My Day at Redskins Park

In between all the blogging for Yahoo!, I took a trip down to Redskins Training Camp with my buddy Russ, who hooked it up with some all-access passes that enabled us to get inside the ropes and into the Redskins Park building. The building itself was fairly unimpressive, but standing in front of three Super Bowl trophies and four NFC Champion trophies (those are pretty sweet-looking, by the way), all while ten feet away from the spot where Joe Gibbs gave his first and last press conference, was very cool.
Some pictures of the day:



Jason Campbell made a point of coming back to sign autographs for two kids after he had left the line to run out to the field. It was a simple gesture, but one that resonated with me.

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Chris Cooley's beard is coming in nicely. I can't imagine it's too comfortable during two-a-days in the 90-degree heat though.

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I was struck by how big guys on the offensive line (Todd Wade in particular) were. I was equally startled at how not-large Cornelius Griffin is. Don't get me wrong, he's still a large man, but a lot less so than I imagined.

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CP and Chris Cooley had a little hop in their step because they were late to stretching.

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I'd like to say Danny Smith is looking in my direction because I was heckling him for being a terrible special teams coach, but I'm pretty sure it was just coincidental.

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For the first hour of practice, Jim Zorn worked exclusively with the quarterbacks. As this is the only sort of coaching he's ever done, I like it. Now let's just hope that everything else doesn't fall apart while JZ is showing Colt Brennan how to perfect the five-step drop.

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It's the little things that make me happy. Here's a picture of me at the bottom of the stairs that Clinton Portis holds most of his interviews in character. Apparently they've painted the railings off-white since Coach Janky Spanky chatted with the media.

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James Thrash was having trouble managing his pads, helmet, Gatorade bottle and signing pen, so Russ offered to lend a hand. The price...

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If you ask me the question, my immediate answer would be Portis. But if I had some time to answer the "who's your favorite player" question, I might answer 'James Thrash'.

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Andre Carter didn't want to be left out.

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And a Chris/Chris picture to wrap it up.

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It was the other Chris's 31st birthday and his family made him a cake. Two minutes after this picture was taken, Randy Thomas smushed this cake into Samuels' face.

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My second favorite picture of the day. I love Twan's expression and also enjoy the kid with too much power in the background who looks like he's imitating Travis Bickle. My favorite picture of the day is being saved for a future blog post that will commemorate an event that will give me endless joy. Hopefully it will come soon.