According to Jason Reid at the Post, Washington Redskins defensive end Phillip Daniels is indeed out for the season.
John Clayton at ESPN reported that it was an ACL injury to his left knee.
Clayton also said that the phone lines between Ashburn and Miami have started to hum to try to work out a trade for the Dolphins' Jason Taylor. A Redskins source in the Post blog entry denied that the team is pursuing a trade for the Dancing With the Stars runner-up.
I generally don't comment much on pending trades because the wisdom of any deal depends on the details. Trading for Jason Taylor and giving up a conditional fifth-round pick and having him work his contract to a cap-friendly deal that would contain a big roster bonus to be paid on opening day of 2009 would be OK. Giving up a second-rounder and having to work around his $8.1 million salary this year, making him a very expensive one-year rental, would be dumb.
In either case, however, it would be highly discouraging for the Redskins to have to make a trade for Taylor or any other defensive end for that matter. Throughout the offseason, Vinny Cerrato has insisted that the Redskins did not need to expend a high draft pick on a defensive end nor did they need to pursue one in free agency. The team's personnel guru insisted that the Redskins were fine at the position.
My definition of "fine" would describe a situation where you should be able to anticipate that your 35-year-old starter may get injured and that you still should be "fine" after that happens without having to make a trade.
Of course, as of now, any criticism is premature. That can wait until if and when a deal is made what the details of that hypothetical trade turn out to be.
Back to Daniels, it's quite possible that he has played his last down for the Redskins. A defensive end who is closer to 40 than to 30 and who is coming off of a serious knee injury and carrying a cap number just south of $3 million isn't likely to be in the team's plans.
Daniels' fragility has been overstated. He has missed just 19 of a possible 190 regular season games in his 12-year career. In 2004, his first year with the Redskins, he played in just five games but since then he has appeared in 16, 16, and 15 games.
He was a reliable in the locker room as he was on the field. No matter what had happened, win or lose, he would be there to answer as many questions as we wanted to ask.
I hope all Redskins fans join me in wishing him well.
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