Rich Tandler’s 5 thoughts possibly related to the Washington Redskins and other matters.
5. We have not yet completed two days of free agency. Signings will go on at a pretty good clip until a couple of weeks before the April 26 draft. Of the top 100 free agents per our friends at Pro Football Talk 70 are still unsigned as of this morning. All of this is saying that it is very early in the free agency process. There is no need to panic that as of right now the Redskins have DeJon Gomes and Reed Doughty starting at safety. There is plenty of time and there are a lot of players who can fit the team’s needs still out there.
4. The bad news is that London Fletcher is still unsigned; that is something that the Redskins and their fans would like to get done earlier in free agency. The good news is that the market at inside linebacker has yet to be set. The other top players at the position out there—Stephen Tulloch, David Hawthorne, Curtis Lofton—haven’t yet signed. Once one signs, the market price will be established and the Redskins and Fletcher’s camp will be able to see who has the more realistic compensation figure. That could well expedite a deal but it also could lead Fletcher out of town.
3. Twitter is a funny medium. Last night someone with a fake Adam Schefter account tweeted that the league had further penalized the Redskins for manipulating the salary cap, that draft picks had been taken away and that the RG3 trade was in jeopardy. I saw it when a friend retweeted it. I quickly figured out that the account was phony and let him know so he could delete the tweet. But it quickly spread out of control. Several nationally known NFL media types with tens of thousands of followers had seen the fake and retweeted it. They also figured it out shortly afterwards and deleted the messages. But the genie was out of the bottle and many Redskins fans had panic attacks before the whole thing was buttoned down. So, if you caught the fake bad news that was retweeted by a respected national writer and didn’t catch the correction, rest easy. It was a fake, the Redskins’ draft picks are all there and the green light is on for #RG3toDC.
2. I’ve had doing an article on whether or not Griffin will start Week 1 on my to-do list since the trade so I’m not going go into it very deeply here. But I would like to address the notion that RG3 will ride the bench at the start of the season because Mike Shanahan has never started a rookie QB in Week 1. In Denver he kept Jay Cutler on the bench for 11 games as a rookie after drafting him in 2006. But Cutler was the 11th pick and Shanahan had Jake Plummer, who had taken the Broncos to the AFC title game the previous season, to play until the rookie was ready. In this situation, Griffin will be the second overall pick and the alternatives are not strong. That doesn’t mean that RG3 will automatically start the first game but comparing this situation to the one in 2006 is not apples to apples.
1. I frequently get asked if the Redskins are going to address right tackle or strong safety with their third round pick in the draft, which will be their first after taking Griffin in the first round. The simple answer is that they can’t. At that point you have to go with the best player available. Although a third-round tackle could theoretically start as a rookie, he has to be a true top 100 talent. If you go in determined to take a tackle in the third, you could easily wind up with a fourth- or fifth-round talent. Then you are right back where you started from without a starting tackle.
You can reach Rich by email at RTandlerCSN@comcast.net and follow him on Twitter @Rich_Tandler.
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