Rich Tandler's Real Redskins

Redskins.com Puff

I don't expect what's written on Redskins.com to be hard-hitting or even mildly critical of the Washington Redskins. I haven't even heard the PR department refer to the site as "unfiltered" Redskins news lately. There is no pretense of objectivity. It's definitely "sunny side up" coverage of the team.

Generally, there isn't anything wrong with that. You see the brand, you see the label, and what you see is what you get. Don't expect to go on to the GOP website and read the dirt about John McCain. Don't visit Exxon-Mobile's site to find stories of consumer hardship caused by the price of gas.

Sometimes, though, positive spin can go too far. Such was the case in a story on Dexter Manley that appeared on Redskins.com a couple of days ago.

The article, written by Michael Richman, summarizes Manley's on-field accomplishments and speaks of his emotion and flair. It's a nice piece, as far as it goes. But where it doesn't go is the issue.

There is no mention of Manley's problems with substance abuse anywhere in the article. Not one word.

You just can't talk about the career of Dexter Manley without talking about his problems with drugs any more than you can reflect on the presidency of Richard Nixon without talking about Watergate. The scandal was the latter's downfall just like cocaine derailed Manley's chances of becoming one of the all-time greats.

His sack totals went up every year from 1982, when the NFL started officially counting sacks, through 1986. That last year he totaled 18.5 sacks and made his first Pro Bowl.

It proved to be his last appearance in Hawaii as well. A first positive test for banned substances resulted in a warning. In July of 1988 he served a 30-day suspension for a second positive test. After recording 8.5 sacks in the strike-abbreviated 1987 season, he got just nine in '88.

The end came not too long after that. Ten games into the 1989 season, at the age of 30, he played his last down for the Redskins. A third positive test landed him an indefinite ban from the NFL.

When he was reinstated after a year, Joe Gibbs and the Redskins wanted no part of him. He played a year in Phoenix and one more in Tampa Bay before a fourth positive test got him banned for life.

These are not trivial, salacious details about the career of Manley. They are a relevant part, even a major part of the story. The substance abuse issue answers questions such as, "If he was such a good player, why did the Redskins ever let him leave?"

But the skies are never cloudy at Redskins.com. Never is heard a discouraging word, even when the credibility of the articles is at stake.

Flashback Friday: Redskins 72, Giants 41 11.25.66

This week's flashback takes a look at the highest scoring game in NFL history.

What's amazing is that, after 42 years, the record still stands. The rules for this game were vastly different than they are today. Defenders could bump and run with receivers all the way down the field. Defensive linemen could head slap those attempting to block them. A penalty for offensive holding was 15 yards from the spot of the foul and the definition of holding was much tighter.

The combined 113 points are a record for any game and the Skins' 72 is the highest output for a regular season game.

The game account is from the pages of my book The Redskins From A to Z.

Brig Owens scored two TD's

DC Stadium—The Redskins scored on offense, on defense, on special teams, on the ground and through the air in racking up the highest single-game scoring total ever in a regular season NFL game. In a losing effort, the Giants scored 41, making the combined total of 113 points another league record.

It started off tamely enough when Brig Owens intercepted a pass by Giants quarterback Tom Kennedy, setting up a five-yard touchdown pass from Jurgensen to AD Whitfield. It was the start of a career day for Whitfield, a backup running back as he scored three touchdowns. His second one made it 13-0—Charlie Gogolak had missed the extra point after the first TD—going into the second quarter.

The Redskins racked up three more touchdowns before halftime. Hanburger barreled into Kennedy, forcing a fumble that Owens recovered and returned 62 yards into the end zone. Whitfield and the player he backed up, Joe Don Looney, scored the other two. The Giants added two scores of their own and it was 34-14 at halftime.

The third quarter was Taylor's time to shine. The receiver scored on Jurgensen touchdown passes of 32 and 74 yards. Jurgy's passing line on the day belies the high scoring nature of the contest—ten of 16 for 145 yards. For his part, Taylor was glad to get on the board, having dropped a sure TD pass earlier in the game.

