You can reach Rich Tandler by email at WarpathInsiders@comcast.net

• I'm starting to think that the Redskins would be more apt to select a cornerback than an outside linebacker with their first selection in the NFL Draft. I'm hearing that they like Chris Clemons at the weakside linebacker spot and they would be perfectly happy to go into the season with him starting there with Warrick Holdman serving as his backup. It's another story at corner. While Kenny Wright might be a serviceable nickel back it would be positively scary if he were to have to start for even a game or two should Shawn Springs or Carlos Rogers go down with an injury. Yes, scarier than starting a second-round rookie. Some mock drafts have Ashton Youboty and Kelly Jennings, two players who have visited Redskins Park, being available in the vicinity of the #53 selection. Cedric Griffin of Texas and Alan Zemaitis of Penn State are very likely to be on the board there as well. I like Griffin because he could play safety, too, and depth there is an issue even if Sean Taylor can avoid doing any jail time.
  
  Mathias Kiwanuka
• In fact, if no corners who would represent a good value are there in the second round and Washington has a choice of a linebacker and a defensive end of equal ability they could well go with the end. Signing Andre Carter was a good start, but the other two main DE's on the roster, Phillip Daniels and Renaldo Wynn, are both well on the north side of 30 and having a fresh, talented young player in the rotation would make them more effective throughout the season. The Redskins would have to strongly consider Mathias Kiwanuka of Boston College should he slide back to them. His stock dropping largely because of a poor performance in the Senior Bowl, but his backers note that he was matched against D'Brickashaw Ferguson, one of the five best players in the draft. Another DE Washington is rumored to be looking at is Stanley McClover of Auburn. McClover was a surprise early entry in the draft, leaving school after his Junior year. His raw pass rushing skills are very good and with proper coaching he could develop into an excellent NFL player. The general consensus is that #53 may be too high a spot to take McClover, but the Redskins do not always go with the conventional wisdom, for better or for worse.
• In his press conference on Monday, some comments by Joe Gibbs were interpreted to mean that the team would not trade up from that #53 spot. I'm not sure how you could read that into what he said:

  
  "I think you could always do [a trade]," Gibbs said. "It's just a matter of, when you get through all of your calculations, do you feel like it would be smart for us to do it? Obviously, it would depend on what kind of deals are out there.

  "We've had teams talk to us about it already. It's something that remains a possibility, but right now we don't have anything that we're talking seriously about right now."

  It was the "we don't have anything that we're talking seriously about right now" part that many picked up on, interpreting that as meaning that a deal was unlikely. Gibbs said no such thing. In fact, he said nothing, which is to be expected. The reason that they aren't talking seriously about anything right now is because no serious talks can begin until a player that the Redskins want is there and the team that is on the clock answers the phone.
  
  There is no question that, with their draft board set, Gibbs and company are debating various trade possibilities and are setting up their if-then scenarios. For example, "If player A is still there when Pittsburgh's pick comes up, then we'll call and offer them this package of picks".
  
  That being said, I've changed my mind on the likelihood of the Redskins moving up to either the end of the first round or the early part of the second from thinking that it's likely to happen to thinking that it's possible but unlikely to happen. What could trigger a trade up would be a run on cornerbacks toward the latter part of the first round. If the Redskins are very strongly thinking cornerback, they have want to move up to ensure that they get one who is capable of starting.

  Rich Tandler is the author of The Redskins From A to Z, Volume 1: The Games. This unique book has an account of every game the Redskins played in from when they moved to Washington in 1937 through the 2001 season. For details and ordering information, go to http://www.RedskinsGames.com

Move Up Makes Sense for Redskins

You can reach Rich Tandler by email at WarpathInsiders@comcast.net

Suppose there was a vacant lot across the street from you. You look out the window one day and you see a car with those Realtor license plates parked on the street in front of the lot and a well-dressed woman and another man and woman, perhaps a married couple, are walking around the lot. They are motioning and pointing as though they are looking at an imaginary house on the lot. A week or so later, you look out the window again and there is a team of surveyors on the lot. Not too long after that a truck from the Taft Architecture Firm, LLC, is parked there. Finally, about a month later, a truck pulls up and on the back of it there is a big, yellow bulldozer.

It would be reasonable to figure that the couple you saw on the first day are having a house built on that lot. In fact, without talking to anybody involved, you could be fairly certain that that was what was planned.

