Redskins' Cooley Is Fighting The System

By Howard Bryant
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 8, 2006

The image burned into the mind of Dallas Cowboys Coach Bill Parcells occurred on Dec. 18, 2005, in the south end zone at FedEx Field: Chris Cooley, the Washington Redskins tight end, bouncing as if he were on a pogo stick, a human exclamation point announcing his presence to Parcells, the NFL and anyone else who to that point hadn't been paying attention.

He scored three touchdowns that day in a 35-7 rout with the type of performance that possessed the proper combination of showmanship and old-style power. The iconoclasm of Cooley's appearance had already made him one of the more popular Redskins, but there was nothing flaky about his game -- he played with a rough-hewn style players could respect.

On that particular touchdown, Cooley showed the panoply of physical tools that ensured no defensive coach would consider him an afterthought during game-planning. First, Cooley ran past the Dallas linebackers, powered through a cornerback and hard-hitting Dallas safety Roy Williams before plowing into the end zone on the 32-yard scoring play.

"He killed us," Parcells said.

Ever since that game, Parcells never allowed Cooley to go unmentioned as one of the primary Redskins threats. Some rival players and coaches cite that day as the end of Cooley's transition from surprise success to accepted threat.

There is debate among the Redskins as to whether that Dallas game served as a defining moment for Cooley. Some Redskins players and rival coaches believe so, but others -- including Cooley himself -- do not. If there isn't a consensus as to when Cooley appeared on the league's radar, there is widespread agreement that he is there now.

Cooley's 71-catch, 774-yard season last year introduced him into this new territory.

Building a game plan around stopping a tight end is a considerably different and difficult exercise than one aimed at neutralizing wide receivers, who, under league rules aimed at opening up the passing game, are allowed the freedom to run in open space on pass routes where they can use their speed. Against tight ends, defenses employ a mix of physical punishment and subterfuge, first by challenging their toughness with a progression of hits by bigger players and then by testing their ability to separate from defenders once they enter their pass route by matching them with smaller but often quicker defensive backs.

The rewards an offense receives for developing a dynamic tight end are many. Because they play largely in the middle of the field and can more easily disguise their passing routes by blocking early in the play, good tight ends can upset an entire defensive scheme.

Jeremy Shockey, the New York Giants' gifted tight end who will stand on the opposite sideline from Cooley today when the Giants host the Redskins at Giants Stadium, is in this camp.

"He's a big guy, and he poses a threat with linebackers because he's quicker and faster than most linebackers," Redskins linebacker Marcus Washington said of Shockey. "Plus, he's a pretty good blocker. That's him in a nutshell. If you look around the league, more and more teams are looking for that type of tight end, because he's so versatile. But you can't pay too much attention to him, because you've got too many weapons over there."

Baltimore Ravens General Manager Ozzie Newsome starred at tight end for the Cleveland Browns and retired in 1990 as the all-time leader in receptions for the position. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1994. His experience gives him unique insight into the position.

A successful tight end like Cooley or Shockey, he said, must overcome a three-layer scheme designed to batter him so much between the time the ball is snapped until he reaches the legal five-yard limit for contact on a receiver that he loses his resolve.

"The first thing they're going to do is get real physical. They'll utilize the backer and safety to take the tight end out of the game," Newsome said. "It started happening my second year. The safeties then were like smaller linebackers. As you started to have success, you had to deal with them coming to bring help. Everyone was trying to deliver some kind of hit to take you out of the play."

The Redskins have a term for what Newsome described. It is called "choking the tight end."

Last season, Cooley excelled at avoiding the logjam and finding areas in the middle of the field uncovered in a zone defense. But Cooley impressed his coaches with his ability to run with the ball after he caught it. Both in his rookie season and last year Cooley regularly broke free for big gains on seemingly innocuous short passes.

The touchdown against Dallas came on a short screen pass that developed behind the line of scrimmage. "I've seen more attention on the line of scrimmage, so it's been tougher to get off," Cooley said. "When I line up in the tight end position, you see the safety and linebackers, but nothing more than that."

Of his 71 receptions last season, 21 were caught behind the line of scrimmage, a play designed to let him run with the football.

"If you look around the league, very few, if any, excellent passing teams are weak at tight end," said Redskins offensive coordinator Don Breaux. "The thing we kept noticing about Chris was that the first guy never got him down."

This year, Cooley has been faced with more man-to-man coverage designed to force him to win an individual battle off the line of scrimmage from a better defender. While neither Breaux nor Cooley sees opponents' game plans being formed around stopping Cooley, they do notice that defenses are covering him with their best players.

"He has to work harder and harder. He probably is getting a little better type of player in individual coverage to make sure they match up with him," said Redskins tight end coach Rennie Simmons. "I think that Dallas game was what did it. They do a few scheme things where they choke the tight end where the end will be on him and a safety and a backer will be right up on top of him, rather than let him run up the field. We're seeing a lot of that, but that's what you have to expect."

When the Redskins hired Al Saunders as associate head coach to oversee the offense last offseason, many expected Cooley to benefit immediately. Saunders's offense when he was an assistant in Kansas City relied heavily on the tight end. Indeed, with the Chiefs, Tony Gonzalez emerged as one of the great tight ends in the game. Cooley was coming off a breakout season and stood ready to take his place among the list of dangerous Redskins pass catchers. Saunders publicly said Cooley and running back Clinton Portis would be chief beneficiaries of his offensive system.

But Cooley struggled with the new offense early in the preseason. His per-catch yardage is lower than last season and he appeared to be lost behind the various shifting and slotting of the wide receivers.

Cooley is moodier than last year as a result. The pogo-stick enthusiasm has been replaced by a sporadic bounce. Last week against Jacksonville, Cooley had his first breakout game under Saunders, catching four passes for 70 yards. But more importantly, Cooley for the first time found the open spaces within the defense, spaces in which he thrived last season.

After the game, perhaps energized by the spectacular overtime Redskins victory, or enjoying the first game of the year in which he appeared to be more primary threat than secondary, Cooley was finally ebullient.

"A lot of people sleep on him until they realize how good a pass receiving tight end he is," said Antonio Pierce, the Giants middle linebacker who was Cooley's teammate with the Redskins in 2004. "He can find open spots and read zones real well, and he and Mark [Brunell] have built up a relationship and have a connection with one another. They click well together on the field."