Rich Tandler's Real Redskins

Defining a role for Tim Hightower

Tim Hightower is back with the Redskins. Now what?

Although we haven’t heard anything yet, it seems unlikely that he will be able to participate in the upcoming OTA’s and minicamp. He suffered his torn ACL against the Panthers on Oct. 23 last year. That was seven months ago and the injury usually requires at least nine months of rehab.

If he can recover fully from the knee injury the Redskins would be wise to define a role for him and stick to it whenever possible. And the workhorse running back, which is what they tried to make him into last year, is not a role for which he is well suited.

In his first two games with the Redskins last year Hightower carried 45 times. Prior to that the most carries he had in two consecutive games in his career was 35, when he was a rookie with the Cardinals in 2008. His carries were limited over the next few games and he did not play in the Week 5 game against the Eagles with a shoulder injury. The next week he was well on his way to another heavy workload against the Panthers when he went down with the injured knee on his 17^th carry of the game early in the third quarter.

In three years in Arizona he averaged about nine carries per game and he never missed a game due to injury. The shoulder injury might be an indication that he was being overworked. The ACL, of course, could happen to anybody.

Hightower might be able to handle more than nine carries per game but it seems that it would be wise to hold his rushing attempts down well under 20 per game. 

Hightower excels in pass protection and with rookie starter Robert Griffin III at quarterback, those skills will be welcome. He caught 63 passes out of the backfield in 2009 so there is some more ability that the Redskins can take advantage of. That doesn’t mean that he should be relegated to duty as strictly a third-down back but his carries do need to be limited.

The same holds true for Roy Helu Jr., who was the team’s prime back in the latter half of the season until he wore down under workloads of 25 carries per game. 

If Griffin is going to have a successful rookie season, the Redskins will need to run the ball often and they will need to run it well. There should be about 500 carries or more for Hightower, Helu, Evan Royster and possibly rookie Alfred Morris to split up. If that can be done in a way that maximizes the effectiveness of all of the backs and has the right back in the game in the right situation, the Redskins should improve their 25^th-ranked rushing game and Griffin will have a shot at reaching his potential.

 

Morris could be the right player in the right place

Running back Alfred Morris, the Redskins’ sixth-round pick out of Florida Atlantic, could be the right guy in the right place.

Morris said he was shocked when the phone rang during the draft and the Redskins’ head coach was on the other end. 

“‘He said, ‘This is Mike Shanahan, welcome to the Redskins,’” said Morris, who grew up a Redskins fan. “I was like, wow! It kind of floored me but I was excited, I told him thank you, thank you and ended up talking to [running backs] coach [Bobby] Turner.”

It wasn’t the first time that Morris had talked to Shanahan. He was a member of the South team at the Senior Bowl, the squad coached by the Redskins’ staff. Morris was a bit puzzled by Shanahan’s demeanor on the practice field. “He was just kind of quiet the whole time, he just walked around.”

Morris found out during last weekend’s rookie minicamp that he was seeing Shanahan’s normal practice-field manner. He is normally seen around the middle of the field observing the offense and the defense.

Morris believes that he is well prepared to play in Shanahan’s offense. His coach at FAU was Howard Schnellenberger and he was not one to get caught up in the trend towards the spread offense. 

“He was a big I-formation guy,” Morris said of Schnellenberger, who has been around so long he was the head coach of the Colts the year after they traded away Johnny Unitas. “I’ve been in the I formation, it helped me with my blocking skills, just running between the tackles . . . I definitely helped me transition over.”

Morris said that he is well aware of Shanahan’s history of taking running backs late in the draft and turning them into highly productive players. But he’s not thinking about that right now. 

“It just goes to show, he saw something in me that others didn’t,” he said. “He was taking a chance on me and I definitely didn’t want to disappoint him.”

 

Report: RB Turbin visits Redskins

Earlier this week, our man Ben Standig posted a draft profile of Utah State running back Robert Turbin.

I’m not sure if Ben knew it at the time but it turns out that according to our friends at Pro Football Talk Turbin has visited the Redskins. 

Here is a little bit of what Ben wrote about Turbin:

Until Tim Hightower officially joins the mix with Roy Helu and Evan Royster, the Redskins could use an interior, short-yardage type runner. Enter Turbin. After missing nearly two seasons with injuries (toe, knee), the powerful cutback runner responded with a statistically loud season for Utah State, the kind that earns one WAC offensive player of the year honors.

A visit isn’t necessarily an indication that a team intends to draft a player. Indeed, a player could be taken off of the draft board after a visit if does not go well. It’s all just a part of the process and due diligence.

But the Redskins do need a third running back and if they don’t come to terms with Tim Hightower or don’t think that he will be ready for the start of the season, someone like Turbin would make sense.

 

Will Hightower be back with the Redskins?

By Rich Tandler

The Redskins website recently ran an article with quotes from Tim Hightower and Mike Shanahan about the possibility that the running back, an unrestricted free agent, will be back in Washington.

Hightower said that he wanted to be back and Shanahan said good things about the player and everything seems to be all warm and fuzzy. However, there is a long way to go between exchanging pleasantries and exchanging signatures on an actual contract.

