Redskins Minicamp Gets Underway Friday

Minicamp is one of the most misleading terms in sports. There's nothing "mini" about a bunch of gigantic football players getting together to toss around the ol' pigskin, and nobody is sleeping in a tent or making s'mores. I digress.

I remember when I was a wee lad, we would scour the network news this time of year, desperately seeking any minicamp coverage available. Video of guys in shorts and helmets running routes, crushing tackling dummies and generally preparing for the grueling summer ahead was voraciously consumed by football fans hungry for anything they could get. How times have...not...changed.

Let's get ready to overreact to dropped passes, blown "assignments" and other gaffes that the fanbase will use to make predictions about the makeup of the team come autumn. This is what we do, because even though we might put too much stock into it, we do know that these gatherings are important.

It likely goes way too far to suggest someone will make the team based on what transpires at a minicamp, but I do believe a player can plummet to the bottom of the pile at a deep position if he shows poorly enough in May. I don't think there is anything capricious about that--after all, in this day and age, the competition exists year-round. A general manager like Scot McCloughan, aka McLovin, loves to churn the bottom of the roster. There will no doubt be roster changes made after the minicamp, but it will almost certainly be to try and bolster special teams depth or to add competition to a position group that just simply needs more competition. In other words, these weekend minicamps are crucial to fringe players. We give McLovin a lot of credit for the caliber of fringe players he brings in, so elevating the competition at that level of our roster will do wonders for our in-season chances. (after all, this camp is for rookies and longshot prospects.)

(Editor's Note: I recently read a comment about McLovin's nickname that made me bristle a bit, and so I wanted to help some folks better understand the derivation of the name. When Scot was first rumored to come here, and even right after he was inked to a contract, there were some people out there mispronouncing his name, employing an "f" sound where the "gh" is in his name. Being the fan of the movie "Superbad" that I am, I never looked back, even getting Kevin to help me make convert the fake ID from that movie into this image:

My life is a story told through movie and pop culture references, as is so many of your own lives, hence why many of you even bother to read anything I write at all. I think the name McLovin is amazing and hilarious, while also somehow conveying a true affinity for the man we believe is going to be the reason why we hoist a Lombardi Trophy. In addition to kind of resembling an Irish R&B singer, Scot truly encapsulates what I think Fogell was going for when he put down the name "McLovin" on his fake ID.

Anyway, that is just a random Thursday Editor's Note.)

Enjoy minicamp y'all! We'll be updating you with press conferences, video clips and other news out of Redskins Park that will cause us to begin the cut process early!