The Redskins Blog

Tuesday, January 12: Rooting For … The Cowboys?

An interesting item on ProFootballTalk this morning about the provisions put into the CBA to prevent an uncapped year from turning into the rich getting richer. I hadn’t been thinking about it much because it was so far from relevant to the extremely non-playoff 2009 Redskins, but it boils down to this: teams in the final eight will be faced with certain limitations in the upcoming 2010 free agency period.

Here are the four major restrictions as cited in PFT, with me attempting to do a lawyerese-to-English translation on each one. Read more »

Redskins Work In A Pizza Place For Christmas

Waleed Zarou, owner of The Don’s Wood-Fired PIzza in Sterling, Va., had one major concern with letting Redskins players act as servers during his second annual Christmas Eve free pizza dinner: “They take too much space,” he said. “You see how tight it is. I was nervous with them being in the kitchen how the other guys were gonna move. It’s a tight space, [and] you got a 700, 800 degree oven going, man.”

The dinner — supposedly two hours of free pizzas for all, although Zarou was still handing them out when I left half an hour past the scheduled end time –is partially about fellowship, a place for people who don’t have anyone else to come on Christmas Eve, and partially about charity, raising money for a mission in Africa. This is the first year that the players have participated — “I thought these guys would help me to grow it,” Zarou said — and Kedric Golston, Derrick Dockery, Lorenzo Alexander, and Renaldo Wynn seemed to really be enjoying themselves.

“We’re very blessed people,” Golston said. “To be in the NFL — regardless of the record — we’re very blessed, and to be able to give back and help … I mean, you never know.”

Golston is friends with Zarou through his father-in-law, and was acting as the de facto manager of the restaurant-working Redskins. “It was hard to get Derrick from the pizza,” Golston said, explaining how the group divided their labors. “I didn’t wanna fight that battle, so I just left him there. And Lorenzo’s more of a calmer dude, so he just said he’ll get the drinks. Renaldo was actually the last guy to show up, so we was actually already operating when he came, and so he was kinda like the guy in the restaurant that went around talked to everyone.”

Watching Golston and Dockery handing out pizza like old pros — asking a firm “Cheese or pepperoni?” like they’d been doing it forever — was entertaining, but not as entertaining as watching them eat seeming one slice for every one they handed out.
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Friday, December 25: The Redskins Christmas Halftime Show, 1946

Honestly, there is nothing I can say about this that trumps the description from the person who put it up on YouTube: “A rare gem — portions of the Washington Redskins halftime show from what I believe is the 1946 Christmas Halftime Show, featuring the Washington Redskins Marching Band — also featuring Santa Claus and midget acrobats!”

Well, I suppose that description fails to mention the horse, the elephant, and the “gilded Indian dancers,” but you get the idea.

I hope everyone is having a happy and healthy Christmas day, whether you’re celebrating it with a tree and gifts, Chinese food and a movie, or a nice comforting day at work waiting for Redskins practice.

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One More Part Of The Trick Play

Okay, one more dip into the well on this failed trick play thing.

In the yellow circle and over the yellow arrow above is Fred Davis, the second option — and eventual target, sort of — on the play. Davis is not, as some people have suggested to me, just standing around wondering what the heck is going on. What he’s actually doing is acting; because of the shifted offensive line, the defense is meant to believe that the ball is coming quickly to Davis with an entire offensive line of blockers in front of him. (This is, in fact, one of the most common ways that the swinging gate formation is used.)

Meanwhile, Hunter Smith is dropping back while being rushed by three Giants, Malcolm Kelly is running across the formation away from us, theoretically taking a couple of the defenders with him, and Todd Yoder is about to — again, theoretically — come open and unnoticed into empty space from the long snapper position. But we’ve heard from Yoder at length on this already, so let’s leave him frozen in time, with the play not yet a complete disaster, and get Davis’s point of view.
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Redskins Distribute (And Discuss) Coats

It’s the holiday season, so I’ll be heading out to a Santa-themed charitable event at FedExField today. But Antwaan Randle El was ahead of that curve: on Friday, his El Foundation partnered with the Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation to hold his “Randle El Warms Up Washington’s Youth” event at a local Macy’s, giving away 300 coats to underserved area youth alongside a bunch of his teammates.

December in this area isn’t all holiday cheer; we all know how bitterly cold it can get. So the gift of winter coats is a valuable one, something Randle El understands. “They certainly deserve these coats and need these coats,” he said Friday. “And it’s a good thing. It not only warms their bodies with the coats, it warms their hearts too knowing that somebody is thinking of them.”

