Tag: Trent Williams

Trent Williams quotes sure look interesting after the firing of Bruce Allen

Could Trent Williams come back?

The Washington Redskins canned Bruce Allen on Monday alongside a few other moves aimed at overhauling how things are done both in the front office and at every level of football operations.

Is that enough to lure someone like Trent Williams back to the team? Maybe not given the life-threatening nature of the left tackle’s injury saga that made him leave the team in the first place,

But the above quote provided by ESPN’s John Keim — taken well before Monday — sure looks interesting now.

Based on that, Williams still understandably has an attachment to the guys in the locker room. If the business side of things is all that needed fixing to make things right, what’s stopping the Redskins from dangling an extension after making these moves to the front office?

Maybe nothing. One thing is for sure — small as the chance probably still is, Monday’s moves seem to suggest a Williams return is more likely than it was just a few days prior.

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Report: Redskins looking to make changes to medical staff in Washington

As a part of the numerous changes taking place on Monday, the Redskins reportedly could look to shake up their medical staff as well.

If Washington Redskins fans were to make a list at the start of the season of things they’d like to see happen in order to change the losing culture, it would likely go as follows:

  1. #FireBruceAllen
  2. Fire Jay Gruden
  3. Get rid of the medical training staff

Two of those boxes have been checked off, and the third is reportedly close to happening as well. According to NBC Sports Washington’s JP Finlay, the major upheaval in the Redskins organization on Monday could reach all the way to the training room, where head trainer Larry Hess could find his job at stake.

The Redskins have had a muddled injury history over the past several years, and they finished this season with 24 players on the injured reserve list. They’ve also been gifted much of the blame regarding left tackle Trent Williams, who claims that they severely misdiagnosed a tumor on his scalp that ended up being cancerous. According to Williams’ side of the story, the medical staff had been monitoring the growth for six years while telling him that it was nothing to worry about. Williams had the cancerous growth removed earlier this year, and he has been holding out from the team ever since.

With a new GM likely to be named, and a new coach on his way to Ashburn, it seems fitting that new medical staff could be implemented as well. All of these injuries over the past few years can’t be the result of coincidence. A change was needed at the top of the Redskins organization, and it happened on Monday morning. Now it’s time for that change to trickle on down to the medical staff as well.

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What do Redskins’ changes mean for Trent Williams and Josh Norman?

Both Trent Williams and Josh Norman had questionable relationships with Bruce Allen, but now that the team president is out, what changes?

Obviously, some incremental changes are being made in Washington right now. The Redskins made the decision to fire team president Bruce Allen after 10 years of work on Monday morning, and they’re expected to sign former Carolina Panthers head coach Ron Rivera by the day’s end.

While this information is pertinent to answer some questions about what might happen in the franchise’s immediate future, it also poses a couple personnel questions down the road — mainly, what is going to happen with LT Trent Williams and CB Josh Norman?

Let’s start with Williams first. As a seven-time Pro-Bowler, Williams entered 2019 as the un-rivaled star of the Redskins, and his presence on the offensive line was easily the best thing that the team had going for them. Unfortunately, a rift between himself, the team’s medical staff, and Allen had grown to dangerous levels, and it led to Williams holding out from the team for the entire season, where he was eventually placed on the NFI list.

A lot of the tension surrounding Williams had something to do with Allen, who he reportedly did not get along with. It was reported that Allen placed Williams on the NFI, not guaranteeing his 2019 salary, out of spite due to Williams meeting with the media earlier that week and airing his grievances about the team. Now that Allen is gone, where does that leave Williams?

Technically, Trent is still a member of the Redskins, and he is under contract for one more season. The 31-year-old left tackle has been aiming to get a new contract signed before he plays again so that he has some finances secured in case of injury, or the team could choose to trade him. He has a strong relationship with team owner Dan Snyder, who could offer Williams a nice new contract if that’s what it would take to get him to return. There is nothing official yet, but the Redskins may have a path to getting Williams back now that Allen is gone.

As for Josh Norman, it is the hiring of his former coach, Ron Rivera, that is interesting. Norman played under Rivera for several years in Carolina with the Panthers, and he has a solid relationship with both him and defensive coordinator Steve Wilkes, who is rumored to be coming to Washington as well.

