One player the Skins cannot afford to lose to injury in '09

Who's the one guy that would cause major problems if he goes down with injury for an extended period of time in '09?

I'm going with Samuels, and until we see one of the young guys step up, Moss a close 2nd.

I agree with Samuels on offense, although I don't think we are in a great position to sustain injury anywhere on the line. On defense I'm going with AH.

Without question...the one player that we absolutely could not win consistently without is...London Fletcher. I know there are some more obvious picks, but this guy makes everything happen on the defensive side of the ball and with so many questions on offense, I think we will be depending a lot on our potentially elite defense to pull out some wins.

Fletcher for me too. He's the glue on the defensive side of the ball. Plus, if he goes down, it stretches an already thin LB corps even thinner.

I'm going to cheat. Tie between Laron Landry and Chris Samuels.

I would say Moss is in there, but I really think the other WRs (Thomas, Kelly, Roydell) are going to step up to at least make our WR corps adequate.

On Samuels, he consistently protects Campbell from the pass rush, without him Campbell will be under constant pressure and Zorn, like last year, will make the offense much more conservative. We'd be hog-tied.

Landry should not be forgotten, he is the most important player on the defense. Fletcher is very important as the QB of the D, but Landry's range is what allows us to free up Horton/Moore. Without Landry we're left to play a cover 2 with both safeties back, and our LBs don't have the speed to cover the middle of the field. We'd be very vulnerable. Furthermore, if we're to have success this year, we need Hall and Rogers to come up with picks. If they don't have their angel (Landry's nickname, per Blache) behind them, they will have to be more conservative.

It has to be Chris Samuels. I think the rest of the line will be effective and all the players are fairly interchangeable. But Samuels has no equal, or even close to equal replacement.

If you break it down by team units:
Offense - Samuels

Defense - Tough call, because everyone is used depending on the situation, but I think I would go with Carlos, I know he doesn't get picks, but he does come as close to a shutdown corner as we have now, and can pretty effectively stop a passing attack. (Remember the Dallas game where after SS went out, he was a mad man and just shut down TO - awesome)

ST- a big limb here, since he's not even the starter yet, but Aldridge/Dorsey. I think one of these guys will be our PR and we will be anticipating actual forward progress on every punt. A close second is Hunter, cuz who knows where the next punter would come from.

Portis. Was third in total touches in the NFL last season. During the first half of the 2008 season, Portis failed to touch the ball 20+ times in a game only once, Pittsburgh (Loss). And the team was 6-3 at the bye. Averaged over 4 ypc and was a solid contributor to Campbell's impressive first half of 2008 (243 atts with only 2 INT's through week 9).

It was after the bye when Portis was a little dinged up that there was some fluttering in the offense and Campbells INT's increased.

Guy is a proven leader on the field, can put a team on his back when called upon, and is a great asset for Campbell.

Overall: Samuels

Offense: Samuels
Defense: Fletcher
Special teams: Hunter Smith

The top three we cannot afford to lose are Samuels, Samuels followed by Samuels.

To me, there isn't even a close second. The next group I could see would be Fletcher as a wayy distant second with Moss,Portis, Rogers as the next most important group.

I've got a busy day and won't be able to spend much time on Warpath today so I'll light the fuse. Jason Campbell is the one player we cannot afford to lose in '09.

Zorn has spent most of his time and focus this offseason towards getting the offense to be more productive and a majority of that time was spent with Campbell. Campbell is far and away our best option at QB for the '09 season. If we had to go an extended period of time with either Collins, who is a career backup who has played in less than 10 games over the past 10 years for a reason or Brennan who, despite the hopes and dreams of some fans dazzled by 3 preseason games is no better than a backup that is far from ready for primetime, then we're in for a very long and difficult season.

We have depth, although not Pro Bowlers, at virtually every other position, but other than Philly with Kevin Kolb, we probably have the weakest, least experienced backup QB in the division and would be in serious trouble if we had to go an extended period of time with one of them playing.