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HH's Hump Day Redskins Hullabaloo

Guess what day it is??? Mike Harar takes a weekly look at the offseason news and notes of the Washington Redskins along with the rest of the NFL.

By Mike Harar
Patrick McDermott

This past Memorial Day weekend, we remembered all of the brave soldiers who served and sacrificed for America.  This country would not be the great place that it is without them, so we here at the Hump Day offices stand and salute.  Thanks to these men and women, we have so many great freedoms and can present opinions without fear of condemnation, no matter how off-the-wall or dumb they may be.  Speaking of which, we turn now to the Hullabaloo.  In this week's edition, the Redskins handed out a promotion and accidentally spilled the beans about it before the formal announcement, the team got their top draft pick into the fold and Pierre Garcon got dissed by the NFL Network.  But first, here is this week's player spotlight:

Redskins Player Spotlight: Ladies and gentlemen!  On this week's spotlight, we would like to present to you our choice for 2014 Redskins' Hullabaloo Rookie of the Year: Lache (pronounced Lake) Seastrunk.  When he was drafted in the sixth round, we were a little excited about the idea of having a running back with speed and quickness to spell Alfred Morris and contribute on third downs.  Then we saw this (Caution: the song that accompanies this video is NSFW):

Ultimate Lache Seastrunk Highlights | HD (via TheFootballman175)

Now, we're more than a little excited.  He has a low center of gravity, great on-field speed and crazy moves to boot.  Plus, coming from Baylor, he has experience in the option offense.  Now the negatives:  He caught zero passes out of the backfield last year and can get in trouble running east-west instead of north-south.  However, when he gets a head full of speed in the open field, he is no picnic for a defender to take down.  He can make tacklers look silly and his feet seem to be running in fast motion compared to everyone else around him.  Some Redskins fans and draft experts have tempered expectations by reminding folks that last year around this time we were all very excited about Chris Thompson.  Thompson also had some impressive video coming out of Florida State, but then struggled in the punt return game and in the running game before finally getting injured.  To those critics, I offer this: Seastrunk weighs about 20lbs heavier than Thompson, which will help in the pounding he will take.  Also, Seastrunk does not have the durability issues that Thompson had coming out of college(injured back, torn ACL).  Seastrunk will need to work on his pass catching and pass blocking, but if he can get that to a respectable level, oh the possibilities......

Redskins Hullabaloo of the Week:

-        On Wednesday, Pierre Garcon was included among the NFL's top 100 players, as awarded by the NFL Network, when he made the list at number 80.  This ranking seems a little low for a player who led the league in receptions last season and some members of our staff felt he was being disrespected.  Garcon agreed and the Redskins now have two top receivers(Garcon, Jackson) who feel they have something to prove this season:

-        On Friday, the Redskins announced they had signed their top pick OLB Trent Murphy to a four year deal.  On a side note, please do not take our selection of Lache Seastrunk as our Hullabaloo ROY as any kind of slight to Murphy.  We believe strongly that Murphy will contribute quite a bit to the defense this season and predict a 6 - 8 sack season for the former Stanford Cardinal.

-        The Redskins also waived wide receiver Kofi Hughes and signed wide receiver/kick returner Rashad Ross on Friday.  Ross is 6'0" 167lbs and spent some time with the Kansas Chiefs last year.  He is fast and tiny.

-        Last week, the team was sent a letter by fifty members of the Senate asking them to change the team name.  The Redskins responded as everyone knew they would, but the part of the letter that stood out the most to everyone was that Bruce Allen labeled himself as the Team President.  Well, this shook up the Twitter-verse for a while until the Redskins announced on Monday that (surprise!) Bruce Allen had been promoted to Team President.  What this means, however, is that Allen is now running this ship like we always knew he would be after Mike Shanahan was shown the door, except now he gets some nice new business cards and a cubicle at Redskins Park closer to a window(the window in Dan Snyder's office).

-        Finally, the Redskins started another minicamp on Tuesday and it marked the first time that the new draft picks and veterans took the field together.  Media was not allowed in on Tuesday, but we did manage to get a few photos from the team website, and including this one of Ryan Clark:

Team Having the Best Week: Since no NFL team jumped off the pages as having a particularly great week, we will go off script and give this designation to Team Gregor, otherwise known as the Gregor family.  Conrad Gregor is a rookie in the Houston Astros organization and plays for their minor league affiliate the Quad Cities River Bandits (which sadly has no affiliation to 1990's super group Quad City DJ's).   Conrad hit the first home run of his pro career this week, which is pretty cool on its own.  But to make the situation even cooler, the person who happened to be standing just above the right field wall to make the bare handed catch of the home run ball was none other than his father, Marty Gregor.  Sometimes, life is truly stranger than fiction, and if this was the end of a fictional baseball movie, I would have rolled my eyes and wished for my $18 back.  Very cool moment for them, however.  Here is the video of the home run hit and catch:

Team Having the Worst Week: The Dallas Cowboys suffered what could be a major blow on Tuesday.  Linebacker Sean Lee was injured during a non-contact drill at their OTA's and needed help coming off the field.  He had an MRI on Tuesday night and it was being reported late Tuesday that he had torn an ACL.  The Cowboys have already lost DeMarcus Ware and Jason Hatcher in free agency.  The team is expected to make the announcement Wednesday morning.  We would like it noted that this is the first time in memory where the staff at the Hump Day offices felt kind of bad for this hated rival.  We hope the news is not as bad as feared so that our team can twice beat a Cowboys team that is at full strength in 2014.

Huge Redskins Fan Dale Jr. Report (Aka Why Junior is Awesome):

Junior and the Hendrick team raced in Charlotte on Sunday in the Coca-Cola 600.  The 88 car had a cool new paint job with a Super Man theme, but unfortunately the car did not drive as well as we would have liked.  After leading for a several laps towards the middle of the race, Dale had some engine issues, fell back and finished 19th overall.  Staying positive after the race, he tweeted the following:

He is now in 5th place with 394 points for the season and heads to Dover for the Fedex 400 on Sunday.

Random UnRedskins Item:

Since we focused on the Washington Wizards in this spot so often towards the end of their season, we decided it was only fair to mention that our Washington Capitals hired a new coach and general manager on Tuesday.  The new coach is Barry Trotz, who was a former Capitals scout and the long-time coach of the Nashville Predators until he was fired after last season.  He coached in 1,196 games and won 557 of them with the Predators.  The new general manager, Brian MacLellan, is a former assistant general manager on the team who was promoted from within.  His hiring has already brought out some strong opinions.

Wow, that escalated quickly.  Moving on, last week we caught some flack (not Ryan Grant flack, but flack all the same) for failing to include the famous video of the cat who threw out the first pitch at a baseball game.  You might be asking yourself, if you haven't already seen this story, why a cat would be throwing out the first pitch.  This report by CNN shows why:

As you can see, it was clearly well deserved that he received the invite to throw out the first pitch.  Here's how he did when he took the mound:

You may laugh, but let me remind you how John Wall, a finely tuned athlete, did on his first attempt a while back.

Yeah, the cat might have him.  Finally, I would like to leave you with Giants cornerback Prince Amukamura enjoying himself at a bar mitzvah.  Why?  Just because it's awesome.  Enjoy:

Next on the Redskins' schedule: Minicamp runs through tomorrow.  Media will have access on Thursday so we should have some sound bites for next week.

That will do it for this edition!  Enjoy your short work week and know that as of today, we are 99 days away from the start of the NFL season.

Until next week......

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