Norman has had a tough 2019 season, and he’s seen his time on the field dwindled down to none in order to get young players some experience. It has long been assumed that Norman, who has a $12.5 million cap hit in 2020, will be playing for a new team next season. However, a new coaching staff could change things. That’s not to say that Norman is suddenly going to rewind the clock and turn into the lock-down corner of old, but his veteran presence could be beneficial to the Washington locker room.

Things are changing at the top of the Redskins’ organization, and it is likely to have ripple effects long down the line. We can’t wait to see how this all plays out.

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Redskins can double their cap-space and attract coaches with a few simple moves

There’s a way that the Redskins can become a contender in the NFC East as soon as 2020, and all it takes is ridding the roster of some aging and expensive talent.

After it was announced this month that the NFL’s 2020 Salary Cap was likely to increase to somewhere between $196 and $201 million next season, it probably caused many fans of the Washington Redskins to do some research and find that the team will have approximately $48 million of cap space this coming offseason.

However, there are several moves that could make that number grow even higher for the Redskins, and that increased flexibility might behoove them in other areas this offseason, as they look to find an elite coaching candidate to fill their vacancy at the top stop.

According to NBC Sports JP Finlay, if Washington were to make these five roster moves this offseason, it could potentially clear up $50 million in extra cap-space, giving the Redskins more than $90 million to work with. As it stands now, that would be the third-most in the NFL. Here’s what Washington would need to do:

  • Cut CB Josh Norman | Saves $12.5 million in 2020
  • Cut WR Paul Richardson | Saves $6.5 million in 2020
  • Cut or reach an injury settlement with TE Jordan Reed | Saves $8.5 million in 2020
  • Trade LB Ryan Kerrigan | Saves $11.7 million in 2020
  • Trade LT Trent Williams | Saves $12.75 million in 2020

All of those roster decisions seem highly possible, and any logical franchise would likely pull the trigger instantly. However….well, I don’t need to say it.

Not only would this freed-up cap-space allow the Redskins to be highly active in free agency, but the added flexibility could be a huge selling point for any coaching candidate who may be wary of stepping into a difficult position in Washington. As it stands now, the Redskins have a stubborn owner, an incompetent general manager, and a whole host of players who are either injured or refusing to play taking up more than half of their cap space. You’d have to be a fool to willingly take on that job.

However, with a few of the moves we mentioned earlier, the Redskins could rid their roster of aging and expensive talent, spend on committed players who are in their prime and surround their talented young core with playmakers who are coming into their own. You pair that with the right coach, and suddenly you have a contender in the NFC East on your hands.

All of this can be done with a few roster decisions and a commitment to the future. Any logical franchise would do it…

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What’s one overarching reason for the Redskins struggles in 2019?

If you took all of Washington’s problems this year and boil them down to one thing, the inability to play up to expectations is the culprit.

While they sit with a 3-10 record and have been officially eliminated from the playoffs, the Washington Redskins are coming in danger of matching their lowest win total in 25 years. Looking back on the last year, where did it all go wrong?

Sure, a coach was fired after Week 5, and a rookie quarterback has been subjected to some bumps and bruises as he starts to gain his footing in the NFL landscape. Still, those two factors can’t be solely responsible for the incompetence that is the 2019 season for the Redskins. However, there is one reason that is currently the leader in the clubhouse for ‘Things That Went Wrong in 2019’ and it’s just so appalling that quite possibly zero NFL teams would be able to overcome it:

The players who are paid top-dollar on the team have looked like anything but top-dollar players.

Of the eight most expensive contracts on the team, six of those players have either been benched due to lack of production (Josh Norman — $75 million); been lost due to injury (Alex Smith — $94 million); or refused to play for the team (Trent Williams — $68 million). Check out this breakdown of the top eight contracts in Washington, and see if you can spot the two players who have arguable played up to their wages.

