Training Camp Tracker
The Washington Post
Thursday, Aug. 12, 2004, Page D07
Today's Schedule
Practices are closed to public.
Brunell vs. Ramsey
While the top two quarterbacks had relatively quiet days on the field, Mark Brunell did have the play of the day by a long shot. With wide receiver Taylor Jacobs streaking down the left sideline, Brunell threw an on-target 50-yard pass that Jacobs caught while in a perfectly timed full dive.
Rookie free safety Sean Taylor made Patrick Ramsey look bad on a pass along the right sideline, drifting over and catching the ball as if it were thrown right to him. Jacobs could have balanced his first impressive grab with a second from Ramsey, but the long pass went right through his hands. Ramsey did have a nice toss to a leaping Lavernues Coles in the back of the end zone.
Coach Joe Gibbs weighed in on the quarterbacks' subpar performance in the team's first preseason game against Denver, "It was tough for Mark and Patrick and I think Tim [Hasselbeck], you know, made some good plays for us later on."
Quotable
"He's my daddy, man."
-- guard Randy Thomas, on newly signed lineman Ray Brown's age (41)
Fresh Faces: Garnell Wilds
Position: Cornerback.
College: Virginia Tech.
Who He Is: Wilds, notable for his mass of thin dreadlocks, started the first six games of the season for Virginia Tech in his senior season. In his junior year, he led the Big East with five interceptions. He had two interceptions in his first career start in 2001 against Temple.
How He's Doing: The 5-foot-11, 196-pound cornerback hasn't really distinguished himself so far, but he hasn't been bad either. Mostly he's been trying to get a feel for the speed of the pro game. "Just learning to go with my instincts and react a lot quicker," he said. "A fast decision is better than no decision."
Chances of Making the Roster: Wilds is shooting for special teams work while also trying to learn the defense. He has a chance, but not a particularly good one, to end up on the roster. "That's going to be my alley on to making this team right now, so that's what I have to put more of my focus on," Wilds said of special teams. "Coming from Virginia Tech, we put a lot of focus on special teams anyway, so I'm kind of used to it."
The Daily Gibbs Watch
Coach Joe Gibbs seemed to have a rather uneventful day at the final practice open to the public, though he did get a rousing cheer from the assembled fans when he jogged onto the field. Gibbs again firmly directed his players as they continued drills similar to ones they've been doing since camp opened. While Gibbs looked to be taking a break from his cornerback practice position, he appeared to switch to safety, following some quarterback-to-receiver passes from afar. After the practice, Gibbs praised the play of his defense during Monday's preseason opener against Denver but indicated he was unimpressed with the production of the offense.
Odds and Ends
Nose tackle Brandon Noble practiced for the first time with a broken right hand. He wore a massive club-like soft cast, which will be scaled back as the hand heals. He said he can still feel the bones moving within the cast. "It's awkward. It's something I'll have to get used to. . . . I tried not to club anybody today. I'm going to wait until somebody makes me mad, and I'll whack 'em," Noble joked.
Tight end Chrisey backed up the Redskins' decision to draft him in the third round, impressing with a one-handed circus grab over the middle on a ball from quarterback Tim Hasselbeck. While many of the receivers played well, there were several passes bouncing off players' chests or going through their hands.
Apparently hazing isn't just for rookies at Redskins training camp. As running back Ladell Betts responded to a fan in the crowd, a devious Clinton Portis pulled down Betts's shorts, eliciting a roar from the crowd.
As Portis ran off the field and into the locker room, he threw his practice long-sleeved undershirt to an appreciative adolescent fan.
Injuries
LB Mike Barrow -- Day-to-day with tendinitis in his left knee.
RB Ladell Betts -- Out for a few days with a strained hamstring.
LB Khary Campbell -- Missed practice with a thigh contusion.
DL Phillip Daniels -- Back on the field, after being out with an abdominal muscle strain.
CB Walt Harris -- Assigned to the active/physically unable to perform list with a knee injury but has been doing well in his rehab.
