Redskins Still Seeking Help in the Secondary...Right?

Maybe Shawn Lauvao is just an over-sized strong safety.

Maybe Andre Roberts has some sneaky coverage skills.

Maybe Reed Doughty hasn't yet hit his stride, and is just about to enter the prime of his career.

For a team that gave up passing yards the way some houses give out Halloween candy (in a bowl set out on the front porch, with a note that asks five-year old kids to show restraint), the Redskins have shown little urgency to address their secondary needs in free agency. So far, that is...

Ryan Clark and Brandon Browner are the latest names to be linked to visits and possible contract talks with the Redskins. Unlike in years past, these kinds of reports no  longer mean we are signing a guy. Five years ago, if a free agent flew over D.C. airspace, he had a five-year deal for $25 million completed before the pilot could say, "If you look over the right wing of the plane, you can actually see Ken Meringolo's beard...check it out y'all! Looks like it's a hot tub day!"

I would be shocked if the Redskins didn't bring in at least one warm body that can compete for minutes at the safety position and perhaps the cornerback spot as well. It is...ahem...a need.

In one possible scenario that has about a 5% chance of happening, I have Ryan Clark and Champ Bailey as our starting safeties in 2014--each on one-year deals at the veteran minimum (although maybe a two-year deal is more salary cap friendly this season--that is Shoup's problem). Neither of these guys is likely to accept such a deal unless it is the only offer they have, but we have seen the free agency period dry up in years past and lock out aging veterans from collecting one last lucrative deal. I would love to see Phillip Thomas and Bacarri Rambo take some notes from Clark and Bailey for a season and then see what we have. Either way, it doesn't appear that we could do THAT much better than those two veterans in the back--we might not even be able to afford that.

For Redskins fans, seeing Bailey and Clark firmly inserted into the rear of our defense--stay on point people--could be a ton of fun. The fact that they are both older players with questionable amounts left in their respective tanks only makes them that much more suited to play safety for the Washington Redskins. (In the picture above, we see that Ryan Clark wears #21 in practice to honor Sean Taylor.)

If Brandon Browner can stop accidentally ingesting Adderall for his attention deficit disorder (or whatever the latest story that players lean on when they fail urine tests), he could be a stopgap measure at safety--in a long, never-ending line of stopgap measures.

I guess we'll just have to keep on watching to see how this unfolds, but for now, maybe we need to start working up some film study on Shawn Lauvao's bump-and-run technique.