  • Alex Smith — $94 Million
  • Landon Collins — $84 Million
  • Josh Norman — $75 Million
  • Trent Williams — $68 Million
  • Ryan Kerrigan — $57.5 Million
  • Jordan Reed — $46.75 Million
  • Paul Richardson — $40 Million
  • Morgan Moses — $38.5 Million

Of those eight players, you can really only say that Collins has lived up to the billing, and even then it’s tough to say that his play has been worth every penny of that $84 million contract he signed this offseason. Kerrigan has also played decently this season, but it is nowhere near the level of production that Washington expected when making him one of the 15 highest-paid edge rushers in the NFL — he currently ranks as the 74th best edge-rusher in the league, according to PFF, and his recent move to the injured reserve adds injury to insult.

“The guys who you have big money invested in, those guys have got to be key contributors,” former Redskins salary cap analyst J.I. Halsell said, via The Washington Post. “And when they’re not and if there’s a bunch of them, there’s a threshold where it becomes insurmountable and you just can’t navigate it.”

Many Redskins fans are quick to blame the ineptitude in Washington on the front office and coaching, and there is a lot of truth in doing so. Dan Snyder and Bruce Allen put this team together, and they should be held responsible for the roster that takes the field each Sunday during the season. However, any roster decision can look good on paper, but it’s all for not if the player doesn’t pan out on the field.

So what do you get when a historically inept front office puts together a roster, and those players don’t live up to the billing? You get the Washington Redskins, and it’s not a pretty sight.

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2020 NFL Salary Cap projections give Redskins some room to work in free agency

A projected 2020 salary cap between $196- and $201 million will give the Redskins room to work in free agency is they rid of some contracts.

Per a report from NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, the 2020 NFL Salary Cap is projected to increase to somewhere between the range of $196.8 million to $201.2 million.

The increase marks a significant jump from where it was back in the 2015 season, when the cap sat at $143.4 million.

According to Rapoport, this is the 7th consecutive year where the cap is projected to climb more than $10 million per club, year over year. Since 2011, the cap has increased roughly 65 percent and $76 million per club.

The Washington Redskins currently have just over $163 million committed to the 2020 salary cap, which would leave them with approximately $40 million in salary cap going into the new year. This number could also grow if they are to cut ties with aging and expensive players like Josh Norman, Trent Williams, Jordan Reed and Vernon Davis.

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Trent Williams says future free agents should take note of his treatment in Washington

Williams is unhappy with how he’s been treated in Washington, and he urges free agents to look at that before signing with the Redskins.

Regardless of whose side you stand on in the Trent Williams vs. the Washington Redskins power struggle that has taken place over the last calendar year, you can’t deny that it’s acted as a black mark on the franchise as a whole.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with the situation, Williams was upset with the medical staff in Washington after they reportedly downplayed the significance of a growth on his scalp that ended up being a rare form of cancer. He held out from the team for several months, and when he eventually returned, claiming he had intentions to play, they placed him on the NFI list, making him ineligible for the season.

Now, as the team sees the end of the season fast approaching and starts to think about future free-agent signings, a dark cloud looms over the franchise that has to be detracting to future signees.

In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Williams explains why.

“Let’s say you are a coaching candidate or you’re a free agent, what does it say to you?” he asks. “… It’s not like it’s something whispered. Everybody sees how they treated me. Free agents know for a better part of the last decade I’ve been one of the only guys in those Pro Bowl locker rooms with a Redskins symbol on my helmet. So then they see somebody like that get treated like that …”

His voice trails off.

“At the end of the day, money is money, so you might have to overpay just to get people in to overcome this,” he continues. “But I know if I was [a free agent] looking at it, I’d be looking at the situation closely.”

Will the treatment of Williams cause future free agents to avoid Washington completely? Maybe, maybe not. It may not have made the franchise a non-factor when it comes to the free agency market this upcoming offseason, but it for sure did not make them a more coveted place to play.

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Trent Williams says he returned to the Redskins with the intention to play

Williams was placed on the NFI earlier this season but says in a recent interview that he came back to the team with the intention to play.

Despite the recent string of wins, and the preluding streak of losses; the firing of a head coach and the inability to score a touchdown, the Washington Redskins’ 2019 season has largely been ruled by a single storyline — the Trent Williams debacle that has played out in front of our eyes.

