The Washington Redskins are desperately trying to improve their roster, their coaching staff, and in general, pretty much everything they will bring for the 2010 season. Let’s face it, 2009 was deplorable. Continuing with the the signing of new Head Coach Mike Shanahan, they’ve signed Justin Medlock from the CFL to join the team as a kicker.
The 2009 team couldn’t seem to buy, steal or blackmail a win, and the only positive, for me at least, was the game against the eventual Super Bowl winners, the New Orleans Saints.
At least in that game, the Redskins showed they actually know how to play football and held the lead right up until the last seconds of the game, when their then kicker, Shaun Suisham, missed a 23 yard field goal. Unbelievably, he missed it, his first miss from less than 30 yards, and it cost the Redskins the game. Not so much because the Saints scored, but because his fellow players were in shock and the momentum they had had stopped as if it was hit by a train. They had played with the kind of heart that kept them in front of the number one team in the league at the time and bang, it was gone. Not only were the players stunned, Redskins fans everyway were struck dumb, and many accused Suisham of choking on purpose. Almost immediately he was booted out of town and traded to the Dallas Cowboys. There, of course, he made no such further errors.
The Redskins now have Graham Gano as their primary kicker and have in fact, only signed Medlock to a futures contract, but they’ve made an excellent choice with Justin.
He is a US native, from Fremont, CA but here’s my take.
Justin has spent some time since college at UCLA with the Kansas City Chiefs and the St. Louis Rams, but most recenly Justin had a lesson in humility. That’s right, he played in the CFL, most recently for the Toronto Argonauts. To many NFL fans, that’s a death sentence, but in reality, as a Canadian, and a fan of the CFL as well, my opinion is that sometimes a stint in the CFL can be just what a major league NFL football player needs.
The Argonauts were really the Redskins of the CFL in 2009, sucking in mostly every game they played. They were nowhere near the playoffs but their one bright spot may just have been Justin Medlock. He succeeded on 40 of his 46 Field Goal attempts and was successful on every single extra point attempt, as few as there were. In fact, he came close to tying the record for the number of field goals scored in a single game, falling short only by one, with seven.
What does Justin mean for the Redskins? Well, he played for a team that didn’t do too well, and he’s coming to a team that didn’t do too well. He didn’t let the lack of success get him down, just kept on doing the job he was hired to do, and doing it well. I can only see him continuing to do the same for the Redskins, and that is exactly what they need. The morale in the Redskins’ dressing room and the trash talking of the coaching staff and owners was just as big a story as their performance on the field in 2009 and they want to avoid a repeat of that in 2010. A new head coach will help, as will having positive influence in their team members. Justin may be just one of those positive influences.
What’s next? I don’t know, but I’m sure Shanahan has a plan.
