REDSKINS 101

  I love this time of year for football, every fan and every "expert" try to make predictions based on drills done in training camp with no pads on.

For example, on the radio last Friday when I was driving home one of the local Washington D.C. sports talk stations was making a big deal about an article from the Boston Globe where the writer was all smitten with former Redskins Donte Stallworth and Jabar Gaffney. The article, which was paraphrased on the radio, talked of the chemistry between Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady had with Stallworth and Gaffney.

Of course this was met with the radio hosts lamenting that this was another case of former Redskins not being paid and shipped off elsewhere to have better careers. Once again with little to talk about local radio makes waves out of ripples.

First-off, I'm pretty sure most of us would look like really good receivers if we had Tom Brady throwing to us, secondly both Stallworth and Gaffney are former Patriots and have played with Brady before, and lastly Stallworth and Gaffney's departures had nothing to do with paying them. Both were one year Redskins who were rentals to help make Rex Grossman not look as terrible as he really is (though not even a receiving core of Jerry Rice, Art Monk, and Tim Brown could do that). Also they're old, Stallworth will be 33 this season and Gaffney will be 32. If you haven't noticed the Redskins opted for youth over experience this off-season, especially at receiver.

The Redskins are finally rebuilding the right way with a young core of guys and the fans and radio guys are slamming the team for not paying older on their way out players. Basically the Skins are damned if they do, damned if they don't. If they pay older past their prime talent people say "it's the same old Redskins" if they don't sign older past their prime talent "they're not respecting their veterans."

I've said it once and I'll say it again, "this fan base won't be happy until this franchise wins the Super Bowl, even then they'll probably find something to bitch about."

Another thing I've found that has irritated me this training camp is a tweet from Evan Silva (of NBC Sports) that Robert Griffin has been holding on to the ball to long that would have resulted in sacks in an actual game. Of course once this tweet went live it seemed like everyone overreacted to it. Most notably people tweeting wondering if Griffin was ready to start.

Again folks this is training camp. He's a rookie learning a new system, he's going to take a little bit longer in practice to throw the ball because this is all new to him. Griffin is a very gifted athlete but even he will have some growing pains to begin his career. All first year quarterbacks do, Joe Montana did and so did Steve Young, Peyton Manning, and Brett Favre, just to name a few.

Fans need to have patients, this is a very young Redskins team with a lot of potential to do a lot good to great things, but because of their inexperience they have the potential to do a lot of dumb things as well.

What this team has going for it is a very scary front seven on the defense and if they can keep this team in the play-off hunt late into the year, maybe, just maybe, Griffin and this young offense can hit their stride late and make a run of things which hopefully could lead to the play-offs but none the less should set this team up for a successful 2013.

Tags: Donte Stallworth, Football, Jabar Gaffney, NFL, Robert Griffin III, Washington, Washington Redskins

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