Every week, Redskins.com chats with a Redskins coach about a hot topic. This week: assistant head coach-defense Gregg Williams discusses some of the young, emerging defensive players.
"LaRon Landry deserved the opportunity to start on opening day. We all have to earn our right in this business and he has earned that right.
"He did everything that he was supposed to do at the college level. He did everything he was supposed to do from the time he became a Washington Redskin. He was here long days in the off-season, long days in the OTAs, long days in the mini-camps. He came back early and did some things during the summer time. Once he got to camp, once he got his contract situated, we couldn't be more pleased with him.
"He's going to make mistakes this year. There's going to be things that I can't predict and he can't predict. The one thing we can all predict is he's going to make them full speed and he's going to do it with an attitude.
"He's got a very good attitude about playing defensive football and I think our defense feeds off of that type of attitude."
"Anthony Montgomery's progression has been light years from where he was last year. The word potential can be a negative, and the word potential can all of a sudden be a positive when it turns into production.
"It's been a long, hard, tough year on the young man in a lot of ways--behind the scenes, too. To his credit, he decided to change. I can't wait--I want to see the smile on his face if it turns into production, because he'll see that the hard work, the hard coaching, the hard criticisms are going to pay off for him because he has made a lot of improvement."
"H.B. Blades is a really smart football player. Right now, he's kind of the young guy that I've been picking on the most, but he's a really smart kid. He could play all three linebacker positions, not just one.
"For a rookie to come in and be able to do that, that really is special. He's got great football intelligence about him. When you're not the starting three, we want you to be able to play more than one position, and he can do that. He's doing that very well.
"Chris Wilson is a player who can flat-out run with some speed off the edge. Is that young legs? No, that's fast legs--that's just fast. We hope that we can get him a couple opportunities through the course of this season.
"I know that offensive tackles are always worried about how powerful the people are over them, but the thing that scares them the most is speed. We wanted to get faster in every area on our team and we did.
"Leigh Torrence is one of the fastest guys we've timed in an off-season workout since I've been here. He's the fastest guy I know that I have ever put a stopwatch on since I came to the Redskins. You can't coach speed.
"The thing that you hope you can affect a little bit is the understanding of technique, the improved technique. Leigh did all those types of things, but he can just flat out run.
"He stepped up on special teams. In order for a young corner to make it in this league, and especially a young, undrafted corner, that player has to be able to be a force on special teams, too."