With less than two weeks to go before Day One of the NFL draft, the Redskins are examining a piece of turf in the annual selection meeting. The surveyors are going over some territory that the Skins currently own no part of, with its southern border at about the 25th selection and its northern limits reaching to the 40th pick.

In an article here on WarpathInsiders.com earlier this week, I looked at who the Redskins were having in for visits and found that they were hosting some cornerbacks and outside linebackers who are projected to go anywhere from late in the first round to early in the second. CB's Antonio Cromartie and Kelly Jennings and LB's Thomas Howard and DeMeco Ryans aren't quite among the elite players in this draft, but they're almost certain to be gone when the Redskins own first selection at #53 comes up.

Just like it makes no sense to pay a crew to survey land that you have no intention of building on, it makes no sense for the Redskins to take up time and burn their limited draft visits (they get 30) on players they have have no chance of drafting.

The other indicator that the Redskins could be looking at moving up is their recent history. Both in free agency and in the draft, the team has displayed a pattern of identifying a player that it wants and then doing what it takes to get him. We saw how they wined and dined Adam Archuleta, Andre Carter, and Antwaan Randle El and made them offers that they couldn't refuse. They didn't bat an eye in sending two draft picks to San Francisco in exchange for Brandon Lloyd. In 2004 they saw Chris Cooley sitting there in the third round and dispatched their 2005 second to be able to draft him. Last year Gibbs liked what he saw in Campbell and did what it took to get him.

Is there any reason to think that if the Redskins do decide that they want one of these players that they've brought in they're not going to do whatever it takes to get him?

And, at this point, they should. If you've built your team one way you need to stick with your modus operandi. Worse even than having a bad plan is to keep on changing plans. You have to have to guts to stick with what you've been doing and see it through. This team is on the verge of having a two-year window to win a championship open up for them. Now is not the time to get a sudden rash of patience.

Being patient and letting lower-round picks develop is one way to get the job done in the NFL. You could argue that it's the best way to go about it. But the slow and steady train left the station a couple of years ago.

Or, to turn back to the house analogy, you can't build three-fourths of the house in a Tudor style and then decide you want to do the rest as a Colonial.

This Redskins team was built by identifying the players they wanted and doing whatever it took to get that player. Why should they pick now, when they are very close to being a Super Bowl contender, to be patient and let the draft come to them?

Such a move would not come without a high price. A move into the first round would cost the #53 pick and next years first-rounder. The 2007 first alone would net a pick somewhere in the middle of the second.

Of course, it has to be the right deal for the right player. Just as bad as changing your plan midstream is making a deal just for the sake of making a deal. If they stay at #53 the chances are they can get a starting-caliber player there. Rather than chancing it, though, if things fall together right the Redskins should go up and get the guy they want.

Rich Tandler is the author of The Redskins From A to Z, Volume 1: The Games. This unique book has an account of every game the Redskins played from when they moved to Washington in 1937 through the 2001 season. For details and ordering information, go to http://www.RedskinsGames.com.

Sean Taylor: Celebrity Injustice

You can reach Rich Tandler by email at WarpathInsiders@comcast.net

As some of you have noticed, the Sean Taylor legal case has not been discussed much here since it broke early last June. Perhaps such an omission has been irresponsible journalism on my part, but I had never seen enough about the details of the case to understand what happened. Believe it or not, I actually want to be informed about something before I form an opinion on it and, at least in in articles I've been able to find, the details of what actually happened have been very sketchy.

That is, in the articles I've been able to find up until today. I found this New York Times article by one Robert Andrew Powell. I'm not sure if Powell is a sports reporter or a legal reporter but he is definitely a reporter. He did some legwork, got access to the case file, interviewed one of the men involved in the incident and pieced together the best, most complete account to date of the confrontation that landed Taylor in legal hot water.

The picture painted is disturbing in many respects. I'm going to clip a few excerpts here, but I don't want to take too much of Powell's work. If you want to follow the rest of this blog, I'd suggest that you click on the link to Powell's story and read that and then come back.

Taylor, who had signed a multi million dollar contract a year earlier, was hanging out with a friend named Michael McFarlane in West Perrine, which Powell describes as, "a depressed community south of Miami." He brought along his two new ATV's to cruise the side streets and the lawns of the housing projects. At the end of the day, Taylor left them parked in McFarlane's lawn even though he didn't stay at his house.

