No big deal, of course, except it makes me look stupid.  Madieu Williams just signed for a ridiculous 5 years at $33 million.  Apparently, the owners are in that “Baseball in the 90’s” mood.  If Williams is worth $33 million in this market, Asante Samuel has got to be worth $60 million. Frightening. More as the day unfolds.
-DW

…have done nothing while many teams around us have done lots.
And that’s ok.  For a change, we’re not going to rush out and grab every 30 something free agent we can name.  It took awhile for Vinny and Dan to get it, and it took cap prison to make it happen, but hear them roar in Jason LaConfor’s blog: “Our cap situation is okay. I just think there’s a limited number of guys in free agency. The price of what guys are going to be paid is astronomical. I don’t foresee us being a big player. It’ll be a shock [...]

Got an email from Jason.  He has painted a tribute to Sean Taylor that will be on display at Children’s Hosptial in DC until March 21st when it will be sold and some of the proceeds will go to the hospital with any future proceeds from prints, etc. going to Taylor’s foundation.  Check out the painting here, and if you can give to these worthy causes.
-DW

The incomparable Jason LaConfora has given us the 411 on how we got to basically under the cap. We converted Jon Jansen’s salary to bonuses and Mark Brunell and Rock Cartwright are having their contracts voided.  I can’t say I’ll miss poor Mark.  Though if he ever wants to coach, I’d offer him a job.  Cartwright will be missed, and I’m not sure why we’re cutting him since he was only about half a million against the cap.  Is he that hurt?  Info would be appreciated if anyone has it.
As it is, this was done with very little difficulty and as Jason points [...]

I don’t know for sure whether this is official, but while I was watching the NFL Network coverage of the combine, the ticker underneath was showing who had space under the cap and then listed us as over the cap by only $103 K.
Really?  Woohoo!  Considering there hasn’t been any major news of restructuring deals, it looks like either the numbers thrown around were exaggerated or we were able to get that number down mostly with changing salaries to guarenteed and other cute tricks.
At any rate, unless we’ve signed a bunch of players to new deals that weren’t announced, we [...]

You know that mime schtick where they pretend their trapped in a shrinking box?  That’s what the press claims cap jail is like.  And most people are talking about the Skins as a team in cap prison.  It is true that we started this offseason 20 million over the cap, but we have already started to trim that just by monkeying with contracts. For instance, we took four million off the cap by converting some of Randy Thomas’s contract into bonuses.
Anyway, despite being over the cap, the Skins have already indicated that they are interested in top flight free agents like [...]

I promised a story on the Redskins salary cap today but I just couldn’t get it together.  Life intervened.  I’m sorry.  I’ll have it by tomorrow.  But for your reading pleasure I think you’ll love this article.
It is not Redskins related.  It is not even football related.  It is about *gasp* baseball.  And it isn’t even about the Nats or O’s.  But I’m just going to say that it is one of my favorite pieces of sports journalism I’ve read in a long time, a heck of a story, and just a pleasure to read particularly on a day when [...]

I pretty much ignored this when I first read it, but it really gathered steam on ESPN and other outlets today so I can’t ignore it anymore.  According to the Post, Drew Rosenhaus is working hard behind the scenes to make a deal for Chad Johnson to come to the Redskins.
Count me as one of the many people who don’t care for Johnson.  I don’t think his TD celebrations are particularly inventive or funny.  But I have a feeling I’d like them a lot more if they happened in Burgundy and Gold. There is no doubt that Johnson is an [...]

OK, I’ve been weighing all of the Zorn talk in my head the last couple of days and I’m ready to talk about it semi-intelligently.  The bottom line?  I have no clue, but I’m intrigued and willing to watch.  No excited anymore, mind you.  But intrigued.  There are several parts to this discussion as to whether Zorn is a good coach– 1) Some people think Snyder settled for Zorn when everyone else turned us down. 2) Some people just don’t like Dan Snyder and any decision he made other than Gregg Williams (Gibb’s choice) would have been generally hissed at. [...]

According to ESPN and the Washington Post, the Redskins will announce that Jim Zorn, our recently hired offensive coordiantor will actually become our head coach. No word on what we’ll do for an OC yet.
I’ll reserve final judgment for now.  I want to see the press conference and hear the plan for the future.  But I’m pretty excited to tell the truth.  I can’t figure out whether I’m excited because we have a new coach or because I like Zorn.  But Zorn is an interesting football mind with a great reputation.  Had he been hired a week after Gibbs retired I [...]