The two sides could have very different views of what that contract should look like. Hightower is coming off a torn ACL he suffered in mid-October. The Redskins might want to sign him to a short-term deal with little guaranteed money and possibly some lucrative incentives.

Hightower’s camp, on the other hand, will point out that this is the first injury of his career. He had played in 53 of a possible 53 games before going on injured reserve after the Redskins’ fifth game last year. He’s not “injury prone”, he just suffered an injury.

There also is the question of just how productive a back Hightower has been and can be. He has had some pretty good seasons, gaining over 1000 yards in combined rushing and receiving in 2009 and getting 872 in 2010. But his career average is just 3.9 yards per rush and he never has carried a full load of rushing attempts for an entire season.

Hightower brings some things to the table that don’t necessarily show up in the stat sheet, like excellent pass blocking ability. His agent will surly counter with Shanahan’s own words praising Hightower’s blitz pickup prowess.

Some back and forth probably has taken place and negotiations will intensify as the March 13 start of free agency approaches. Perhaps Hightower will want to test the market and see if the grass is greener elsewhere.

It is difficult to even take a stab at what a contract for Hightower will end up looking like. He made in the vicinity of $1 million last year under the restricted free agent tender. It is doubtful that he will make much more than that whether it’s a one-year deal for just 2012 or as an average over the course of a multiyear deal.

There seems to be a good chance that Hightower will be back with the Redskins in 2012. But there is a sizeable gap that has to be bridged before that happens.

 

Rookie review: Helu shows rare ability

 

By Rich Tandler

 

During the course of the year, 11 of the Redskins’ 12 draft picks from 2011 were on the active roster. Here we take a look at each of them, how much they played, what they accomplished and what their future prospects are.

See the links below for the previous rookie reviews. Today, it’s running back Roy Helu.

Roy Helu
Drafted in 4^th round, 108 overall
On roster 16 games, played 15, started 5, played 556 snaps (50.4 percent)

2011: Helu led the team in rushing with 640 yards rushing and averaged 4.2 yards per carry. He saw some action early in the year and set a team record with 14 pass receptions against the 49ers. However, his breakthrough game came a few weeks later in Seattle when he scored a memorable touchdown by hurdling over a Seattle player before bouncing off another tackle and scooting into the end zone. That was the first of three straight 100-yard games for Helu, a first for a Redskins rookie.

Prospects: It seems likely that Helu will open the 2012 season as the Redskins’ starting running back but the size of his workload remains to be seen. He carries 23, 23, and 27 times during that three-game stretch of 100-yard efforts and then he was inactive in the next game and played just a handful of snaps in the next on, which was the season finale. It appears that the Redskins will need to manage his workload and get

Previous rookie reviews

• G Maurice Hurt 
• LB Markus White 
• NT Chris Neild
• CB Brandyn Thompson 
• WR Aldrick Robinson
• RB Evan Royster
• WR Niles Paul 
• DeJon Gomes

 

Handwriting was clearly on the wall for Torain

By Rich Tandler

In the course of a calendar year, Ryan Torain went from being the Redskins’ leading rusher to being an ex-Redskin.

The fall was not really as rapid as it sounds. There were hints that Mike Shanahan was not set on having Torain as the team’s workhorse back when the Redskins drafted Roy Helu and Evan Royster in April. The handwriting on the wall became even clearer shortly after the lockout ended and the Redskins traded away defensive lineman Vonnie Holliday and a conditional draft pick (turned out to be a sixth) for Tim Hightower.  

NFL teams do not spend fourth-, fifth- and sixth-round picks and a solid veteran contributor on running backs if they are happy with what they has.

It’s possible that Shanahan and the other coaches liked the way that Torain ran but did not trust him to stay healthy. Torain had a history of injuries when he and Shanahan were with the Broncos in 2008. Then last year it took him five weeks to get back in the lineup after he injured a hamstring.

When he came back, he was anything but consistent. He piled up a career-high172 yards in his first game back against the Bucs but his production tapered off the rest of the year.

This year he broke his hand during a non-contact drill early in training camp. The injury was only supposed to keep him out for seven to 10 days but Torain was only able to play in the last preseason game. That helped cement his reputation as a player who not only got dinged frequently but who took a long time to heal when he did get injured. He did make the roster but he was mostly a spectator except for a 135-yard outburst against the Rams.

Torain averaged 7.1 yards per carry in that game. After that he didn’t average more than 2.5 per carry in any game. His opportunities became fewer and fewer. Before being active and picking up eight yards in four carries against the Vikings he was inactive two games and did not play in two others.

When asked about Torain on Monday, Shanahan strongly hinted what his issue with him was. “The people that are consistent get more opportunities,” he said. “If you’re not consistent, you don’t get as many opportunities to show us what you can do.”

Torain was under contract for 2012 and it would not have cost the Redskins anything to have him go through minicamps and training camp as an insurance policy in cast Tim Hightower either isn’t recovered from his torn ACL or ends up not resigning as an unrestricted free agent. And Torain is far from being an old, high-mileage NFL back. He is 25 and has just over 1000 career carries.

