SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2010
KLMNO PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL
Counting down to the Dallas game T
BY RICKMAESE
he week leading up to the Dallas game is a flurry of activity in every corner of Redskins Park, from the locker room to the owner’s office to the video room.
Days start early and end late. ¶ Trying to distance them- selvesfroma disappointing stretch ofteamhistory, standing at the start of theMike Shanahan era, the Redskins prepare for a game they hope will set the tone for the weeks, months and years to come.
Monday: The Camera guy ForMike Bracken, DallasWeek
is over before it even starts. He arrives at Redskins Park
around dawn. While the players have a practice later in the day, Bracken, in his seventh year as head of the team’s video depart- ment, and his staff have already prepped hours of Cowboys’ foot- age for the coaches. “We’re already working on
Houston and St. Louis,” said Bracken, himself a former player at Lycoming College, a Division III school in Pennsylvania. “We’re about two weeks ahead of the coaches.” Bracken’s work space is like
something stolen from a sci-fi set. Monitors, laptops and computer equipment fill the room. Every NFL game dating back to 2007 is available on the team’s servers. There also are tapes of every leaguegamesince2006andevery Redskins’ game since 1985. Bracken and his staff have to
marry statistics and details of every play with two video feeds— a sideline camera and one sta- tioned in the end zone. They never rely on the network footage that fans see on highlight shows. The video is then turned over to assistant coaches Sean McVay and Kirk Olivadotti, who input details such as formation and personnel groupings Coaches can access this footage
on the computers in their offices upstairs and sort it in every way imaginable: third-and-long situa- tions, blitz packages or every red- zone play the Cowboys have run under CoachWade Phillips. With younger, computer-savvy coaches on this year’s staff, video is inte- gral to game-planning. “They’re big video watchers. I
don’t want to say other staffs weren’t, but I think these guys really try to push the limits of our computer system,” Bracken says. “They’re very good at it.” The video crew also staffs each
practice session, manning camer- as and recording every second. About midway through practice, Bobby Slowik, one of Bracken’s assistants and the son of Bob Slowik, the team’s secondary coach, races inside and begins editing the footage.About10min- utes after practice is finished, the video is already available for coaches to review.
Tuesday: The GM On the ground floor of the
Loudoun County government building in Leesburg, Redskins General Manager Bruce Allen waits for the Board of Supervisors meeting to begin when he spots a display case in the lobby that features a Redskins helmet. “It’s autographed,” he says. “I
wonder who they got.” As Allen looks closer, he sees
that it’s actually his signature on the helmet. While Shanahan runs practic-
es, part of Allen’s job is to serve as a public face for the franchise, attending rallies, charitable events and government meet- ings. In the Board of Supervisors’ chambers, a proclamation is read declaring this “Redskins Kickoff Week.” Allen addresses the crowd, saying, “We’re teaching a new generation of Redskins players and a newcoach what this rivalry means to the community.” Allen understands the rivalry
better than perhaps anyone at Redskins Park. His father, George, coached the Redskins from 1971-77, and Bruce grew up on the sidelines, hating the team across the field. Time did little to change things. “You always have feelings,” Al-
len said. “They don’t go away. I wasjust like every other kid in the Washington metropolitan area. It’s Dallas week. You have to win.” Allen spends the week working
the telephones, talking to scouts and the personnel department about recently-released players across the league. Depending on whom you want to believe, Allen also spent some time talking with the Tennessee Titans about trad- ing defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth. Allen, though, de- nies this. He does a couple of radio inter-
views and visits team functions, such as the oneWednesday night
at an Arlington bar involving a couple dozen Redskins alums. This is when Allen is really in his element. The players remember him as a kid running around the practice field, and he remembers them as giants of the game. Over the noise, he yells at four-time Pro Bowl running back Larry Brown to take the stage. Brown quickly hits a hole and cuts through the room. Allen soon takes the stage himself, grabs a microphone and surveys the players behind him, former greats like Gary Clark and CharlesMann. “One of the reasons that this
franchise is put on Sunday night TV is thanks to the contributions of these great players, who have made the Redskins a dominant team in NFL history,” Allen says. “And gentlemen, on behalf of the organization, thank you so much. Because if we could line up with these guys, I promise Larry Brown’s got another 30 runs in him and we’d kick their ass.”
