how ambitious and accomplished a cook Thomas was until I got him talking on the subject — about how long he’s been cooking, about the legendary assortment of food he rolls out, about how cooking is like football, and even learning an impressive-sounding recipe for lamb chops in the process.

Tell me how you got started cooking.
“Well, it started way back when I used to sit around the kitchen when my mom was cooking. I never was one of those street guys. I was really excited to know what was for dinner, ‘when are we going to the grocery store, can I get in the cart, can I push it’ — and it just started growing, where I would experiment cooking with her. I chopped up a couple vegetable here and there, seasoned a couple meats, drop a couple things in the hot grease.”What kind of stuff did your mom cook?
“Of course all the southern dishes with the vegetables, fried chicken, pork chops. She baked a lot, too. We weren’t in too much into sautéing stuff because that’s not what we did in the south. We boiled a lot of stuff with meat fat. We grilled a lot of foods. We never did use wood. We used just coals; we never got into the wood- now you have hickories, oak wood, other kinds of wood chips.”

Did you at any point start cooking for your whole family?
“Oh yeah. Sometimes I cleaned and surprised my mom with dinner. I would do something like baked chicken — or another option you have is fried chicken, or you boil it. I didn’t try to cook anything that she would probably have for Sunday, like a roast or anything like that. I would just cook something that we had a big quantity of, so that I could play with it and if I messed it up I could throw it away.

“Then I would cook some vegetables; make some black-eyed peas that used to come in the plastic bags that would dry. You had to float them in water to pick out the bad ones. Sometimes they bag old black-eyed peas that if they float you have to get them out.”

So what did you mess up and have to throw away? Any major disasters?
“I think one time I scorched something, put something on too long and made the house real smoky. I couldn’t tell them I hadn’t cooked anything because when you walked in the house it was burnt-smelling. I didn’t catch anything on fire, but the aroma was lingering for like two days. They were black-eyed peas and you don’t want to smell black-eyed peas that were burned to where they smoked.

“I said, how did it get so hot? I wasn’t thinking that it had grease in it along with the vegetables. It smoked forever and then I tried to put water on it, and it started smoking even worse. The best thing I probably could have done was take it outside, but I didn’t- I watered it down. I tried to save them, but it was like burnt popcorn.”

Did you keep cooking even after going to school?
“To be honest, I’ve always been an entertainer with my food. One thing we believe in my family is that we like to see people happy when they eat, we like to get that response. I believe people cook for a review. You don’t just want someone to come to your house and eat you food and just be like, ‘Oh.’

“You have to be like, ‘Was it good?’ You don’t ask those questions, but you want feedback. I cook for feedback to see how people really liked it. I cook so much, and I have been doing it so long, it’s not just giving out food like here, here, here. I like to watch one person who’s eating and realize, like, ‘Oh he really liked it.’”

It seems like an whole lot of guys in the locker room cook.
“We’ve got a few fake Italians,” he says as Fabini walks by, and then he laughs for awhile. “A couple of guys cook but they never invite me over to eat, so I don’t know what it tastes like. People will tell you, when I do it, I can cook probably like six different meats and six different sides, a big pan of dessert. I am going to give you everything I have if you come to my house. Some guys will probably serve you one dish and say, ‘This is my specialty. I can’t mess this one up.’”

Well, do you have a specialty?
“No. I can do something quick that I can get over with, but no one specialty.”

Is the cooking something you see being part of your life after football?
“Yeah, because I like being around people and — like I told you — I like to see them eat my food and see reactions. Basically, if you are going to criticize me, tell the truth so I can improve what I do. Just like on the field.

“I actually take what I learn in the kitchen sometimes and put it on the field, because if you season the meat and you pound it, it is going to come out how you want it. It’s like how you practice on the field. If you practice hard, and pound plays, the outcome is going to be nice.”

Is there a particularly memorable meal you’ve made?
“Yeah, I am an experimental guy. Sometimes my best meals are the ones I have alone, because, there’s that feeling of, ‘Man, this turned out good.’ There is no one to share it- it can be in the off-season or OTAs because my family is in Atlanta and I’m at home by myself.

“I’ll go buy a rack of lamb and I just play with stuff. Here’s an example: I hand rub a rack of lamb with some spices and maple syrup, and I sauté them in a syrup and butter sauce. It almost turns into a teriyaki, but it’s not teriyaki, it’s a home-made glaze that’s sticking to the lambs. I think I chopped up some asparagus real fine and nice with some white kettle corn with some chives and I just sautéed that real good and just plated it and threw my lamb on top and that was it.”

The guys say you put out an impressive spread.
“I give people choices. If you don’t eat chicken, I have pork. If you don’t have pork, I have beef. If you don’t eat beef, I have sausage.

“I think people really like when they come to my house I have choices. You’re not just stuck with burgers and fries. It’s kind of like, ‘Daaaaaamn.’ And that’s why I get a big gathering, because people know I’m going to have everything in there.”

“They don’t believe I cook all this food, because I don’t have but so much time.” Chris Samuels walks up to see what’s going on, and Thomas gestures at him. “Ask Chris , he comes over my house and says, ‘You catered all this.’ I cook big pans. I mean, my kitchen is big, and every countertop is full of food.

“I can cook from 11 to 3 and I’ll be done with everything. I am talking about, you know how big I am, I have to stir mac and cheese in a big pot like this,” and he makes a circle with his arms about the size of a hula hoop.

Do you prep things in advance to get it ready?
“I will probably do cold stuff. I might do the potato salad.”

Have you st
udied food or cooking at all, or is it just innate?
“It just runs through your head.”

At this point, Samuels is compelled to chime in. “He is awesome. Seriously. You know he used to have a restaurant in Atlanta, too?”

I didn’t, actually. What kind of restaurant?

“It was Southern,” Thomas says.

Samules elaborates: “Heart attack mansion.”

Thomas brushes the discussion away. “It’s not really something I talk about because it was a bad experience.”

“Seriously,” Samuels says emphatically, “he’s an awesome cook though. It really is a big spread.”

Thomas shrugs. “They be like, ‘I know you catered it,’ because I leave practice and they come over at, like, four o’clock and it’ll be all done.”

Samuels shakes his head. “He must get up at four in the morning and start cooking. It’s the only way it’s possible.”