It has been alleged that tomorrow evening both Rocky McIntosh and Carlos Rogers will take snaps in an actual pretend football game. This is quite miraculous given the gravity of their injuries. In McIntosh's case it was knee surgery that had the Washington Post (per ESPN at least) predicting he'd be out for at least two more weeks... that was 4 days ago. Rogers was in even worse shape:

Tests showed that Rogers tore his right anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in the 52-7 loss Sunday to New England. He will undergo surgery when the swelling subsides in a few weeks and Gibbs will consider signing a free agent cornerback or promoting a cornerback from the practice squad to replace him.

My soul has yet to recover from the loss.

At the time word matriculated about that Rogers might not even be back in time for the start of the following regular season given the injury was so totally serious. X-Rays were terrifying and really, really cereal you guys:

via i93.photobucket.com

And yet, via two reliable sources, Rogers and McIntosh are both returned healthy once more. Redskins Insider:

The Boys Are Back In Town: Blink and you may miss them, but they will be there. Linebacker Rocky McIntosh and corner Carlos Rogers are both coming off of major reconstructive knee surgery, both are well ahead of schedule, and both are set to make their preseason debut tonight [sic]. Now, they'll likely on be out there for a play or six, but even getting through that would be significant.

Redskins 360:

Redskins coach Jim Zorn announced that cornerback Carlos Rogers, whom the team thought might not get on the field until October as he recovered from reconstructive knee surgery last November, will see some action in Saturday's preseason game at the New York Jets.

I've had some serious questions for the training staff given the freakish amount of hamstring injuries this team accumulated over the past 12 someodd months, but paint me impressed by their ability (while giving due credit to both Rogers and McIntosh) to return two of our young defensive starters to the field.

Enough can't be said for the necessity of both players, especially with an eye towards the future. Rocky McIntosh represents the only starting LB under the age of 30. Indeed, at 26 he's still got a lot of mileage on him, especially if his life is modeled after that of superhuman London Fletcher, who remains one of the best (and most underrated) linebackers in the league at 33. And he ain't done. (But he will be eventually which is why I'm so slap happy Rocky's back.)

Although Carlos Rogers has some help from Smoot smack in the under 30 crowd, he's the heir apparent to take over for Shawn Springs, now 33, as the team's premier wide receiver one day. That is assuming he takes some strides forward this year, as many have questioned whether he has yet warranted billing as the third best cornerback of the 2005 NFL Draft (drafted 9th after Adam Jones and Antrel Rolle). I remain faithful -- which is to say, full of faith, and not to say I've ever cheated on Carlos Rogers by dreaming of a Redskins slash Adam Jones mixer.

Welcome back fellas.

Phillip Daniels is strong.

Is that what passes for a lead/lede (the debate rages on!) around here? I'm just following the big dogs, as USA Today's Inside Slant demonstrates:

Phillip Daniels is 35.

That is hot off the presses, nine-minute old news, I'm told.

But, unfortunately, very true. Phillip Daniels is old. USA Today might as well have substituted his actual age for a descriptive adjective like elderly, ancient, or antediluvian if they were feeling especially saucy. On the let's-keep-smiles front, battle-tested, seasoned, or familiar would have worked.

Or just old.

The reality in the NFL is that actually quite young human beings can be approaching their professional twilight by their mid-30s, especially when that person's job description says something like: Must outrun or out power a large, probably younger superhuman.

At 35 I'm not certain how much success Daniels will have outrunning his younger opponents, but on this latter challenge there is some reason for optimism. Because though Phillip Daniels might be old in football years -- he's the third oldest on the team, behind Todd Collins and Ethan Albright -- he's strong even by football standards. Really strong:

And Daniels is certainly stronger. In his first competitive powerlifting event since 1999, the 6-4, 290-pound Daniels won his weight class with a 633-pound squat and a 600-pound dead-lift at the American Powerlifting Federation Nationals in March.

"That was in March so who knows what I can lift now?" Daniels said. "I took two weeks off (after the Jan. 5 wild-card loss at Seattle) and I went right into powerlifting. I hadn't done this since just before my last year in Seattle.

Not so coincidentally, that's when Daniels had a career-high 9.0 sacks, which resulted in a hefty, four-year deal with the Bears. And Daniels had 8.0 sacks with the Redskins in 2005, the healthiest of his first four seasons in Washington.

You've hooked me, USA Today, but I learn best with pictures. Six hundred pounds, huh? Consider:

via www.all-creatures.org

I'm told the feller on the left weighs 600 lbs. (Fat ass on the right is beyond even the comic strength of Daniels; he's a 700 pound tortoise.) There are no 600 pound offensive linemen in the NFL. As of this writing, I should add.

I must acknowledge that Daniels hasn't exactly been the sackmaster recently. His sack totals have steadily declined since 2005 from 8 to 3 to 2.5 last season. His tackles haven't moved in the right direction, either, from 48 total in 2005 to 37 in both '06 and '07. But tackling and sacks (and the latter requires the former) is not the only thing a defensive end can do to help the defense.

Sacks aren't some glorious end in and of themselves, even if fans love watching them. They're great because they kill the opponent's down while also taking from them some yards. Even when they fail to accomplish the yardage decrease by any substantial amount, sacks are still extremely valuable for the defense. A negative inches sack is still a useful means towards the ultimate end of forcing the other poor bastard to die three times then punt. Another, comparably debilitating means towards that end is swatting the ball down. It doesn't get the yards, it isn't nearly as sexy a stat as the sack, but it always kills the opponent's down and sometimes leads to an immediate possession change; batted passes sometimes get intercepted.