DT Cedric Killings -- Day-to-day with a mild ankle sprain.
LB Kevin Mitchell -- Missed practice with a rotator cuff injury.
OL Jim Molinaro -- Had to leave practice early with heat-related symptoms.
NT Brandon Noble -- Back to practice with a broken right hand in a soft cast.
CB Shawn Springs -- Day-to-day with tendinitis in quadriceps.
If You Go
• Admission: Free.
• Parking: Free.
• Directions (from Washington): Take I-66 west to Route 267 west (Dulles Toll Road). The toll is 50 cents. Follow 267 west for 13 miles to the Dulles Greenway toward Leesburg (toll is $2.25). Continue approximately two miles to Exit 7 (Loudoun County Parkway/Route 607). Turn right. Proceed approximately two miles and cross over Waxpool Road. Go approximately 1.2 miles more until the two lanes merge into one. Look for Redskins parking staff to find parking at Redskins Park.
• What to expect: No bleachers will be set up around the fields. Food, drink and souvenirs will be available.
What you can bring:
•
• Cameras for still photography.
• A chair or blanket.
What you can't bring:
• Alcoholic beverages.
• Video cameras.
• Pets.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sp ... cker11.htm
Hasselbeck Sticks His Nose Into the Quarterback Derby
By Thomas Boswell
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page D01
The curious legend of Tim Hasselbeck continues.
You can bury him on the depth chart. You can go six months without anybody at Redskins Park so much as speaking his name. You can make him an asterisk to an addendum to an afterthought.
You can bring in a $43 million three-time Pro Bowl quarterback, presumably to be your starter, even though you already have a young quarterback-of-the-future on your roster with a javelin thrower's arm. You can consign Hasselbeck, who is 26 but looks more like 36, to the category of NFL curiosity with his thinning hair, accountant's physique and friendly unassuming manner.
You can even forget that Hasselbeck played almost all of six games for the Redskins last season and did quite well in five of them. He won only once, but his teammates squandered two victories.
Yes, you can sell his arm short, badmouth his size and damn him with the faint praise of "human interest story." He's the runt of the litter in a family where his father is an NFL veteran, his brother, Matt, is the Seahawks' star quarterback and even his mother had five brothers who were quarterbacks. Oh, you can denigrate his chances of an NFL career from dawn to dusk.
But you can't make him go away. You can't make him quit. And you can't convince him he can't play quarterback in the NFL. Because he, not his better-known wife Elizabeth of ABC's "The View" and reality TV fame, is the real "Survivor."
Yes, he's doing it again. Hasselbeck is messing up everybody's well-laid plans. When Joe Gibbs said there would be an "open competition" in preseason for the starting quarterback job, nobody sent Tim the memo telling him he wasn't included.
The casting call was supposedly for Mark Brunell and Patrick Ramsey. But, so far, only Hasselbeck has gotten raves from the only critic who matters: Gibbs.
On Monday night, after Hasselbeck led a preseason win over Denver, Gibbs said, "I've been bragging on him all along." Yesterday, Gibbs added: "I like Tim. He's smart. He's made some good decisions." Of those other fellows, he said, "We had some opportunities and missed them. . . . It was tough for Mark and Patrick. . . . Tim came in and made some plays."
Don't worry. Hasselbeck's head still fits in his helmet. "Coach Gibbs has said things that make me feel pretty good," he said yesterday. "But if I don't keep it up, in four weeks he'll forget he ever said anything about me at all."
When the regular season opens in a month, Hasselbeck may still be playing third string or be injured or even have bombed out of the league entirely. When your primary tools are your head and your heart, job security is nonexistent in the NFL.
But so far, based on performance, not reputation, Hasselbeck is leading in the Redskins' quarterback competition. By a lot.
