Joe Gibbs held a press conference today at Redskin Park at 1:45pm to address the recent concerns over the OTA’s and some various other issues. Here is a summary of what he had to say.
On participation at the OTA’s…
… real pleased with participation… know where everyone is at except Sean Taylor.
On training camp dates…
... Guys will report on July 31st and practices will commence the following Monday (Aug. 1st).
On June 1st cuts and interest in other players
… Nothing to announce.
On Michael Barrow…
… had a long talk with Michael on Friday… he’s anticipating being fully ready for the mini-camp and then he will work out for the trainers to be cleared. Everyone anticipating mini-camp as his return.
On Chad Morton…
… still not cleared.
On R.W McQuarters…
… he has visited a couple of other places… he’s considering his options. Told him we would have an interest and when R.W is ready, we’ll continue talks.
On the recent OTA’s being looked at by the league…
… to be truthful, we think we’re well within the rules… certainly from a time stand point… the other major concern is injuries and we’ve had none. Real important thing to me is with the players. We think everything fits within the rules. All stems from some shots from the website where there was some commentary about the competitiveness… perhaps a little over zealous… we think we’re doing what we need to be doing to get ready and doing it within the rules. Pass sets, pass rushes… we feel like we were doing stuff that fits within the rules.
The biggest thing for us is to get our players ready… what the league doesn’t want is competitive stuff where players end up on the field injured. I keep in touch with the player reps on our team about it all the time and try to make sure that they are comfortable with everything. There are three former reps on the team… James Thrash, Renaldo Wynn and Ray Brown. All 3 of them, and all of the other guys, are on board with what the Redskins are doing at the OTA’s.
On Redskins.com doing something wrong with the level of access…
… No. Evidently there has been a real interest in it and we’re just trying to give the fans a little more.
On Mini-camp…
… going back to the first part of practice being open to the press.
On positives from OTA’s…
… Made some changes in the approach to conditioning and nobody has been hurt.
… Work ethic has been good
… See guys fitting in the passing game like Patten and Moss.
… draft choices been steady…. it’s been good work… I think it’s helped us.
On offense’s progress compared to last year…
… the offense seems to be moving at a better clip. You always think you are…. so yeah. The defense does so much stuff that the offense gets good work.
On special teams progress…
… Excited about ST… added some guys that are going to help out the teams and really fit in for Danny (Smith).
On how he feels about varying lengths of recoveries for injuries…
… My feeling with the injuries… some take longer… for me, when a player is ready… and the training staff is ready… some guy is going to do better than a hurt guy…
On Barrow again…
… Michael we didn’t get to play at all last year… he’s brilliant as far as football goes… he’s helped with coaching. He just needs to get back his strength and he’s ready to go. Super smart, tremendous history, real good background… if he can get healthy, then he can really help us.
On Sean Taylor…
… nothing new at all to report.
These comments are a brief synopsis of what Coach Gibbs had to say. You can listen to the entire press conference at Redskins.com.
–BossHog
Edit: This blog was archived in May of 2016 from our original articles database.It was originally posted by Mark Solway