Ok, Desean is one hot topic. Regardless, is no longer going to burn us twice a year, since the other NFC East teams don't appear interested. I will make this point, everyone seemed to be fine with adding Kenny Britt. Matter of fact, several people here really want the 'Skins to sign Britt. Why do I mentioned Britt??? His background if issues and arrests are long...9+ and so forth, how many issues does Desean have? One. Now everyone is saying Eagles must know something more. How about this, Chip Kelly views him a dispensable and everyone knows that Desean has the personality that he will have a hard time playing a back seat. So, they cut their losses.
I will agree that he is a higher maintenance type player and NO he is not just a player that is signed if you are the one player away theory either. He's not old and he's a dynamic type player that warrants a defense to game plan for him. He can stretch the field almost better than anyone in the game and that has been a fatal flaw of the Redskins for years now.
So, my point is why does everyone JUMP so quick on the "oh, no no...don't sign him" bandwagon? He is what we need and yes it would be ideal if the diva part could be left in Philly, but unfortunately most of the better WRs have that character about them. Hey, they can't all be Jerry Rice, right?
Last point, for everyone that think we should only build via the draft...when in the past 20 years have we shown to do that on any consistent basis? If we had a history of being able to draft on a successful or get higher amount of talent than drafting position than average in the NFL, then this would be a very valid line of thinking.
I'm mostly in agreement with you. Jackson and Chip Kelly did not get along, and he was going to be cut. That started out awhile back when Kelly wanted all the skill position players to learn the responsibilities of other skill positions and Jackson balked at it, and it has grown since then.
I think it's pretty clear that, since the nj.com article talking about gang affiliations and their sources are almost entirely Eagles front office sources, that the Eagles fed them the story. The Eagles also knew 2 days before that the story was going to be published, according to Mike Lombardi on the radio this afternoon.
So basically the Eagles are going to cut him, know it'll look bad, feed some bad PR about him to a paper, wait for the paper to publish it, and then cut him with the story making them look good in the public's eyes. Seems very Shanahan-ish to feed bad talk about a player to the press.
The Redskin lead the league (or were close to it) last year in substance-related player discipline, so it's not like we've been supporting a bunch of choirboys in town whom Jackson is going to corrupt. He wouldn't be the baddest actor on the current roster. And if it's obvious he's too much of a diva to sign the Redskins would know that if they talk with him and do their due diligence about his background outside and within the NFL. Other teams do that, you know?
They guy's one of the best deep threats in the league, the Skins have (or can make available easily) the cap space for him, they badly need another quality WR. And they're missing a 1st round pick this year, and will have to burn a 2nd or 3rd to get a good WR when they have multiple other team needs (S, CB, ILB, OL to start off). And they shouldn't talk to Jackson? The only way that's not ludicrous is if the Redskins have already done thorough research on the guy and concluded that he's not a good risk.
So perhaps he's a good signing. He's definitely a good player. He's definitely worth talking to and looking into. And to play in to a "gang connection" article that was fed to the press by the Eagles is just plain stupid.
Last year Jackson had 126 targets, 82 receptions, 1332 yards, 16.2 YPC, and 9 TD.
Garcon had 113 receptions, 1346 yards, 11.9 YPC, 5 TD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeSean_Jackson#Career_Stats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Gar%C3%A7on#Professional_Statistics