But Shanahan apparently decided that Torain wasn’t worth one of the 80 offseason roster spots. He wanted a roster spot for Aldrick Robinson, ensuring that the Redskins will be able to retain the rights to the rookie wide receiver.

Torain’s highlight moment came in his second game with the team. He trucked Eagles safety Quintin Mikell to set the tone for the “Return of Donovan” game in Philly. If only he had been able to do this consistently.

 

With Helu ailing does his workload shift to Royster?

By Rich Tandler

During Mike Shanahan’s press conference on Monday, the coach said that Roy Helu wasn’t quite as effective against the Giants (23 carries, 53 yards, 2.3 yds./carry) as he has been lately in part because of he was dealing with some injuries to a knee and a toe. He is listed as questionable for tomorrow’s game against the Vikings.

Assuming he plays, have to wonder if this will lead to Helu getting a lighter workload over the last two weeks of the season. He has carried 20 or more times in each of the last four games. The last Redskins running back to do that was Clinton Portis, who had 20 or more carries in eight straight games in 2008. The load wore Portis down. Helu, of course, is younger and better able to handle it. On top of that, in two more weeks he will have eight months to rest up before the next game.

Still, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Mike and Kyle Shanahan drop his carries per game to somewhere in the mid to high teens. His load has been quite heavy over the last four games. Helu has carried an average of 24 times per game, which comes to a pace of 384 carries for the year. That would be the most in a season since Larry Johnson had 416 rushing attempts in 2006. Last year, Michael Turner led the NFL with 334 rushing attempts.

Since it would not be wise to continue to hand the ball to Helu 20 or more time a game every week next year, the Redskins could use the last two games to see how they might work Evan Royster into a rotation next year. Or maybe they could even see if they want Ryan Torain to return in 2012.

 

Helu: Bumps and bruises come with the job

By Ryan O’Halloran 

When 23-year old Roy Helu has waddled around the locker room after his first four starts for the Redskins, he looks like a man three times his age, each step more painful than the last.

But two days after he was unable to finish the Redskins’ 23-10 win over the Giants, Helu’s health had improved. He’s nursing knee and toe injuries plus a right eye shiner sustained when he lost his helmet during a play.

“It’s mental toughness,” Helu said Wednesday morning. “You just have to fight through that stuff.” 

Helu has carried 96 times the last four games, a workload he didn’t match at Nebraska.

“It comes with the job,” he said of the nicks. “Obviously, you don’t want to be in that situation but it was really great we came out with the victory so that felt a lot better.”

Asked what NFL Sore is like compared to College Sore, Helu said: “At Nebraska, we had a to run a lot the day after the game so I don’t know if I could do that running again.”

The black eye was serving as a badge of honor for Helu, whose streak of three consecutive 100-yard games was snapped Sunday.

“I didn’t see it in the mirror; I didn’t want to look,” he said. “My girlfriend asked for a picture so I saw it when I sent it. It looked pretty cool.”

Contact O’Halloran at rohalloran@comcastsportsnet.com

 

Redskins' rushing game still not on track

By Rich Tandler

With the emergence of Roy Helu, the Redskins rushing game has improved in recent weeks. Still, this is shaping up to be one of the team’s worst seasons in terms of gaining yardage on the ground.

They are currently gaining about 94 yards per game rushing. Over the course of a 16-game season, that would come to about 1500 yards. That would be the third-fewest total rushing yards for a full season for the Redskins since they went to the 16-game schedule in 1977.

Even if they can hold the rushing pace they have been on the past three games and gain 132 yards in each of their last three games, they would end up with 1615 yards. That is the same total rushing yardage they had in 1997, the fifth-worst rushing season of the 16-game era.

The worst rushing season of Mike Shanahan’s tenure with Denver came in 2009, when the Broncos rushed for 1836 yards.

The Redskins are 31^st in the NFL in rushing yardage with 1220 yards. Only the Giants, with 1115, have fewer. 

 

Royster gets going vs. Patriots

By Rich Tandler

While Roy Helu rightfully got most of the attention as the Redskins racked up 170 rushing against New England, fellow rookie Evan Royster had a pretty good day in a supporting role.

Royster carried six times for 44 yards against the Patriots. In five games this season, 44 yards rushing would have been good enough to lead the team.

The coaches were not afraid to put him in the game in a big spot. During the Redskins’ final drive, the one that could have tied game if not for a hotly-debated penalty that negated a touchdown, Royster carried on consecutive plays and picked up 14 and six yards to move the Redskins from their own 34 into New England territory at the 46.

If Royster can come through and establish himself as a solid second option to Helu, the Redskins could be set at running back for the next few years. It also remains to be seen where Ryan Torain, who led the team in rushing last year, and Tim Hightower, who was the team’s top rusher when he went down with a knee injury in Week 7, fit into the picture going forward.

Do you think Royster can be a key part of the running game in the future?

Should the Redskins continue to try to stockpile running backs or should they focus on other areas?