.....which leads me into the content of today's post. This morning I made my annual pilgrimage to Redskins Park in Ashburn, VA (just outside of Dulles Airport) to check out my favorite team at training camp. Driving through rush hour to get there, I almost forgot how much I hated driving in DC traffic. In any event, when I got to camp, what I saw there was, quite frankly, dreadful. The players were just wearing helmets and shorts and walking through the motions of the plays. Now, I can appreciate a coach deciding not to do 2 straight hours of the Oklahoma Drill, but give me a break. I know you're hyper-paranoid about injuries, but these guys have to hit each other. If you are going to get a professional football team ready for the season, at least have them wear shoulder pads during your one-a-day practice! If you recall, the new CBA does away with full pad 2-a-days. So if you get only one practice, make it count! OK, enough of my old-school rant.
Aside from the absolute ban against contact, the practice that I saw was far from crisp...which is doubly disturbing since one would think a defense going half speed would allow an offense to just open up the playbook and take off. Remember this is the Redskins here. I wonder if Rex Grossman agrees. The main portion of the practice started with some 11 on 11, with a focus on running plays. Recent acquisition Tim Hightower took most of the carries in relief of the oft-injured Ryan Torain. Tim Hightower is a verteran of the Fightin' Snyders fantasy football team (that would be my team). Fellow past Hightower owners will recall his primary value is as a pass-catcher and occasional goal-line back (always highly valuable in fantasy). His big bugaboo (which is most definitely NOT valuable in fantasy) is a history of fumble-itis. Now, in today's 11 on 11 session, he didn't fumble, but if there is absolutely ZERO threat of being tackled, what's the point of running the play anyway. You can go through the motions, but you can also do that on a video game. If you're going to run the play, put some pads on and block somebody! Sorry...don't want to start that rant again.
After the first round of 11 on 11, the practice moved onto special teams, which was really nothing more than asking how far the punter could kick the ball, and could the guy field it. The answer to the first question was not far and the answer to the second question was most of the time. Now, Sav Rocca got off a couple boomers (according to Redskins.com there were "several" punts over 60 yards), but it didn't take long before the guy standing in front of me on the practice field starting seranading Rocca with "Shankapottamus!" After punting, the side show that was field goal kicking commenced. Graham Gano-good was being challenged by Shayne Graham. Maybe it's something about the name Graham. Now I know my angle was skewed, but I think I saw a grand total of 1 football hit the net behind the goalpost. They were trying long field goals (40 yards and up), so I highly doubt that they were hitting the balls OVER the net. I did hear a lot of wide left and wide right comments. It's going to be another long year in the place kicking department. It won't be that big a deal though. No, I don't think they'll only be kicking PATs...they won't be kicking much of anything. If the offensive display in the 11 on 11s was any indication, the kickers won't even be in shouting range much less field goal range.
After not-so-special teams work, we moved onto 7 on 7 drills. Now, 7 on 7 is usually a time when offenses can play around with defense because there is de jure no pass rush and all of the downfield coverage is man to man. One would expect a somewhat skilled offense to show off. Unfortunately, the only thing they showed was a bad case of the dropsies. The quarterback quinella (yes folks...that's five of them and you KNOW you loved the alliteration there) didn't get the ball on the receivers hands often, but when then did, the drops killed me to see them. Leonard Hankerson (prize 3rd round draft pick) had one easy drop that happened right in front of me. There were not many deep ball tries, but most of the ones that they did attempt were mostly overthrown. Grossman did connect on one deep ball to Anthony Armstrong, then celebrated as if he had actually thrown a touchdown pass.
After 7 on 7, the team moved to one more session of 11 on 11 work from various yardage and down and distance scenarios. They started with red zone and goal line. The only time the ball crossed the goal line was when Hightower carried it across (and as I've said before, we'll never know if he actually would have scored since they were NOT wearing pads). They attempted to throw into the end zone a few times, but the closest they came was when Santana Moss nearly made an acrobatic catch reaching backward to try and snag a Grossman delivery. If you read the practice report on Redskins.com, you'll see one word quite a bit: overthrown. There were overthrows on just about every pass route you can think of: corner routes, post route, go routes. The quarterbacks and receivers just don't seem to be in sync right now. I don't know if that's a product of not having had an offseason program or just an indication of the quality of play (Rex?). Either way, it did not look crisp, it did not look smooth. I was hoping that with a virtually zero contact practice, the offense (especially the passing game) would have had a chance to really show off and prove Rex right. As far as I'm concerned, they didn't. As far as the running game is concerned, the jury is still out. You can't really practice running plays unless you have offensive and defensive linemen engaging each other. I'm sorry. You can't simulate game day without playing a game anyway, but when you take contact out of the question all together, you can't really get a gauge on how much the team is progressing.
I know it may seem like I'm taking an overly pessimistic view of the Redskins this season, but I understand football, and I know good football when I see it. I also know bad football when I see it, and what I saw today was definitely more bad football than good football. I really do love my team (I really like the fact that they actually let the fans onto the practice field to let us watch the 11 on 11), and I hope they make me (and every other pundit picking them to go 4-12 or worse) look like a fool. I listened to Mike and Mike on the way in and Adam Schefter said something that often times us fans of (supposedly) bad teams seem to forget sometimes. In the NFL, we don't know what's going to happen. If games were played on paper, the New England Patriots would have won the last 8 Super Bowls. Obviously that hasn't happened. You play to win the game (Hello?). Nobody would have picked the New Orleans Saints to come within one game of the Super Bowl in 2006 and winning the Super Bowl in 2009. You just never know. While I do believe the Redskins will be very lousy this year, I will cheer on that team every play of every game and go delusional every time we find the end zone (even if we're lucky enough to find it once a game). I just hope that we play games in December that matter. I want to watch games that mean something. As a fan, nothing gnaws on me more than watching my team play out the string. It almost gets to a point where I say, "OK, we're mathematically eliminated, let's just get to work getting ready for next year." I hope we never come to that point, but given my grim outlook for the 2011 season, I have to prepare myself for that start possibility.
I hear that Bruce Allen is already in contact with Andrew Luck's agent to begin contract negotiations...
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