Wednesday: The first-year wide receiver
At 6:20 a.m., the alarm clockon
Anthony Armstrong’s cellphone went off. The first-year wide re- ceiver didn’t know for certain until just a fewdays ago that he’d be a part of the Redskins’ 53-man roster, so he’s still living in a nearby hotel. Armstrong reaches Redskins
Park within the hour, has break- fast there and squeezes in a hot tub session before Cowboys’ prep- arations formally begin. Armstrong is originally from Carrollton,Texas,onthe outskirts of Dallas, attended college at West Texas A&M, played with the Odessa franchise in the Intense Football League and then with the Dallas team in the Arena League. He was born and bred a Cowboys’ fan. “I remember when I first got
here, I remember Santana[Moss] caught those two touchdown passes from [Mark] Brunell,” Armstrong said with a smile, re- calling the Redskins’ 14-13 win in 2005. “I told him I was pretty upset with him. It tookmea while to get to like him.” Armstrong now holds bitter
feelings for his childhood love because the Cowboys never gave him a shot. Dallas’ Arena team was owned by Jerry Jones, the Cowboys’ owner, and its head coach, Will McClay, also worked in the Cowboys’ scouting depart- ment. The Cowboys, he said, had every opportunity to bring Arm- strong aboard but never gave him a look. At 8 a.m., Armstrong begins
more than twohours ofmeetings. He receives a binder containing the week’s game plan and a DVD the video staff prepared specifi- cally for the wide receivers. All the while, his phone lights
up with text messages and his Facebook page receives new wall posts. Friends and family deliver the same message: We hope you have a good game, and the Cow- boys still win. “They’re basically ganging up
on me,” says Armstrong, whowill be making his NFL debut if the coaches include him in Sunday’s game plan. “I enjoy that under- dog role, fight your way out of the corner type thing. I’mready.” At 27, Armstrong is the oldest
first-year player on the roster. As a practice squad player in 2009, he didn’t have to study the Red- skins’ gameplan each week, but now he takes the binder home each night and reads everything multiple times. Sunday’s game is important, he says, for more than a fewreasons. “I just remember they were
real heartfelt games, very physi- cal, and they just meant a lot to both cities,” he says. “Being on this side, it will be little bit differ- ent, but it’s going to be fun.”
Thursday: The laundry guy As the team’s afternoon prac-
tice ends, the laundry bins in the locker room fill up quickly. Sixty- one players make a mess. Three men clean it up each day. The equipment room is where
the trouble-shooting occurs — helmets are fixed, new shoes
TONI L. SANDYS/THE WASHINGTON POST Owner Daniel Snyder
found, pads sanitized. Every re- quest is fulfilled. Brad Berlin’s office is separated from the room by a giant window. Berlin is in his 10th year with the team and oversees all aspects of its equip- ment and locker room, which is a lot more complex than it sounds. Berlin arrives each morning by
6 a.m. Shortly after Shanahan was hired in January, Berlin tried for several days to beat the head coach into the office. He finally managed it on his fourth or fifth attempt,showingupbefore4a.m. “That afternoon in Danny
Smith’s office, I made the mistake of saying, ‘Coach, I beat you to work today,’ ” Berlin said. “He chuckled. And it didn’t happen again.He’s always here.” With just three days remaining
before game day, Berlin and his three-man staff have mostly com- pleted filling five dozen trunks with equipment that will be shipped to FedEx Field. They in- clude everything from the foot- balls — the team must supply 24 for each home game — to train- ers’ equipment to the head coach’s wardrobe. “We could con- duct minor surgery with the stuff that we take,” Berlin said. On Sunday, Berlin has 100 peo-
ple to outfit. Only 53 of them are players. In Shanahan’s office at FedEx Field, Berlin will hang five to six outfits and allow the coach to choose what he wants to wear on the sidelines. “Weather is the biggest obsta-
cle we face,” he said. “Rain chang- es everything, more than anyone can imagine. It changes what everyone wears, changes shoes, changes gloves. We got to have more footballs, more everything. It’s a nightmare.” The equipment area is really a
series of storage rooms. There are more than 1,000 footballs in un- opened boxes. One wall features
shoes piled from floor to ceiling. On any given Sunday, around 40 of the 53 players willwanta brand new pair of cleats. Three years’ worth of game uniforms hang along one wall, and helmets and face masks fill another room. (Little-known fact: the paint on a Redskins’ helmet isn’t technically burgundy. It’s called “pearl cardi- nal metallic.”) The equipment staff also helps
run practice. Shanahan gives them a script, and they’ve got to make sure that for each play, the ball is in a certain spot and the appropriate players are wearing beanies on their helmets or col- ored jerseys to represent specific players on the opposing team. It costs about $800 to outfit
each player — from the custom- made pads to the helmet to the gloves and shoes. And, of course, the jersey. Even as the game draws near, complications can arise. On Wednesday, Allen called
Berlin and told him that rookie tackle Trent Williams would like to change from No. 72 to his old college number, 71. Berlin called the league for permission. The league called Reebok, the manufacturer for the okay. Then the league called back Berlin and gave him the go- ahead.