Phillip Daniels is a ball-hawk. At least in so far as the term can be used for defensive linemen.

See for yourself: Daniels can claim that he had more passes defensed than LaRon Landry last year. Only Shawn Springs, London Fletcher, and Fred Smoot had more. If you combined all the passes defensed by other defensive linemen last season it would be nine, or, the same amount Daniels had. Nine passes defensed.

I am not certain that all nine were swatted balls, but it's doubtful that the Redskins were often putting a 276 pound, thirty-something linemen into coverage. I also know that many of those passes defensed were balls swatted at or near the line of scrimmage, because I watched him do it. (CNNSI says 8 of them were, in fact, batted down at the LOS.)

Would I trade every sack for a ball swatted at the line of scrimmage? No, but it's close, or at least a lot closer than most fans would be willing to admit. And if you counted them as comparable than Phillip Daniels goes from an over-the-hill defensive end in steady decline in 2007 to similarly disposed towards ending the opponent's play as Andre Carter. Carter had 10.5 sacks and 2 passes defensed. Daniels very nearly swapped, with 9 defensed passes and 2.5 sacks.

Admittedly, none of that takes into consideration hurries or pressures or simply presence. At some point trying to turn Phillip Daniels in 2007 into Andre Carter in 2007 is asking reader(s) to deny what their eyes told them; Carter was the better defensive end. But I'm saying it's close, or at least closer than your eyes said.

Phillip Daniels is old. He does have twelve years, almost certainly his best years, of NFL experience behind him. Somewhere in the future a younger player is going to have to supplant him as the starter. But that doesn't mean he's finished tomorrow; the man still knows how to rush a passer with his head up, focused on the only really important thing in dispute, which has been, and always will be, the actual football. Also:

Phillip Daniels can lift a hippopotamus.

[Note by Skin Patrol, 05/20/08 11:03 AM EDT ] Update per my amigo WCG at Windy City Gridiron. He has his own post up right now on the move, that probably deserves attention. Here's what he told me in an email:

He worked for Bobby DePaul who is well thought of around here. The Bears scouting department, homer status aside, is one of the best in the league.  They get more from late round draft picks then a ton of of teams do with their 1st rounders.   I know the Bears did not want to lose him, I've seen a few blurbs talking about the Bears trying to up his money, but you can't keep a guy from a promotion and DePaul wasn't going anywhere.

I can't recall if I told you this or not, but the Redskins released their pro personnel director Louis Riddick a couple weeks ago. Per the Insider his contract was up this summer, and the team did not intend to extend it, so bon voyage. This created a void in the football operations heirarchy that the team will apparently soon fill with Morocco Brown, formerly of the Chicago Bears.This marks Brown's second stint in Washington:

Brown did not play professionally but worked for the Indianapolis Colts after graduation and joined the Redskins as an intern in 2000...

Brown left an impression in Washington, however, and in a 2001 interview with WolfpackChicago.com (a Web site devoted to N.C. State grads in that area), he said that owner Daniel Snyder mentioned him by name during an organizational meeting following the firing of head coach Norv Turner during the 2000 season.

"The Redskins called a meeting and Mr. Snyder came to address the entire organization," Brown told WolfpackChicago.com. "They said there were two people doing an excellent job . . . Morocco and the janitor."

A lot of people talk about "chemistry" or distinguish certain draft strategies or emphasize the need for a General Manager, but really, and this is just one man thinking aloud here, winning is all about your custodial staff. You clean up the toilets, you clean up on the field. That's always been my attitude; it starts and ends with the janitor. (The janitor? One janitor for all of Redskins park? This man deserves more print, whoever he is.)

Or at least that's what Dan Snyder must hope when he says something like that. Yes, everyone in the entire organization sans the year old intern and the janitor deserve denigration. Followup question: Who was responsible for hiring all those people?

I don't know much about Mr. Brown though the word, at least from Jason at the Post, is mostly positive:

Brown had been assistant director of pro personnel for the Chicago Bears since 2001, earning a reputation as a bright prospect, league sources said, and was someone the franchise did not want to lose.

I've already contacted our Bears blogger to see if he has much insight, though I wouldn't blame him if he didn't. Honestly, I barely knew who Louis Riddick was before we released him, and could only grade him on the pro scouting I was aware of, both the good (London Fletcher) and the bad (Brandon Lloyd). I don't know enough about the Bears' pro personnel transaction history over the past seven years to really judge Brown's tenure in Chicago, though he was the assistant pro scout guy so temper praise/blame accordingly. They did sign Adam Archuleta while he was in Chicago. To their credit, they also cut him. (But they also signed Brandon Lloyd! But then they released him this week; musical chairs.)

Welcome to the Redskins Mr. Brown and best wishes to you and the team.

The Post article had a not-insigificant note at the bottom about increasingly overworked director of player personnel Scott Campbell:

The Redskins are unlikely to hire a new college scouting director following Campbell's promotion, with Campbell slated to continue traveling to college games and overseeing the college scouts. . . .

I suppose it is good that the team has so much faith in Scott Campbell that they'd permit him to do two jobs, much as we did with Cyborg Workaholic Team President slash Head Coach Joe Gibbs, or our apparent one man custodial staff responsible for every urinal deodorizer block for the Redskins. If Scott Campbell is just half the one man show that either Gibbs or Janitor X were, he's going to do just fine.