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It's something none of us want to do, but if you can take your mind back to the 2012 season when the Redskins lost to the Panthers, their third staight loss to enter the BYE week...Redskins Nation, to say the least, was a very passionate, no....difficult, no....stressful....no, .... "THE WORLD IS ENDING" kind of group that week. The Redskins were done at 3-6. There was the drama of Mike Shanahan (sort of) saying at week nine he was evaluating players. Despite RGIII saying we'd still make the playoffs, we had Stephen A. Smith saying "Mike Shanahan is a waste of time," BMitch going off, Fred Smoot calling for Andy Reid, and all the Redskins media piling on (myself included). Well, even Brian Orakpo's Mom threw in the towel:
"The locker room was united once we knew our backs were extremely against the wall. We had all doubters from all over the place. Even family was doubting us, everybody. My own mother said we weren't going to make the playoffs, like, she didn't believe it because it was such a hard feat to overcome. It was playoff mode once we came out of that bye and we all believed that and we just kept rolling, and guys was just buying into it."
I'm so glad that period is over. I promise I'll never bring it up again.
On how Orakpo feels after missing virtually all of the 2012 season due to a torn pectoral muscle:
"I'm good, man. Ready to rock and roll. Body's feeling great. I've been working extremely hard, grinding extremely hard, ever since I went down in early September, and I'm way ahead of where I needed to be and I'm ready to go."
On last year:
"We took every precaution to make it through the 16 games, but obviously it's something that was detrimental to my body, as far as to keep re-injuring it like I was doing in OTAs and like I was doing in the preseason, training camp. ... So we just did every precaution to hold me out and then once the season [started] I was gonna go ahead and go full-steam. But eventually my body couldn't hold up, and that was the most disappointing thing. But luckily I'm healed up and ready to go."
(H/T SB Nation)