The Giants matched Washington's scoring in the third period with Gary Wood throwing a pair of touchdown passes of his own. That made it 48-28 going into the fourth quarter. The Redskins defense was certainly capable of blowing such a lead.

But there were more points to be scored by the Redskins. Ricky Harris pushed the Redskins over the 50-point mark when he returned a punt 52 yards for a touchdown. Then Owens stepped in front of a pass from Wood and went all the way with a 60-yard interception return. That touchdown broke the team record for most points scored in a game, the 59 they had scored against the Boston Yanks in 1948. The Giants scored two more touchdowns pushing the total for both teams over 100 points. Just for fun, Otto Graham lined wide receiver Mitchell up at his old running back spot and Mitchell scooted 45 yards for the Redskins' tenth and final touchdown of the day. To recap, they scored a touchdown almost every way you can: four running, three passing and one each on a punt, fumble, and interception return. They also got nine extra points and----a field goal.

Oh, yes, the field goal, a very interesting sidebar to the game.

Either thinking it was third down or just wanting to get the heck off the field, Kennedy threw the ball out of bounds on fourth down with nine seconds left. Gogolak trotted onto the field and kicked a 29-yard field goal. After the game, Redskins coach Otto Graham said that he just wanted to give Gogolak some practice. Some accounts said that the players had pleaded with Graham to go for breaking 70 points. The best story, though, is that Sam Huff, still mad at the Giants for trading him two years earlier, yelled out "Field goal team, field goal team" himself in hopes that the unit would run on the field in the confusion and rub some salt in the Giants wounds. No matter why, the three points made the final 72-41.

Jason Taylor not on Skins ' dance card

An aging but still effective star player becomes available. Add the player's Hollywood aspirations into the mix and you seem to have a match made in heaven.

Daniel Snyder, do you take Jason Taylor to be your lawfully contracted defensive end?

The answer, apparently, is no. Cancel the caterers and see if you can get your deposit back from the florist.

It appears that the union between Taylor and the Miami Dolphins, his team since the beginning of his NFL career in 1997, is over. According to the team's head coach Tony Sparano, Taylor won't be attending OTA's, minicamp, or training camp.

That Taylor and the Fins are on the outs isn't breaking news. It's well known that they shopped him hard during the draft, including an offer to deal him to the Washington Redskins. At the time, they turned down Miami's request for a second-round pick for Taylor.

Indications are that the Skins' interest in Taylor remains dormant. They don't want to give up the high draft pick that Miami is looking for as compensation and they don't want to pay Taylor some $16 million over the next two seasons.

It's not that Taylor, 34, is done as an effective player. He had 11 sacks on a horrid team last year, following up a 13.5-sack effort that earned him NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors in 2006.

But the age certainly is a factor. While he appears to be in excellent shape and he should be an effective player for several more years, his best years clearly are behind him.

And there are legitimate questions about whether or not Taylor will play beyond his current two-year contract. He enjoyed the Hollywood gig with the Dancing With the Stars thing and nobody would be surprised if he hung up his jersey with some good seasons as a player left in the tank in favor of an acting career.

The Redskins are trying to build through the draft. They aren't one player away from making the Super Bowl. It would be counterproductive for them to expend a high draft pick and a big chunk of cap space on an aging player.

The Redskins were saved from themselves in the week before the draft when the Bengals rejected their offer for Chad Johnson. They appear to be taking their fate into their own hands here by steadfastly resisting the temptation to go dancing with Jason Taylor.

Zorn in an awkward spot

Bob Molinaro, Washington Redskins reporter for the Virginian-Pilot in Tidewater, did a Q&A with Jim Zorn when the Skins were down in Virginia Beach for their annual Beach Blitz.

Certainly, nothing earth-shattering was revealed in the interview. I did, however, find one of Zorn's answers interesting because it pointed out a challenge that he faces that most other rookie coaches don't have to deal with.

Here is the exchange:

Will your system make Campbell a better quarterback?

I just cringe answering a question like that, because it might imply that the staff before me failed, and that's not it at all.

