Washington Football Team: Potential hidden gems on the team’s roster

Defense: DE/LB Casey Toohill

I chose Hemingway because he fills a position of great need. Unfortunately, the roster doesn’t offer anyone like that on defense. The best deep depth on the defense comes along the defensive front – where James Smith-Williams and practice-squader Devaroe Lawrence are waiting for a chance, and at the cornerback position, where Danny Johnson and Aaron Colvin would be able to step in if needed.

Those are the two areas of strength on this defense. Where they are in desperate need of help is at linebacker and at safety.

Kevin Pierre-Louis, Jon Bostic, and Cole Holcomb have all played well at times at linebacker. But they clearly could use some help. Thomas Davis appears to have finally run out of gas, and Shaun Dion Hamilton appears to have stalled in his attempt to carve out a meaningful role for himself. Rookie Khaleke Hudson has been a non-factor thus far.

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But there is a player currently languishing in that active-roster/inactive-on-game-day purgatory who could step up.

When he was released by the Eagles last month, Washington quickly snapped up Casey Toohill. Initially, it appeared that WFT was merely replacing one promising young edge rusher – Jordan Brailford – with another. Braiford had been plucked from Washington’s practice squad by Minnesota the previous week.

Toohill, who won his team’s leadership award as a fifth-year senior, is a fast, rangy defender who had a productive career at Stanford, and who wowed scouts with his speed and explosiveness at the combine. The combine also revealed a positional problem. He was not quite big and strong enough to play the edge in either a 4-3 or 3-4 front. Washington fans have watched Ryan Anderson struggle with this for four years now.

But Toohill, though not nearly the hitter that Anderson is, shows much better movement. The team liked him enough to say good-bye to Nate Orchard, who provided serviceable edge depth. Toohill has bulked up a little since entering the league, and his ultimate position is most likely as a 4-3 defensive end. But if he can maintain his speed and agility, he could provide help at linebacker in the short term.

Toohill’s speed numbers are quite good – especially his 20 yard shuttle, which is generally a more accurate gauge of how effective a linebacker can be than a 40 time.

Washington is in pretty big trouble should one of the three starting linebackers suffer an injury. When Cole Holcomb was out, they played a lot of snaps with just Bostic and Pierre-Louis on the field. But they also had Landon Collins at that point. And though he made a lot of mistakes, Collins was the safety best suited to step up and do what a linebacker might otherwise be doing.

Without that fallback, the linebackers will be needing help.

I expect to see Toohill get a shot in the coming weeks. Washington has gotten very little productivity out of Ryan Anderson, and Toohill might give them a boost as a situational pass rusher. And it would be even more intriguing to see Toohill use his athletic gifts to spell Bostic and Pierre-Louis from time to time. Seeing him and Cole Holcomb flying around behind that defensive line could be fun to watch.

These players may not end up becoming productive players. Then again, Timmy Smith still holds the record for rushing yards in a Super Bowl, and back on the morning of January 31, 1988, that would have seemed like an even bigger long shot.