Redskins Training Camp Day Fourteen - Hall of Fame Day

Welcome friends we have been waiting for you

Saturday 2 August 2008, one day before the Hall of Fame Game

No practice today.

Today is the day, the day, Induction Day for Redskins Art Monk and Darrell Green, today Art and Darrell take their rightful places beside the greatest ever to play the game.

Tomorrow there is a football game to commemorate today's induction and the Redskins are in that game. Many regulars will sit out tomorrow's Hall of Fame Game, no need to put anyone at risk for what is essentially a sideshow to the main event happening today. Curly R game preview.


One interesting aspect of training camp this year is tighter roster limits than in years past. While the WLAF World League NFL Europe NFL Europa was in effect (it is now defunct) teams were allowed roster spot exemptions for up to ten players, increasing the training camp roster to up to 90 players.

Now that NFL Europa is gone so are the roster exemptions, the roster is back down to 80 players. This means teams have fewer slots for evaluating talent and when a team like this year's Redskins suffer bunches of injuries in camp it creates problems. Such as increased practice reps for marquee players and therefore increased chance of injury, and a faster churn at the low end as players are shuttled through faster. If those bottom tier guys get hurt and they are not in the team's future plans the team must negotiate an injury settlement as part of league rules. I wonder what a typical injury settlement is and how much is paid out and before you get smart with me don't say it depends.

26 August is the first cut day, down from 80 players to 75 and final cut day is four days later on 30 August, from 75 players to 53.

The WaPo piece goes on to quote Redskins player's union representative receiver James Thrash as expecting owners and players to revisit the issue soon and come up with a quote better number unquote. A Michael David Smith piece on Pro Football Talk from March of this year though mentions chill relations between owners and players and represents owners as reluctant to add any more mouths to feed at all.


Matt Terl at the ORB (Official Redskins Blog) is off to Canton and wants us to remember how long Redskins fans waited for Art Monk to get in the Hall of Fame. He links over to an excellent video put together by Tom Kercheval, a Redskins TV producer, a video that may or may not have influenced the electors, it is spliced game action footage of Hall of Famers, some as players, some as announcers, including Frank Gifford, Dan Fouts, Dan Dierdorf, John Madden, Al Michaels, Bill Walsh, Jim Kelly and many other faces you will recognize. A bunch of other pro Art Monk vids there as well. Here Matt talks to Sonny Jurgenson about Redskins rookies and the HoF.

Matt also found something he did not expect to find in his tour of the Hall. I had thoughts on that thing in an earlier post on Curly R. Matt also observed Redskins rookies getting a talkinto from Joe Theismann (every play like it's your last) and Sam Huff (they moved me to a new position and I moved myself into the Hall of Fame).

Ron Burgundy at Bleeding Burgundy is in Canton as well. He says Redskins fans have taken over. Here is Ron's slideshow of photos taken at HoF weekend.

Chris Cooley writes about Jim Zorn's dress code for travel to Canton (op. cit.).



Art Monk, Darrell Green and Fred Dean at the 2008 Hall of Fame Induction: Ben Liebenberg / NFL.com from here.