Usually, when a new coach takes over he doesn't have to tiptoe around making sure that he doesn't say anything that could be interpreted as a knock on his predecessor. Sure, you don't want to go around slamming the guy you replaced, but by the same token you don't have to be guarded in any implied criticism.

However, most new head coaches aren't replacing legends with busts in Canton, Ohio. In fact, Zorn is in a spot where few, if any, have been before.

He's replacing Joe Gibbs, who won three Super Bowls here in his first run. While his second run wasn't as successful, he helped get the Skins back on the right track. On top of all that, he's a better person than he is a football coach.

Now, many who followed the team through the glory years and the more recent so-so comeback—present company included—have had some critical things to say about the way Gibbs coached in his comeback.

But that would be vastly different from Jim Zorn coming in and going negative on Coach Joe. We have been here, watching every play of every game, following every event from week to week, month to month, year to year. We've earned the right to take issue with the Hall of Famer.

Zorn, on the other hand, has been hanging out on the Left Coast for most of the past few decades. He hasn't been here so he hasn't built the credibility to be critical of what Gibbs did and didn't do.

And, no doubt, behind closed doors, Zorn occasionally wonders, "What the hell was he thinking?" when watching film. Every once in a while he's talking to a player who was here last year and wants to say, "He wanted you do it that way?" And, behind closed doors, Zorn might let such comments pass through his lips.

That doesn't mean that Zorn thinks he's smarter than Gibbs or that he knows more than Gibbs. Different coaches have different ways of getting things done and it's natural that what one coach thinks makes perfect sense would have another coach rolling his eyes

But in public, talking to reporters, he has to be very careful not to let anything slip. For the next several months, well into the season, Zorn will continue to "cringe" every time he gets a question that involves an answer that could be phrased in a way that might be considered to be a knock at the way Joe Gibbs did things.

Zorn is just starting to live down the "maroon and black" gaffe. He doesn't need to make another verbal misstep. It's obvious that he's being consciously careful not to.

Davis ’ mea culpa

Fred Davis returned to Redskins Park on Tuesday and apologized publicly for oversleeping and missing the third and final day of the team's minicamp earlier this month.

"I want to start by apologizing to [Redskins owner Dan] Snyder, Coach [Jim] Zorn, the players for making a minor mistake, just not waking up on time, something that was irresponsible of me," said Davis, whom the Redskins drafted in the second round out of USC. "I can't believe I did that. I overslept. I felt really bad. It's something that won't happen again ever."

I've said that I thought that too big a deal was made about this in the media—the incident was discussed and written about ad nauseum for the entire following week. He didn't drive drunk, he didn't make it rain, he overslept.

He also denied that he was out in downtown Washington that Saturday night as was rumored at the time.

"I didn't even go out," Davis said. "I was at the hotel the whole night. Just being on my own, it was probably a mistake on my part."

At the risk of being hypocritical by making something out of what Davis said about what I said was an overblown incident, something in his statements bothered me.

Oversleeping and missing an NFL minicamp practice is not "probably" a mistake, it's not a "minor mistake", it's a Class A, big-time, screw up. A high-school type mistake. A calling consecutive timeouts when you should know that doing so will result in a penalty kind of mistake.

Just because the media shouldn't go on about it for a week doesn't mean that Davis didn't commit a doozie. A biggie. Nothing probable or minor about it.

I don't necessarily expect Davis to come crawling on his hands and knees begging for mercy or anything like that. And, at this point, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he knows that he messed up in a major, major way.

At least he didn't say something like, "I'm sorry that this happened" and distance himself from the responsibility for the happening.

As a star athlete in high school and at a high-profile university like USC, Davis wasn't asked to apologize for much of anything. I'll forgive him if his skills in doing so aren't very polished.

Still, his take is something to file away to see what happens if he should be called upon to apologize for something again.

Hopefully, that won't happen any time soon.

Some movement towards rookie scale?