In open training camp practices, he's been the best performer almost every session. On national TV in the Hall of Fame Game, Brunell completed 4 of 8 passes for 18 yards and managed one first down in three series. In five series, Ramsey went 3 for 8 for 12 yards, fumbled a snap and got only one first down, aside from penalties. Both looked uneasy in the offense.
Hasselbeck played three series. First, he drove the ball out from the 4-yard line so the Redskins had room to punt. Then, he capped a 56-yard touchdown drive with a 33-yard scoring bomb. Finally, with the score 17-17, he drove 66 yards for a game-winning field goal as time expired. Overall, he was 7 for 10 for 118 yards and a quarterback rating of 142.9.
Okay, so the field was cluttered with reserves and rookies. Garbage time in early August doesn't count for much. But Hasselbeck looked like a quarterback playing in a new offense who had already learned it and was pretty comfortable in it. There may be a reason. Dan Henning, Gibbs's former quarterbacks coach, worked with both Hasselbeck brothers during their Boston College careers. Matt used the Gibbs system his whole career and has been preaching the gospel to Tim in phone chats.
The brothers talk about rolling pockets and learning to trust their receivers to make the proper reads of defenses in mid-play. "Sometimes the receiver can break in any of three different directions," said Hasselbeck. "I have a hard time throwing to guys when I can't see them." So does any quarterback. But that's central to Gibbs's offense. In time, Joe Theismann knew, as he dropped back, whether Art Monk would break left, right or hook on a crucial third-down pattern. Then he gunned it, trusting that Monk, not a defender, would be there to catch it.
All the Redskins quarterbacks are still a bit mystified. They didn't even get a playbook from Gibbs, just a blank notebook. The best note taker in meetings wins the job? "I opened the notebook and said, 'Where are the pictures?' " said Hasselbeck.
So, Joe, how high could Hasselbeck, even in theory, move up the chart?
"We're just competing out there," said Gibbs innocently. "They'll all get to play a lot in the next four weeks."
"All" would now seem to include Hasselbeck.
Few would imagine Hasselbeck can keep up this fantasy. After all, he's one of the few quarterbacks ever to have a 0.00 rating for an entire game; in the 27-0 Dallas disaster last year, Bill Parcells exposed Steve Spurrier's offensive theories by blitzing multiple men on almost every play. Hasselbeck was the human guinea pig in that public humiliation.
Still, this is delicious while it lasts. Is Hasselbeck actually moving into the competition, even if only at the edges of it?
"You may not believe this, but I don't think about it. I just can't," said Hasselbeck.
In Hasselbeck's fragile yet hope-filled world, you never know what can happen -- good or bad.
"In this game, you can't relax. I coach myself never to feel like, 'I'm going to be here,' " he said. "One year in Carolina, Jeff Lewis was supposed to be the starter. He had a horrible camp and exhibition season and [by opening day] he was out of the league for good.
"When you get opportunities to play in this league, if you play well, good things will happen. You may not be with that team, but you'll be in the league. Things will work out for you. Last year at this time, I was the fourth guy in Philly, just waiting to get cut, and I ended up starting five games for the Redskins."
All Hasselbeck can do is his best, though few believe it can be enough. Still, Gibbs has a unique history. Who thought Mark Rypien or Doug Williams would ever win a Super Bowl or that Jay Schroeder would start in an NFC title game?
"People tell me [Gibbs] wants a smart quarterback who runs a clean operation and doesn't throw the ball to the other team," said Hasselbeck, who fits that minimalist description.
On Broadway, when you have an open casting call, you never know who might end up playing the lead.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Aug11.html
Redskins' Jones Has Lot to Tackle
Incident Lingers for Jansen's Fill-In
By Jason La Canfora
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page D01
At the far end of a deserted field, long after practice had ended, Kenyatta Jones and offensive line guru Joe Bugel worked on the nuances of their craft. For 15 minutes they honed Jones's technique -- backpedaling, shuffling, hand placement, angles -- getting him ready for the Washington Redskins' home preseason opener against the Carolina Panthers on Saturday night.