The next morning the ATV's were gone. Yes, this just in, if you leave expensive items unsecured in housing projects overnight, they just might get stolen. To compound the stupidity, instead of calling the police Taylor, McFarlane and another unidentified man jumped into Taylor's truck and another car to cruise the neighborhood to try to find the vehicles.

For some reason they confronted a man named Ryan Hill, who was hanging out in the neighborhood with some friends and demanded to know where the ATV's were. Hill denied knowing where they were and that's when the confrontation started. Powell interviewed Hill for this story:

"He (Taylor) started talking nasty and stuff, talking about how: 'The police can't touch me. I own this town,' " Hill, 22, said in an interview on the stoop outside his mother's public-housing apartment in West Perrine, where he lives with her, a brother and a sister.

According to Hill and other witnesses, Taylor exited his truck, pulled a gun out of his waistband and pointed it at Hill and a couple of his friends. Witnesses said another man pulled out an M-16 and demanded that Hill return Taylor's A.T.V.'s. When Hill denied stealing the vehicles, Taylor and the other man left in their cars. Both vowed to return and kill everyone present, according to depositions from Hill and other witnesses.

Obviously, if this is true, Taylor committed a crime here in pointing a gun at people and by threatening to kill them. He and the other men then left and further compounded the already already compounding stupidity and bad judgment by returning with a "posse". A fistfight evidently started by Taylor ensued and ended when Hill and his group fled. So now we have another crime committed by Taylor in starting a fight.

As if all of this wasn't strange enough, there was one final twist. Taylor drove his GMC Yukon back to McFarlane's house, parked it in front, and went inside.

A silver car pulled up. Hands poked out of the car's windows. From inside the house, McFarlane noticed guns and dived to the floor, according to depositions given by witnesses to Taylor's lawyers.

The Yukon was struck at least 15 times, and the police recovered 27 bullet cases, according to the police report.

Taylor was not at the house when police arrived. He turned himself in to police three days later to face one count of felony assault and one count of battery. In January, Dade County DA Michael Grieco, a/k/a DJ Dirty Sanchez, filed two additional felony assault charges. Since there was a gun involved in the assault cases they each carry a mandatory minimum of three years in jail if Taylor is convicted of them.

With the warning that I'm not a lawyer and not intimately familiar with what goes on every day in the housing projects near Miami or elsewhere, let me take a stab a summing this up. Two vehicles costing thousands of dollars each were stolen. Two men, one of them Taylor, drew guns and made threats. A fight involving a "posse" and Hill's group of friends broke out. A car filled with men drive by and with multiple guns and apparent disregard for the safety of whoever was in McFarlane's house or any bystanders who may have been present unloaded a couple of clips of bullets into Taylor's truck.

And in all of this Sean Taylor, the one whose ATV's were stolen and whose truck was shot up, is the only one charged with a crime. Isn't it fair to say that he was the victim of a couple of crimes himself? That doesn't excuse the crimes, of course, but if this was such an outrageous happening that someone who didn't fire a single shot is facing nine years in the slammer for it, what about his co-conspirators? What about whoever stole the ATV's valued at thousands of dollars? What about the ones who did the drive by?

It's important to note two other points here, points that in many cases would be causes for leniency when it came to considering a sentence for a defendant. First, there doesn't seem to be any premeditation on Taylor's part; whatever crimes were ones committed in the heat of the moment. Second, it's very important to note that when he returned after making the death threats, Taylor was not armed.

One does not have to be a Redskins homer or a skeptic to think that this reeks of a case of a publicity-hungry DA going after the only famous person involved in the whole mess. We do know that the Grieco was using press clippings from the case to promote his second career as the above-mentioned DJ Dirty Sanchez. Apparently, going after some guy named Hill doesn't generate enough pub to make it worth the additional time. Might cut into the clubbing time, don't ya know.

When we use the term "celebrity justice" it usually is in reference to a case where a famous person gets a slap on the wrist for a crime that would have brought the full hammer of justice down on us average folks. In this case with Sean Taylor, we seem to have the mirror image of that with very serious charges being brought for an incident that, while it calls for legal action, does not seem to be serious enough to warrant the possibility of such a severe penalty.

Rich Tandler is the author of The Redskins From A to Z, Volume 2: The Games. This unique book has an account of every game that the Redskins played from the time they moved to Washington in 1937 through the 2001 season. To get details on the book and ordering information, go to http://www.RedskinsGames.com

Ralph's Mouth

You can reach Rich Tandler by email at WarpathInsiders@comcast.net

A display of sheer, green envy just isn’t becoming of an 88-year-old man. But Ralph Wilson showed his colors in an Associated Press article published last week.

