Department of Bad News: Randy Thomas

Done

Redskins Right guard Randy Thomas tore his right triceps in the second quarter of the home game against the Rams on Sunday, he has had surgery and was placed on injured reserve, he is lost for the season.

The Redskins went into the 2009 season paper thin along the offensive line, now the team will play the next fourteen games without a stalwart starter, albeit one with accumulating surgeries.

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Randy Thomas came to the Redskins as a free agent from the New York Jets in the 2003 offseason, playing alongside Jon Jansen at right tackle he solidified the right side of the offensive line, in 2002 the Redskins had thrown a patchwork of right guards at the problem, starting Tre Johnson three times, Wilbert Brown eight times and Brendan Stai five times.

Randy was durable, playing all sixteen games in 2003, fifteen in 2004, fourteen in 2005 and all sixteen in 2006 as Ladell Betts ran for more than eleven hundred yards in place of an injured Clinton Portis.

For his solid performance and durability Randy was granted a contract extension in the 2007 offseason with ten million dollars guaranteed and keeping him under contract until 2011. In January of 2008 the team, as they regularly do with high priced veterans, renegotiated Randy's contract to add two years the deal (op. cit.), Randy is currently under contract to the Redskins until 2013.

In the second game of 2007 Randy tore his left triceps and missed ten games, he returned for game thirteen of 2007 only to injure his elbow and be placed on injured reserve for the remainder of the season.

In 2008 Randy played all sixteen games, though had a subpar season, later we learned Randy had a bulging disc in his neck, a condition that was not only career threatening, if it had not been treated correctly it may have left Randy paralyzed. Randy had that surgery on his neck in February of this year, then had arthroscopic surgery to remove floating objects from his knee in June, the soreness in his knees from this second offseason surgery affected Randy's 2009 training camp, offensive line coach Joe Bugel expressed concerns that Randy might not be able to go sixteen games this season, though in retrospect Joe's concern was ultimately unrelated to Randy's current injury.

Randy now heads out for his third surgery of the year and ends the season on injured reserve for the second time in three seasons. Randy will be 34 when 2010 training camp starts and have a salary cap number, assuming there is a salary cap, of 5.6 million dollars.

Good luck Randy, get in there, get it done and get back, I believe you can come back and continue to play football for this team.

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Randy was replaced by third year tackle Will Montgomery against the Rams, second year tackle Chad Rinehart was the depth chart backup to Randy however Chad was inactive for the game, as he was the week before.

Chad and Will competed this week for the job, Chad is a 2008 draftee and was poorly evaluated by the coaches last season, his play has been rated as improved by the team.

It was a close race, the starting right guard position ultimately went to Chad, principally according to head coach Jim Zorn because Will is needed as both backup center and tackle, therefore if something were to happen to Will at right guard the team would also lose its backup center.

Interestingly a name that came up in team internal discussions this week was Pete Kendall, the Redskins left guard the past two seasons and currently a free agent at age 36. In commemorating Pete's birthday in July I wondered right here at Curly R whether Pete may could come back as a backup, he received no offers to compete for a starting job and may yet be able to extend his career by a few seasons if he were willing to take a backup role. A month later Jason Reid at the Washington Post wondered the same thing. Pete's knees are apparently bad and he would have a hard time practicing and so far there has been no contact between Pete and the team. It should be noted Pete did not miss a game, maybe not even a snap over his two seasons with the Redskins.

Away we go into game three with a new right guard.



Randy Thomas in the Rams game: AP photo from here.