There seems to be some movement that might lead to the inclusion of a rookie wage scale in the next collective bargaining agreement. Kevin Mawae, Tennesse center, was on The Herd on ESPN Radio today and he had the following to say on the subject:

"As a guy who has been in the league for 14 now going on 15 years and being around other veteran guys, for a young guy to get paid that kind of money and never steps foot on an NFL football field, it's a little disheartening to think of," Mawae said. "It makes it tough for a guy who's proven himself to say 'I want that kind of money' when the owners, all they're going to say is, 'Well, you weren't a first-round pick.' "And I know there is sentiment around the league amongst the players like, 'Let's do something to control these salaries and control these signing bonuses' and things like that, and I know that's something that the owners are talking about and I'm sure that's going to play in to this round of negotiations for this collective bargaining agreement," he said.

Mawae is no ordinary grunt popping off. He also happens to be the President of the NFL Players Association. That gives his words a bit more gravitas, if you will. When the subject came up in the weeks leading up to the draft, association head Gene Upshaw essentially said that any rookie wage scale proposal would be dead on arrival.

“Every year at this time, I hear it again,” Upshaw said. “They don’t like how the rookies are paid. ‘They need some kind of pay scale.’ Well, I’m not going to limit how the rookies are paid because it has a huge impact on veterans. I’m not going to agree to it.”

Upshaw hasn't addressed the issue lately. He's right that the huge paydays that the likes of Matt Ryan receive (6 years, $72 million, $34 million guaranteed) impact veterans. That's $72 million that is not available to Falcons veterans who have, you know, actually played a down in the NFL. In addition, the big paydays for rookies run counter to the notion that bad teams are supposed to be able to better themselves through the draft. A team getting a top pick has to pay so much money to the new player that its ability to retain its core players and/or attract new free agents is seriously hampered.

Hopefully, this is not something that will become an issue for the Washington Redskins any time soon. They've had enough top 10 picks in the past 15 years or so. Still, fair is fair and the current system clearly is not fair.

LaCanfora on Morocco Brown

On his Redskins Insider blog, Washington Post Redskins beat reporter Jason LaCanfora delivers nothing short of glowing praise for the Redskins hiring of Morocco Brown as their director of pro personnel.

You can read his whole, lengthy post on Brown on the WP website, but here is the nut of the article:

Based on everything I've heard - and my reporting always carries the day in terms on my analysis of anything on this blog - you've got to give Cerrato full marks for making what appears to be an inspired hire.

For anyone to use "Cerrato" and "inspired" in the same sentence is surprising. For LaCanfora to do it is downright shocking.

One could say, as a commenter in another post did, that Brown must be a great hire if even JLC thinks it's a good move.

But if you are one of those who has been skeptical of his notorious "league sources" when they come through with information that is negative in regards to the Redskins, be careful of embracing the positive reviews as well.

The CBA and the Redskins

As expected, the NFL owners voted to end the collective bargaining agreement between the league and the players association on Tuesday. The unanimous vote has no immediate impact but it does start the clock ticking towards an uncapped year in 2010.

That season with no salary cap has many Washington Redskins fans gleefully anticipating a Dan Snyder spending spree to end all spending sprees. It's a long way to go before getting there and it would not be the nirvana that many think it would be.

Let's forget just a minute about how players would have to be in the league for six years instead of the current four in order to be eligible for unrestricted free agency, resulting in an older, thinner group of free agents. And never mind that any potential free agents actually would have to be, you know, free agents for the Skins to be able to sign them. They couldn't throw the Washington Monument and White House at Peyton Manning because he's under contract.

The simple fact is that in the billionaire's club that is the NFL, Snyder isn't up there with the real big boys when it comes to personal wealth. To be sure, unlike Buffalo's Ralph Wilson and Wayne Weaver of the Jags, he sits at the grownups' table, but Seahawks owner Paul Allen could pull enough out of petty cash to buy and sell Snyder a few times over. Snyder made his money in advertising; Jerry Jones made his in oil. Jones' black gold fortune is substantially larger than what Snyder amassed in marketing.

So, even if the Redskins could find enough free agent players that filled their needs, there is no guarantee that they could win a bidding war for the services of those athletes.

