Bryan Stork Officially Decides To Join Washington Redskins

Bryan Stork is officially joining the Washington Redskins after contemplating retirement. What can the third year player bring to the Redskins team?

The retirement speculation surrounding Bryan Stork is now over. The third year player who the Redskins acquired in a trade with the New England Patriots earlier in the week announced on Twitter that he would continue to play in the NFL.

Stork’s addition to the Redskins will be a welcome one at this point in time. The projected starting center in the offseason, Kory Lichtensteiger has struggled mightily in the preseason thus far. In Friday’s game against the Buffalo Bills, he was absolutely terrible. He got flagged for three holding penalties and it did not look like he would be able to adequately protect Kirk Cousins. The team needed an immediate solution and Stork will likely give them that.

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However, there are still some concerns surrounding Stork as he prepares to join the Redskins team. The first and most important issue is his health. Stork has suffered multiple concussions over the course of the last couple of seasons. As a result, he will be at risk to suffer one at any given time. Also, the risk of suffering another is heightened because of the physical nature of the center position. The Redskins will have to be cautious in his recovery from a concussion as well. He missed eight games last year partially due to concussion symptoms.

Another major concern with Stork is his attitude. This offseason, it became apparent that Stork was causing some problems. These issues may have come to a head when he got into a fight with Bears linebacker John Timu at a joint practice in mid-August. ESPN’s Mike Reiss outlined the fight and said the following about Stork’s reaction:

"Timu might have given Stork a bit of extracurricular activity as a play was ending, but Stork’s reaction was way over the top — putting both hands into Timu’s breastplate and pushing him with force before swinging his arms at Timu."

Stork was ejected from practice immediately following the fight, and one would think that Bill Belichick took the incident into account before getting rid of Stork. Shortly after Stork was moved, Mike Petraglia of WEEI sent out this tweet that nicely wrapped up all the reasons that the Patriots were comfortable getting rid of Stork.

Stork was injury prone and had issues relating not just with the media but teammates. And that was a big problem.
— Mike Petraglia (@Trags) August 24, 2016

Still, despite all of Stork’s issues, he is likely the best center on the Redskins’ roster. He may get some competition from Spencer Long, but he should easily beat out Lichtensteiger for the starting job. So long as Stork can stay out of trouble on the field, then he will be an impact player for the Redskins.

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