The Buffalo Bills’ owner called out Redskins owner Dan Snyder by name as the talked to the AP reporter as one of a group of owners who “To me, and this is just my opinion, [they] don't have the same values about the league as the old guard did.”

Wilson whined on, "I just don't think they're as interested in the game as the old owners, I really don't."

The other two owners Wilson singled out by name are Jerry Jones of Dallas and Robert Kraft of New England.

Presumably, the “values” that Wilson is referring to have to do with money and the unwillingness of Snyder, Jones, Kraft and others to “share” it. Wilson located a lapdog in the Buffalo press, the Buffalo News to be exact, who was willing to do his bidding and further articulate his position:

The problem is a Cold New Breed of big-market, huge-egoed owners like Washington's Dan Snyder and Dallas' Jerry Jones, who can't control their Inner Capitalist. They either don't understand or don't care about the all-for-one concept that built the league into a mega-monolith.

Uh, where is the evidence of that? In keeping all of the revenues from luxury seating, stadium naming rights and other sources, Jones and Snyder were just doing what league rules allowed them to do. Nobody asked them for a cut until recently. The first time they had a serious meeting about revenue sharing, which was last month, they were among those who voted to give money—tens of millions of dollars—to the lower-revenue clubs. What, where they just supposed to take out their pens and write out a check to Wilson without any kind of structure, any kind of formula in place?

By the way, what Wilson and his hack writer have conveniently forgotten was that the very same vote that created the revenue sharing plan also kept intact the salary cap system. While the higher-revenue owners like Snyder and Jones must have been tempted to try out a landscape that would have let them bid unlimited amounts of money to acquire the best players, they decided to keep the system in place, certainly not something that their “Inner Capitalist” would have them do. But, no, because they didn’t just hand Ralph Wilson a blank check they’re greedy, their values are misplaced and they don’t care about the game.

While we’re on the subject, can we talk about this myth that it is things like revenue sharing and the salary cap that have made the NFL popular? It has suddenly morphed into The Truth. The NFL is wildly popular not because of its business model but because Americans like football. If people didn’t like the game, the best business model in the world wouldn’t be able to make it any more popular that soccer is.

What’s the second-most popular sport out there? It’s college football, which has very little revenue sharing. Sure, the conferences share TV and bowl revenues among their members. But when Michigan and Notre Dame hook up in The Big House, we don’t see a dime of the millions that such an event generates going to Wake Forest or Vanderbilt. Northwestern, being in the Big Ten, gets a few bucks thrown its way but by far the main financial beneficiaries of such an affair are the participants. And if a rich alum cuts a check for $10 million to have the field named after him, none of that gets shared with anyone outside of the university. Yet the sport thrives because Americans love the game.

And the people of western New York love the game too, perhaps as much as anyone in America, and it’s unfortunate that the Bills may end up moving, to Los Angeles or elsewhere. However, to blame that situation on Kraft, Snyder, and Jones is patently ridiculous. As a Rust Belt city, Buffalo has been in decline for a couple of decades now, perhaps longer. Population and the economy are shifting to the south. That’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just the way that things are. The Redskins and the Cowboys could pour all kinds of money into the Bills and that wouldn’t change these facts. If the city of Buffalo can’t support an NFL team, it’s certainly not up to the cities of Washington, Boston, and Dallas to do it for them.

Wilson isn’t just enlisting allies in the media; he is turning to where most corporations looking for a handout do, the government. All-Pro Buffalo linebacker Cornelius Bennett never put a hurtin’ on anyone like the last person to get between Chuck Schumer and an TV camera got, so he was eager to jump into the fray. A Buffalo congressman named Higgins wants to have a committee hearing to investigate the revenue sharing plan. I’ve been looking through the US Constitution to find out where the Congress has any express or implied powers to ensure that a sports franchise can stay in a particular city. I’m also trying to find out where they will find all of the time and resources needed to conduct such an inquiry. Your tax dollars at work.

When times are tough, one can hunker down, get tough, and try to figure out a way to deal with it, or one can whine and cry and get someone to threaten a congressional hearing and find a bogeyman. Wilson and his media mouthpiece have, of course, chosen the latter.

Credit the late commissioner Pete Rozelle, who sold a socialist concept to a bunch of capitalist owners on the grounds that parity pads everybody's profits.

