According to reports, the Redskins are set to bring in linebacker Kevin Pierre-Louis on a one-year deal.
Pierre Louis, who is a seven-year veteran, was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks in 2014 and has played in a supporting role for most of the his career. The Redskins will be his fifth team, as he has also spent time with the New York Jets, Kansas City Chiefs and Chicago Bears.
Pierre-Louis was mostly a special teams player for the Bears in 2019, but he did get more playing time near the end of the year and had 32 tackles and an interception. For his career, Pierre-Louis has 128 tackles and seven quarterback hits.
Here are five things to know about Pierre-Louis.
1. He played high school football with a former Redskin.
Pierre-Louis was already a talented player by the time he attended high school at King Low Heywood Thomas. As a linebacker, he recorded 159 tackles during his senior year; as a fullback, he rushed for 913 yards and 13 touchdowns on 77 carries. That was enough for him to be selected as 2009-10 Gatorade Connecticut Football Player of the Year.
He also played with former Redskins running back Silas Redd.
Redd didn't have a long career in the burgundy and gold. He was signed as an undrafted free agent in 2014 and only amassed 182 yards of total offense and just one touchdown, but he and Pierre-Louis were a dominant pair at King High School. Together, they led the Vikings to back-to-back Fairchester Athletic Association titles in 2008 and 2009.
Pierre-Louis went to play for Boston College while Redd played for Penn State and USC, but the time they played together at King High School went down as one of the best in school history.
2. He was a four-year starter at Boston College.
Pierre-Louis was considered to be a four-star recruit when he chose to sign with Boston College in 2010. He was also rated as the 10th-best linebacker in his class, and he certainly played like it with the Eagles.
Pierre-Louis made an immediate impression on the Boston College coaching staff and earned himself a starting job as a true freshman. He was second on the team with 93 tackles and was even named to the Rivals.com Freshman All-America team.
His trend of being a consistent starter continued for the entirety of his career with the Eagles. He only missed four games -- one in his sophomore year and three in his junior year -- and earned Walter Camp Football Foundation Connecticut Player of the Year honors.
Pierre-Louis finished his time at Boston College with 314 tackles and one interception. He also had 12 pass defenses and eight sacks.
3. He played alongside Luke Kuechley.
There are few, if any direct relations between Pierre-Louis and head coach Ron Rivera, but the Redskins' newest linebacker did happen to play with Luke Kuechley, who was one of Rivera's favorite players.
Pierre-Louis and Kuechley's time together was brief; Kuechley was a sophomore when he joined the team, and Kuechley chose to forego his senior year to enter the 2012 NFL Draft. Still, they experienced some success together, as they helped the Eagles earn an invite to the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl against Nevada in 2010.
Kuechley turned out to be one of the best defensive players in school history and had an immensely successful career with Rivera and the Panthers. He and Pierre-Louis have always been supportive of each other's careers, and they have even stayed in touch since leaving Boston College.
"Luke has just been congratulatory of my success so far," Pierre-Louis told the Seattle Times in 2014. "He's seen me from the first day that I stepped on the Boston College campus and he said just don't change anything about me. Told me to stay hungry, stay humble and keep pressing on."
4. The Redskins are his fifth team.
This isn't the first time that Pierre-Louis has found a new team. Outside of three seasons with the Seattle Seahawks, who drafted him in the fourth round of the 2014 draft, he's been with a different team every season since 2017.
Pierre-Louis' rookie season was cut short after a shoulder injury forced him onto Injured Reserve. He managed to stay healthy for the next two seasons in Seattle and appeared in 34 games while getting 43 tackles during that span.
Pierre-Louis was then traded to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2017 and had almost as much success in one season as he did in three with the Seahawks with 41 tackles.
He then spent a year with the New York Jets before the team decided not to exercise their option to bring him back for a second season. That's when the Chicago Bears decided to sign him on a one-year deal. He had a career-high in starts (three) and made his first-career interception in Week 17 against the Minnesota Vikings.
Pierre-Louis finished 2019 with 32 tackles and three pass defenses, which was enough to garner interest from the Redskins.
5. His last four games with the Bears show how productive he can be.
Pierre-Louis hasn't had many chances to start in his career, but he showed that he can be a valuable piece once the Bears gave him a chance in the last four games.
Almost all of Pierre-Louis' production in 2019 came in the last month of the season. He went from getting almost no playing time on defense to averaging nearly 77% of the defensive snaps.
And Pierre-Louis took advantage of extra playing time. Twenty-eight of his 32 tackles came in the last four games. He even had a team-high 12 tackles in Week 16 against the Kansas City Chiefs.
Rivera has said that he wants "tough, hungry" players on his roster. At the very least, Pierre-Louis' last month of 2019 proved that he is ready to become a consistent contributor.