Jones, 25, knows replacing stalwart right tackle Jon Jansen, out for the season because of an Achilles' injury, offers him perhaps his first chance to begin restoring his image. Double knee surgeries and a pectoral injury kept Jones out of pads for about 18 months, making the Super Bowl ring he won with New England in 2002 seem like part of a distant era, while an October 2003 incident in which Jones scalded a roommate with hot water and received a year's probation from a Massachusetts court damaged his reputation.
"I get a chance to prove what I can do," the Redskins' Kenyatta Jones said of starting role at right tackle. (Joel Richardson -- The Washington Post)
"I think this is a great opportunity to establish my name and who I am and what I'm able to do," Jones said.
Jones pleaded no contest to one count of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and was issued a "continued without a finding" ruling in April after he threw hot water on roommate Mark Paul. If Jones does not violate his one-year probation the case will be dismissed. Paul, who suffered second- and third-degree burns, was sitting on the toilet when he was hit by the water.
Jones describes the incident as "a prank gone awry" and said he thinks Paul exaggerated the nature of the altercation for possible financial gain. "I was tormented because of a friend and it was a lesson learned, a hard lesson learned. But, hey, we all have to learn," Jones said.
Paul's attorney, Alec Sohmer, said Jones acted carelessly and has shown little remorse for the incident despite his client's injuries. Sohmer said that in a few weeks he will file a civil suit against Jones seeking monetary damages.
"He was very contrite in the courtroom," Sohmer said of Jones. "But he has not issued us an apology."
Jones had family connections to Paul and had known him for about two years when the incident took place. Paul helped Jones run daily errands in a Boston suburb while he was recovering from knee surgery. By all accounts Jones and his friends enjoyed rough housing and playing practical jokes -- Sohmer refers to them as "frat-house pranks" -- but in this case Paul suffered burns on his hairline, shoulder and back and received medical attention at a nearby hospital. Sohmer said Paul would not comment on the incident.
Jones has had other legal troubles. The Gainesville, Fla., native twice received probation while in college at South Florida: he got six months for driving with a suspended license in 1999 and two years for carrying a concealed weapon and resisting arrest without violence in 2000.
But he says that the most recent incident has led him to change his life after he became the subject of considerable scorn in Boston and infamous nationwide as word of what happened spread to columnists and late-night talk show hosts. Jones said the key change was parting ways with people he considers to have been negative influences.
"We were horsing around, but everything happens for a reason," Jones said, "To this day I wouldn't change nothing that happened on that day. I don't hate the guy [Paul], but . . . it was a prank gone awry, and I'm glad it happened the way it happened, because I could have been a more wealthier guy, and he could have went for more than what he went for, so it's good that I got it out of the way and got those guys who I didn't need around me away from me. So that gave me a new start, and now here I have another new start, and I get a chance to prove what I can do and what I'm able to do on the field. And off the field I've got a good family here, and I've got a lot of coaches who care."
Jones's agent, Hadley Engelhard, said his client has put his problems with Paul behind him. "We all learn from our mistakes and this is a new chapter for Kenyatta and he's looking forward to it," Engelhard said. "He's really made a change in his life."
After being selected in the fourth round by New England in 2001, Jones was earning a base salary around $400,000 a season and received a $365,000 signing bonus. Jones became a regular in his second season with the team -- appearing in 13 games and starting 11 -- and helped them win the Super Bowl, but needed surgery on both knees in the offseason and was finally healthy enough to return to the active roster in late October 2003 when the Patriots cut him. Engelhard said he orchestrated the move to get Jones out of New England, and team management obliged ("We all agreed that would be best for Kenyatta," Engelhard said).
The Redskins signed Jones about a month after his release to a minimum salary deal -- $830,000 over two seasons, with no sizeable incentives -- but he suffered a season-ending pectoral injury in practice and was placed on injured reserve a week later without appearing in a game. Now, he's being asked to fill in for Jansen, a respected team leader, having last played a meaningful football game at the 2002 Super Bowl and will be granted every opportunity to be Washington's starting right tackle.
