Posted by Christopher Harris, ESPN.com
Where do they get the money?
While the Tampa Bay Buccaneers sit on more than $60 million in salary cap room, the Washington Redskins have jumped out and nabbed one of the best players ever to hit free agency.
Don McPeak/US Presswire
The Skins' signing of Albert Haynesworth immediately makes their defense a lot tougher.
At age 27,
Albert Haynesworth might not be the most consistent guy in the world, and he's a little more injury-prone than you would like. But he has the ability to be the best defensive player in football, and if you polled NFL experts about who the league's defensive MVP has been over the past two seasons combined, it would be Haynesworth. So dominating is he in the middle that we're writing a note about him in a fantasy football blog, since the Redskins have signed him to a seven-year, $100 million contract with $41 million guaranteed.
The Redskins' defense is going to be better. A lot better. This was a unit that finished 28th in the league in sacks and 20th in interceptions in 2008, and hadn't even finished in the NFL's top half in sacks for the past four seasons. Jason Taylor didn't make a difference, but Haynesworth will. He's a beast. He has struggled with injuries in the second half of each of the past two seasons, so that'll certainly be something to be concerned about. But the NFC East just got even tougher, and the Redskins' D just got draftable.
The Skins also signed DeAngelo Hall for relatively big money (considering his '08 production): six years at $55 million, with $23 million guaranteed. Hall was disastrous for the Raiders last year after they inked him to a huge deal. He was better after he came to the Redskins, though, and he's still fast and has very good "ball skills," to steal a scout's term. As a result of this signing, it seems Shawn Springs isn't likely to stay in Washington, and I guess that's an upgrade. Springs isn't quite as much of a head case as Hall, but he's also 34, while Hall is 25.
Christopher Harris is a fantasy baseball, football and racing analyst for ESPN.com. He is a six-time Fantasy Sports Writing Association award winner across all three of those sports. You can e-mail him here.
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