Berlin had to order new name-
plates for Williams’ locker, prep a new practice jersey, change the number on all of his shoes and make sure he had shorts in Size 4XL with 71 already stitched on the side. Then he had to call his seamstress in Falls Church and ask her to stitch “WILLIAMS” on aNo. 71 jersey by Friday. Williams’s is the last of the
team’s jerseys that Berlin waits on.
Friday: The owner Traffic is bad and Daniel Sny-
der, in his 12th year as owner of the Redskins, is running late.He’s due to speak at a high school pep rally in Leesburg at 3:30 p.m.Not that he needed anything else to pluck at his nerves this week. With each passing day, Snyder can feel the season growing clos- er.
“I’ll be a mess on Sunday,” he
says. Every season opener is impor-
tant.Butfor this one,hehas anew headcoach,newgeneralmanager and a new quarterback. Plus, it’s Dallas. Snyder publicly says all the
right things, but as a lifelong Redskins fan, it’s not hard to figure out his feelings about the rivalry with the Cowboys. In his Tysons Corner office hangs an Associated Press photograph of former Cowboys coach Bill Par- cells. In the photo, Parcells stares at the field and the scoreboard glows brightly in the background: only 14 seconds remain and the Redskins lead, 35-7. The photo is from December
2005. It helped launch Washing- ton into the playoffs and marked the most one-sided Redskins’ win in the 50-year history of the rival- ry. It’s also among the biggest victories of Snyder’s tenure as owner. “That was a great game,” Sny-
der says. AtHeritageHigh, the pep rally
has already begun.AnESPNcam- era crew is present, filming an upcoming “E:60” feature on the owner, as Snyder is ushered into the gym. Cheerleaders scream and the band plays as Snyder grabs the microphone. He stands in the middle of the gymfloor, yet still looks as if he’s trying to hide. He speaks for less than a min- ute and gets a loud ovation from
JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST CoachMike Shanahan
the students. “Now you all go win that game
for the Redskins,” he says. “And cheer hard for us to beat them Cowboys, right?”
Saturday: The head coach Sentimentality is for greeting
cards; Shanahan is clinical in his approach to Sunday’s game, as he is to everything. How does he feel? Better question: What does he think? “I think you look forward to it,”
he says of his first regular season game on an NFL sideline since he was fired as Denver’s head coach 20 months ago. “You’re just like the players — your stomach is turning and you look forward to this opportunity.” He again shows up early at Redskins Park, around 5:30 a.m., and when his players finally ar- rive, he leads them through a brief walk-through practice at 10:10 a.m. Shanahan and his son, Kyle, the team’s offensive coordi- nator, will script out the first 15 plays of Sunday’s game. The play- ers shouldknowwhat play they’re running before they even reach the huddle. Most players leave Redskins
Parkby11 a.m., with themarching band, cheerleaders and a few dozen fans cheering them as they drive off the property. Shanahan hangs around. At 11,
he has a production meeting with NBC’s Andrea Kremer, the side- line reporter for Sunday’s game. As Kremer quizzes Shanahan, an area movingcompany has backed its truck against the building. Sixty trunks — about 20,000 pounds worth of equipment — are loaded up. And by noon, the truck hits the road. The next stop: FedEx Field, 55
miles away.Andbeyondthat?The Redskins are eager to find out.
maeser@washpost.com
JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST Video directorMike Bracken JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST GeneralManager Bruce Allen
EZ SU
D7
JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST Wide receiver Anthony Armstrong Equipment manager Brad Berlin
JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166