But we all know that — even for kids who need them — coats are about more than just warmth. There are all sorts of style and status implications of a new coat, or at least there were back in the day.

“My favorite coat growing up was the Starter coat,” Randle El said. “I never had a Starter coat, but that was the coat I wanted. I would’ve wanted the Chicago Bears Starter coat. I never got one, but that’s the one I would want.”

He wasn’t the only one who had that response.

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Saturday, December 12: On Flintstones And The Heisman

Not everyone in the Redskins locker room has a rooting interest in tonight’s presentation of the Heisman Trophy. There are plenty of guys who simply couldn’t care less; as far as they’re concerned, Tim Tebow is the same as Toby Gerhardt is the same as Colt McCoy is the same as Ndamukong Suh is the same as Mark Ingram.

Linebacker Chris Wilson is not one of those guys.

“Mark Ingram, baby,” Wilson was shouting the other day. “Flint!”

Alabama running back Ingram is from Flint, Michigan, Wilson’s hometown. And it’s the sort of hometown that inspires fanatical loyalty from its proud children.

“The latest pride of Flint is holding it down like never before,” Wilson said. “It’s just good to see somebody on the football side get this much college hype. You know, not to disrespect any of the former Flintstones, but it was just nothing that could compare to that basketball hype, with Mateen Cleaves, Charlie Bell, Antonio Smith, and Morris Peterson.”

Wait a second. Are all people from Flint called Flintstones, or just the former Michigan State basketball superstars? Read more »

Wednesday, December 2: Redskins Discuss Easy Bake Ovens

One last bit from yesterday’s “Holiday Wishes Come True” event, hosted by Renaldo Wynn and his wife LaTanya (along with the Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation, the Family of Faith foundation, and Target).

Even though the event was about giving tangible gifts to kids as we get into the meat of the holiday season, Wynn made absolutely certain to remind everyone what the real purpose of the event — and the holidays — is. “Whenever we’re given the opportunity,” he said, “that’s our goal as human beings: to serve others. And it’s just a great feelin’ when you come and you give yourself to someone else, I think that’s the greatest gift you can have.”

And he’s probably right about that. Still, though, the kids seemed really enthusiastic about the material gifts they were getting, too. Read more »

Redskins Kill Time By Doodling

Renaldo Wynn‘s “Holiday Wishes Come True” event was a big success today. Wynn, along with his wife LaTanya and a huge number of his teammates, escorted local children in need through Target, providing each kid with a hundred dollars to use toward whatever they wanted for the holiday season.

Byron Westbrook was one of the players who helped out with — and enjoyed — the event. “This was a great event today,” he said, “being able to help these kids who can’t get some of these gifts all the time get some of what they did want for Christmas. And it helps the parents out as well, gets something to make their kids happy. The kids had big smiles on their face the whole day.”

Westbrook and a few of his teammates, though, did run into some downtime before the event got started, and they amused themselves by tracing their hands on the disposable tablecloth in front of them and autographing the handprint. Read more »

Thursday, November 26: Redskins Discuss Thanksgiving Foods. At Length.

For Thanksgiving last year — a year ago to the day, in fact — I talked to a bunch of the players about how they prepared their turkey. It turned into a much livelier debate than I expected — and introduced the word Fred-o-synthesis to the world — but ultimately boiled down to two major choices: roasted or fried.

This year, I thought it might be interesting to hear about something a little less binary, so I posed one question to a bunch of guys in the locker room: what’s your favorite Thanksgiving side dish? And that seemingly simple question led to some surprisingly elaborate answers.

The Importance Of Dressing

“Dressing,” Fred Smoot said when I asked for his Thanksgiving favorite. There was no pause, no hesitation, no rumination. Smoot, as usual, is supremely confident in his likes and dislikes. “I am a FIEND for dressing.”

But Smoot declined to provide specifics of his family’s dressing recipe. “If I tell you, I’m'a have to kill you,” he said. “But I will tell you something: I love dressing. I could eat dressing 365 days a year. But the key to a good dressing is a great giblet gravy. ‘Cause no matter the range of your dressing — if your dressing’s great or it’s okay or it’s good — you got the right giblet gravy, it’ll turn out great.”

Just the mention of dressing got Chris Wilson fired up. Read more »

Redskins Chat With Troops

One last Veterans Day link, because I didn’t see it on Veterans Day: Phillip Daniels, Chris Cooley, Fred Smoot, Rock Cartwright, and Renaldo Wynn do a webchat with U.S. Troops stationed in Iraq.

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