"We are giving him a shot to move up there and play," Coach Joe Gibbs said. "So hopefully he makes the most of it. We have confidence in him and we think he's going to do well."
Bugel said Jones has spent extra time working with the coaches after training sessions. He has been peppering Bugel with questions about shifting back to tackle from guard -- "He's a great extracurricular guy," Bugel said. "We just take our walk and cool down [after practice] and answer a lot of questions for him." -- and said he is eager to see Jones match up against the Panthers' fierce defensive line on Saturday, particularly dominant end Julius Peppers. For the limited time the starters are on the field it will be a battle of muscle.
"Kenyatta is powerful," Bugel said. "He's strong, very strong. He can push you around and he can knock you off the ball."
Bugel told Jones shortly after Jansen was hurt that he would be handed the chance to replace Jansen. He had already been preparing for a more prominent role, however, getting his 6-foot-3 frame down to about 301 pounds and working on his conditioning. "I'm running after plays; I never run after plays," said Jones, who briefly played college basketball in 1999-2000. "That's my rest time . . . I've never been that light before. I wasn't even that light when I played basketball at USF. It's a whole new rebirth for me."
Jones missed a few days at the start of camp because of an ankle injury, and although he is not quite 100 percent, his knees feel better than ever after surgery. It no longer hurts to bend over and he is settling back into being a right tackle with each practice. He does not wear his Super Bowl ring, keeping it locked away instead, and said he is forgetting his past -- both good and bad -- and focusing on the future.
"I've been there before and know what it takes to get" a Super Bowl ring, Jones said.
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Aug11.html
Redskins Notebook
Old Reliable: Team Signs 41-Year-Old Brown
By Nunyo Demasio
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page D07
The Washington Redskins yesterday signed 41-year-old offensive lineman Ray Brown, who played for the club from 1989 to 1995 and appeared to have ended his long NFL career after playing with the Detroit Lions last season.
The 19th-year veteran -- he missed two seasons with an elbow injury -- is expected to add leadership as much as depth to a line that has been hit hard with the loss of Jon Jansen. The right tackle underwent successful surgery yesterday in Charlotte to repair a ruptured left Achilles' tendon suffered during Monday's 20-17 victory over the Denver Broncos in the preseason opener. Jansen will be in a cast for six weeks, followed by rehabilitation at Redskins Park.
After leaving the Redskins, Brown joined the San Francisco 49ers, where he played from 1996 to 2001 before joining Detroit for the last two seasons. After not participating in an NFL practice for almost a year, Brown -- who will turn 42 on Dec. 12 -- worked out for Washington yesterday morning, then signed a one-year contract for the league minimum.
"Ray played for us all the way back when I was here," Coach Joe Gibbs said. "We just think he's the right kind of guy."
Brown said after practice: "It feels good, I must admit. As hot as it is, I might be second-guessing that, but other than that I'm fine. I did as much as I could [working out] away from any type of training camp or any type of team. But I have some work to do."
What does he feel he has to offer at his age?
"Obviously when you become an 18-year guy, a 19-year guy, it's [mostly] leadership, it's mentorship. But they're not cutting anybody any slack. You have to work. I know that. We're going to be in pads; we're going to be banging. And I just have to be ready for it, make sure my body holds up for 16 ballgames."
Injury Report
Rookie offensive lineman Jim Molinaro was carted off the field during practice because of a heat-related illness. Cornerback Shawn Springs missed practice because of tendinitis in his quadriceps, but said he expects to return soon.
In some good news on the injury front, nose tackle Brandon Noble practiced for the first time since breaking his hand last week. Defensive end Phillip Daniels, who missed Monday's game with an abdominal strain, has returned to practice. . . .
Safety Sean Taylor, who intercepted two passes Monday, had another strong practice, but he still hasn't been placed on the first team. "He makes a lot of good plays," Gibbs said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Aug11.html