It does appear, however, that the Redskins are better prepared for a potential labor standoff than they were the last time the CBA was being negotiated all of two years ago.

Going into the 2006 offseason, the Redskins were way over the cap, some $20 million over the $95 million limit. Some provisions that took effect in the last capped year before an uncapped year (2007 would have been uncapped had the current agreement not been hammered out) that made it impossible for the Skins to use some of their usual methods to restructure deals and lower their cap numbers.

The Skins were headed for cap hell. Not the kind that everyone keeps predicting for them, the kind that never comes. Real, true cap hell.

From an article in this blog entitled "Cap-tastrophe" from February 20, 2006:

One of the problems with cutting players is that with the contracts structured as they are and the fact that most of the contracts are pretty new, there isn't much money to be saved in releasing a lot of players with big camp numbers. For example, LaVar Arrington counts about $12 million towards the '06 cap, but releasing him would result in a slightly higher cap charge than that because of uncharged money already paid to him.

It's like being upside down on a car loan, when the car is worth less than the payoff amount. Cutting Arrington would the put Redskins further away from the goal of being able to get under the cap. The same is true of such players who might be considered expendable in a crisis such as Mark Brunell and David Patten.

Now, to be sure, there are players that the team could release that actually could save money. Some of these players are ones that the Redskins would rather not cut such as Marcus Washington, Ladell Betts, Jon Jansen and Joe Salave'a. However, the Redskins could cut those four plus Taylor Jacobs, Renaldo Wynn, Pierson Prioleau, Philip Daniels, James Thrash, Cory Raymer, John Hall, Patrick Ramsey, Walt Harris, and Matt Bowen and still be about $8 million shy of being able to make it under the cap.

To realize the maximum cap savings, which are obviously necessary, these players would have to be replaced with rookies earning the minimum salary. Thus the "15-20 rookies" alluded to by Prisco and Pasquerelli.

Many Redskins fans have blocked this from their memories since, after a few extensions of the deadline, an agreement was reached and a level of cap hell that no team ever has experienced was averted.

The Redskins appear to have learned from this brush with death. While the same restrictive provisions will be in place in 2009 if there is no agreement before the free agency period starts, the Skins aren't in danger of being decimated this time around.

They only are a few million over the projected 2009 cap and there are a few players who could be cut to save enough money to get them safely under the limit.

There is plenty of time to hash this over in the coming months. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Rich Tandler's Redskins blog archive is located here. You can reach him by email at rich.tandler+bleachers@gmail.com.

Morocco Brown

According to the Washington Post, the Washington Redskins have hired Morocco Brown to be their director of pro personnel.

I haven't posted much of anything about the moves in the Redskins' front office lately. It's important stuff, but I just wasn't sure about what the departure of Louis Riddick from the job that Brown will be taking meant to the future of the franchise.

And I'm not sure what the arrival of Brown means, either. He comes from the Bears where he was the assistant director of pro personnel.

The director of pro personnel is responsible for evaluating talent on other NFL teams as well as judging the value of the players currently on the team.

From what I can gather, Brown is fairly well regarded, a rising star in the business. He has ties to the Redskins; he was a scout in the late 90's.

Roster spot #80 filled

The Washington Redskins got up to the limit of 80 players under contract when they signed defensive back Steve Tate, an undrafted rookie out of Hofstra.

Tate played in 42 games in his four years at the university on Long Island, but he started only 12. According to the Hofstra Chronicle, that's because his versatility:

"Tate doesn't start for us, but he might be the best defensive back we have." Defensive Backs Coach Lyle Hemphill said. "He plays both Cornerback and Safety. We can line him up anywhere."

Hemphill explained. "He actually plays more snaps then anyone else in the secondary. He is always in giving someone a blow."

Tate is 5-11, 184. He tried out during minicamp and got the call to sign a contract.

It would seem that his best shot at making the team is at safety, where his main competition comes from late-round draft picks Kareem Moore and Chris Horton.

The move puts the Redskins at the preseason limit of 80 players under contract. Their 10 draft picks do not count against this total until they are signed.