One by one, richer owners broke ranks to go for more of the gold. Dallas' Jones was the first to exploit the loophole of unshared revenue from luxury boxes. The me-first principle prompted a glut of new stadiums filled with luxury seats (or hefty upgrades of old ballparks) that cost taxpayers in NFL cities billions of dollars.

The rich got richer, and they don't want to share their excess with their (relatively) poorer brethren. It threatens the competitive balance that turned the NFL into a money-printing machine.

Conveniently left out here is the fact that the stadium that Snyder’s team plays in was built by the team and that he is currently making heft payments on it and that Kraft had to kick in on the construction of the Patriots’ stadium and that Jones will likely have to help pay for a new stadium in Dallas. Apparently, the concept of “excess” when it comes to money only takes into account the revenue side of the picture and ignores the expense side. I guess it’s like that when you play in a 100% taxpayer-financed stadium.

And speaking of excess, how about this: Wilson paid $25,000 for the Bills. He could sell them tomorrow for something in the neighborhood of $800 million. The value of his investment has increased by a factor of 32,000. Wouldn’t a profit of $799,750,000 have to be considered to be excessive, even over the course of 45 years or so? That’s over $17 million a year in appreciation alone. You’re telling me that’s not excessive?

Wilson warns, “Don't buy all of that stuff that the league's PR machine puts out.”

Don’t buy in to all of the “woe is me” spin that Wilson is putting on his current situation, either.

Six-Week Stretch Will Define Season

Forget about the Monday night opener and the return of Smootie and Brad “Whiney” Johnson. Never mind the prime-time affair six days later in Texas Stadium for the home debuts of the idiot kicker, Mike Vanderjagt and the idiot receiver, Terrell Owens. At this point, I don’t really care about the season ending clash with the Giants on the eve of New Year’s Eve. Just tell me how the Redskins will do in a stretch of five games in six weeks in October and November and I’ll tell you how the Redskins will finish the 2006 season.

It starts in Week 7 in Indianapolis with a game against the Colts. This is one that you have to put down as an “L” looking at it right now, but despite the prowess of Indy’s passing attack, I don’t think that you can underestimate the impact of the loss of Edgerrin James. After that, it’s the well-placed bye week. Certainly, the timing here is much better than last year when the well-deserved rest came after the second game of the season.

The week off gives the Redskins two weeks to prepare for the rematch with Dallas. We don’t know what state the Cowboys will be in by then. Besides the two idiots mentioned above, they have an immobile, aging quarterback, a supposed star running back who can’t stay on the field for more than half the season, an offensive line that is in the process of being rebuilt for the second straight year and a coach who hasn’t displayed an ounce of enthusiasm about the moves that Jones is making. To mix some metaphors, the team appears to be a toxic mix that could explode into a train wreck at any moment. Certainly if Dan Snyder had tried to pull together so many ill-fitting pieces he would be roundly laughed at for trying to build his own fantasy football team as he was in 2000. However, Jerry Jones is being hailed for having put together the last pieces of the championship puzzle. The main difference is that Deion Sanders was just an egotistical, arrogant hot dog while Owens is an egotistical, arrogant hot dog who is a proven team killer.

After that there are two straight road games, the first one in Philadelphia. The guess here is that with a healthy Donovan McNabb the Eagles will be better than the were last year but not the league powerhouse they were the three years prior to 2005. The Linc will be a tough place to win. Then it’s on to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, the scene of two taught, controversy-filled games between the two teams last year. It wouldn’t be surprising if the 2006 regular-season contest between the two teams was another preview of a playoff matchup.

Then on Thanksgiving weekend there will be a game at FedEx Field against the Carolina Panthers. While there probably wasn’t a good way to do it, the NFL missed the boat by not putting the Skins and Panthers in the same division and guaranteeing twice-yearly games between the two teams. Before the Panthers came along in the late 1990’s, the Redskins were the team of the Carolinas and many Carolinians remain loyal to the Burgundy and Gold while sort of rooting for the teal and black. This game also has the potential to be loaded with playoff implications.

During this stretch, the Redskins will have ample opportunity to make some statements as to whether or not they should be counted among the NFL’s elite teams. A 3-2 record or better over the meat of the schedule would be evidence that the Redskins are indeed candidates for a long playoff run. A losing record in the five games doesn’t doom them to a year of watching the playoffs on TV, but the team’s aspirations for ’06 go beyond a one and done appearance or even a two and done for that matter and a sub .500 mark against the tough teams won’t bode well for postseason success.