When it comes to Williams and his lengthy holdout that was ended over a month ago, we have facts, and we have opinions. For many, the reasoning behind all of it is in the eye of the beholder, and you can claim that he either had ill intentions when returning minutes before the NFL Trade Deadline to collect a check or that he actually ended his holdout with intentions to play football with his teammates.

In a new interview with The Washington Post, Williams says that when he returned to the team, he did so with every intention of returning to the field.

Yes, his coming back was a procedural move, to get credit for the 2019 season and keep the team from claiming it still controlled him for two more years on a contract that would otherwise expire after next season. But as long as he had returned to the team, he was going to play.

“At the end of the day I just wanted to do it for my teammates,” he says.

He passed his physical and was ready to take the field, that is until the seven-time Pro Bowler tried to put on his helmet for the first time in a long while and experienced severe discomfort stemming from a scar on his scalp that was left after a rare form of cancer was removed earlier that year — the debacle that started this whole thing in the first place. While the team was working with Williams to find a suitable helmet that didn’t irritate his surgically repaired scalp, Bruce Allen and the Redskins placed the 31-year-old on the Non-Football Injury list, ending his season and assuring that Williams would not receive payment for the year on his contract.

“It’s kind of a vindictive move, and it just showed their hand on how they wanted to operate,” Williams said. “I mean, I had until Tuesday and the new helmet Riddell was talking about was coming in on Monday, so for them to prematurely put me on the list without taking [time to see if the helmet would work] goes to show you that they didn’t really want me to play anyway.”

So the question now is about who you believe. Williams, who long said that he would never play for the Redskins again, is now proclaiming that he had every intention to suit up upon his return and take the field with his teammates. If we’re to believe his side of the story, he was never given that chance. Or you could believe Bruce Allen’s side of the story, where the 31-year-old was just returning to the team in order to cash a $5.9 million check and call it good, waiting to be traded in the offseason.

A muddled situation gets even more confusing, and the answers are left open for your interpretation.

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Redskins go for a Trent Williams replacement at top of new mock draft

A new mock goes an interesting direction for the Redskins.

After the incredibly exciting 2019 NFL draft the Washington Redskins might have to get boring in the 2020 draft.

“Boring” as in taking the best offensive lineman available.

It’s not a bad way to go and that’s what Michael Renner of Pro Football Focus has the team doing in his new mock draft with Andrew Thomas out of Georgia:

“Thomas’ career grading profile is about as impressive as we’ve seen from an offensive lineman in our six years of analyzing college (that is until Oregon’s Penei Sewell next year). He’s allowed all of 35 pressures in three years as a starter in his career, and he is currently the highest graded draft-eligible Power-5 offensive lineman. Not a bad replacement for Trent Williams.”

While the whole Trent Williams situation has been a big black eye on the organization, it truly lucked into Donald Penn as a stopgap solution.

But the veteran Penn is only going to last so much longer in this sort of role.

Thomas might not be the most exciting way to go a year removed from getting a quarterback and trading back up to get Montez Sweat. But if he lets the franchise move on from Williams while properly protecting Dwayne Haskins, everybody wins.

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The Redskins are paying an obscene amount of money to injured players

There is $58 million being paid to five players in Washington, all of whom have had little to no impact on the field this year.

One of the most frustrating aspects of the Washington Redskins’ season this year is the financial misfortune they’ve experienced. Chalk it up to poor management or poor coaching, but some of the highest-paid players in Washington either aren’t playing well or aren’t playing at all.

There is an unsettling amount of wasted salary in Washington this season, as players like Alex Smith, Josh Norman, Trent Williams, Jordan Reed, and Vernon Davis have all been non-factors. Those five players account for $58 million of the Redskins salary cap, with Smith and Williams racking up $30 million on their own.

In a salary cap league, it is impossible to succeed when you’re wasting that type of money.

On top of that, the Redskins still have significant dead money on their cap after cutting the following players before the season:

  • Zach Brown – $3 million
  • Josh Doctson – $2.5 million
  • Stacy McGee – $2.4 million
  • D.J. Swearinger – $1.3 million

The Redskins are 2-9 this season, and they’ve struggled mightily to stay competitive. When you look at the players who are cashing a check without playing, you’ll understand why.

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