ST memorial “statue”

[mooby]

I still remember it vividly. I followed his career from the time he was drafted because I was so jealous of what the Ravens had in Ed Reed.

2004 he had a solid rookie season, I wouldn't say it was Pro Bowl worthy but he def. had some highlights - remember him denying Randy Moss on the deep ball? Overall 2004 was a great year for the defense too and he played his part.

2005 was another good year, especially with the obvious highlights of him returning the fumbles for touchdowns (which btw - our last playoff win was directly because of him).

2006 was easily his worst year as I remember him and Archuleta getting beaten like a drum all year long, and despite only grabbing 1 pick that was his Pro Bowl year for some weird reason. I think players were starting to recognize his game even though he didn't have a great season.

2007 everything clicked. His daughter was born, all the off-the-field drama went away, and he had 5 picks in 7 games including two of Brett Fav-ruh. I mean the range he displayed on one of those picks - flying across the field to grab it before toe-tapping out of bounds, that was a career highlight for me. Undoubtedly if he had played a full season maybe he wouldn't knock off Ed Reed for an All-Pro but he easily would've been in contention for second team All-Pro. We weren't giving up the deep ball at all the first half of the season.

And then he got injured and we all know what happened. I was shell shocked. Of course he's one of many examples of people with amazing talent getting struck down in the prime of their lives. It just rings harder because we were all thrilled that he got his shit together and everything clicked.

Statue is up for debate but I think that was Snyder pulling every trick out of the bag to appease himself to a fanbase that hated him. Better career in a Redskins uni vs Chris Samuels, Trent Williams, Ryan Kerrigan, etc? No but if he had played 10 years for us I think his career trajectory would be mentioned amongst them.

It is what it is. But he's still my favorite player because I've never seen a high scoring Commies offense. And lockdown defense wins championships. And he was on his way to becoming what I believe is the best Redskins defender of our time (post 2000's era) - with all due respect to Kerrigan I don't think he ever played on a top 5 defense.