Friday, March 12, 2010

Redskins Sign the Worst RB in the NFL, and Not the Cool LJ

I thought I new era was upon us when the Skins didn't throw money and draft picks at Julius Peppers and Darren Sproles, and then go after an overvalued QB in the draft. Instead, we actually let a free agent leave Ashburn without a contract for wanting too much money and signed a giant man who fits a need at Nose Tackle and whose last name kind of looks like 'I'm-a-eat-u' (Kemoeatu). Even better, Sam Bradford's ascension to likely #1 pick means the Skins are almost forced to draft an OT (cough, or seriously reach for Claussen, cough).

All was well and good until we signed Larry Johnson. No, not the cool one from the Grandmama commercials:


But the over-the-hill RB who is a douchebag. Sure, he has a big name, but Herm Edwards destroyed him by overusing him in KC. Unfortunately for RBs, there is no fountain of youth, and the crappy LJ is even worse than most people realize. How bad? By Football Outsiders' metrics, he was the 2nd worst RB in the league last year! He was 64th out of 65 RBs with 100+ carries. On the bright side, he was the the 97th best pass-catching RB, although he was really only ahead of a few fullbacks. So instead of following the seemingly smart plan used by the Eagles, Chargers, and few other teams of taking a young RB to groom and split carries, we basically signed a locker room cancer who might be the worst at his position in the league. Even worse, we just gave him a lot of money and more than 1 year!

If we draft Claussen, we just reclaim our offseason champs title.

(Image courtesy of sportsbybrooks.com)

4 comments:

  1. The fact you think $3.5 million total over three years is "a lot of money" devalues everything else you said.

    If the guy performs well he'll get paid for it. If he doesn't, the Skins spend very little money.

    ReplyDelete
  2. When I posted, the only figure out there was 'up to 12 million', which made me think he was signed for 3+ mill/year. The lower number only was released in the last hour.

    I also realize that the Skins probably have some crazy escalators in there even at the 3.5 mill number for years 2 and 3. Still, signing him at all is dumb, and anything over 1 year and the minimum is just awful.

    ReplyDelete
  3. In defense of Larry Johnson, the offensive line that he was running behind in KC was pretty awful, no one was able to pick up big yardage behind them.

    Jamaal Charles had multiple 100 yard games after LJ's departure.

    Well, at least he's able to pound the ball in on goal line situations.

    He didn't score a single touchdown last year.

    Oh, I see. Well, at least he's younger with a little less mileage than our current running back.

    Portis is only 28.

    We all know, it's really hard to draft a good running back with mid and late round picks.

    Nope. It's not.

    Fuck.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.