Every team likes a bargain. And in drafting, trading and signing for players who performed well when healthy a team can hit the jackpot when injured players that others have given up on return to the field and resume their careers.
But you can't use this as your method of building depth on your squad and counting on it for overall improvement in the fortunes of the club as a matter of course.
For Washington, unfortunately, many of the players they identified to acquire who were rehabbing from serious injuries have failed to come back 100% or close enough to it to continue their NFL careers at a high level.
We have many examples from Maake Kemoeatu to Jammal Brown to recent signees Josh Morgan and Jonathan Goff.
Most if not all have failed to return.
Joe Gibbs often said one of the most important considerations in signing players for the Redskins was their history of durability.
Whatever talent players have they have to play to exhibit it.
Now, we can knock off the signings of guys like Goff and admit we were swinging for the fences on a player recovering from an ACL to be a backup to what is otherwise a talented linebacking corps.
But on the offensive line we had two performers coming back from injuries this season in Lichtensteiger and Brown and the latter has had a history of missing time, and yet we left the line without any step in solutions/insurance during a year we are initiating a Heisman Trophy winning 22 year old quarterback...............?
Tight ends and receivers be damned. I know Davis is a question mark in regards to the drug testing and I am also aware the team envisions using Moss in the slot to great effect with Griffin.
But Chris Cooley and Moss together count $9M against the cap this year and lack of cap space was one reason given for failing to make any moves in free agency for capable OL that became available.
So, in an unusual year with Giffin coming in Allen and Shanahan COULD have restructured these players deals and created enough space to provide that insurance.
But it didn't happen.
The team once again decided to gamble at a unit on the team where past gambles have almost never turned out for the club in recent seasons under Shanahan.
You would figure the failures here in the past would make everyone at Redskins Park damn sure the OL if any was not going to be the area that let the team down in 2012.
You can win without 2 productive passing tight ends.
You can win with Giffin throwing to Garcon, Hankerson, and a group of receivers not named Moss.
But you can't win without an OL.
And again you can't win depending continually upon players who are coming back time and again from long odds in injury and rehab.
We have to start targeting players like London Fletcher and the players Gibbs had here back in the 1980's, guys that missed few games over long NFL careers:
Monk - 14 years
McKenzie - 15 years
Warren - 14 years
Coleman - 16 years
Butz - 14 years
Green - 20 years
But you can't use this as your method of building depth on your squad and counting on it for overall improvement in the fortunes of the club as a matter of course.
For Washington, unfortunately, many of the players they identified to acquire who were rehabbing from serious injuries have failed to come back 100% or close enough to it to continue their NFL careers at a high level.
We have many examples from Maake Kemoeatu to Jammal Brown to recent signees Josh Morgan and Jonathan Goff.
Most if not all have failed to return.
Joe Gibbs often said one of the most important considerations in signing players for the Redskins was their history of durability.
Whatever talent players have they have to play to exhibit it.
Now, we can knock off the signings of guys like Goff and admit we were swinging for the fences on a player recovering from an ACL to be a backup to what is otherwise a talented linebacking corps.
But on the offensive line we had two performers coming back from injuries this season in Lichtensteiger and Brown and the latter has had a history of missing time, and yet we left the line without any step in solutions/insurance during a year we are initiating a Heisman Trophy winning 22 year old quarterback...............?
Tight ends and receivers be damned. I know Davis is a question mark in regards to the drug testing and I am also aware the team envisions using Moss in the slot to great effect with Griffin.
But Chris Cooley and Moss together count $9M against the cap this year and lack of cap space was one reason given for failing to make any moves in free agency for capable OL that became available.
So, in an unusual year with Giffin coming in Allen and Shanahan COULD have restructured these players deals and created enough space to provide that insurance.
But it didn't happen.
The team once again decided to gamble at a unit on the team where past gambles have almost never turned out for the club in recent seasons under Shanahan.
You would figure the failures here in the past would make everyone at Redskins Park damn sure the OL if any was not going to be the area that let the team down in 2012.
You can win without 2 productive passing tight ends.
You can win with Giffin throwing to Garcon, Hankerson, and a group of receivers not named Moss.
But you can't win without an OL.
And again you can't win depending continually upon players who are coming back time and again from long odds in injury and rehab.
We have to start targeting players like London Fletcher and the players Gibbs had here back in the 1980's, guys that missed few games over long NFL careers:
Monk - 14 years
McKenzie - 15 years
Warren - 14 years
Coleman - 16 years
Butz - 14 years
Green - 20 years