Tryon as Plan B

[caption id="attachment_1373" align="aligncenter" width="457" caption="Rogers may fly the coop in 2010"][/caption]

After I posted about Justin Tryon yesterday, I thought a bit more about what Darrell Green said about him. In particular, this part jumped out at me: ". . . he's a starter in 2009, 2010 or whenever the opportunity comes." What jumped out at me was the mention of 2010. Carlos Rogers will be a free agent next year, restricted or unrestricted depending on whether or not there is a new CBA. If he hits the free agent market he is likely to be a fairly highly sought after player assuming that he has a solid 2009. That's fine; you want to have players that other teams want. But you don't want to be in a position where you're forced to break the bank because you have nobody on the team that can replace that player. So, if Tryon lives up to Green's words, the Skins will be in a pretty good position when it comes to dealing with Rogers. If the bidding gets too high they can just let him go, knowing that a solid replacement, a player that they—gasp—drafted. Now, I don't want everyone to think that I believe that Tryon is as good a Rogers or that I'm trying to run Rogers out of town. Neither of those is the case. I think that Rogers is highly underappreciated. He drops passes that other CB's wouldn't be in position to get their hands on. But the world of sports is unlike that of other businesses in that the prices are set by your dumbest competitor. Often the Redskins are in the role of being that dumbest competitor. In this situation they might be able to draw a line in the stand and, if the bidding goes past that, let Rogers walk and have a cornerback who's working off of a fourth-round draftee rookie deal for the next two seasons. It's probably too much to hope to think it would be the start of a trend or anything like that, but any succession planning taking place at all is a welcome development.