Redskins' Doughty Learns On The Fly

In addition to the normal adjustments to life in the NFL for an unheralded rookie, Doughty also faced the burden of his son's poor health. Micah was born Aug. 30, 2006, in Colorado while Doughty was fighting to make the team. He missed a preseason game to be with his wife and child for a short visit, and several weeks passed before Katie and Micah could join him in the Washington area.

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A cardiac nurse before Reed was drafted and Micah was born, Katie Doughty administers shots to keep Micah's kidneys functioning until he has surgery. Micah also undergoes dialysis each night at the Doughtys' home. During a recent checkup, Micah weighed 20.8 pounds, Doughty said. He must weigh at least 22 to have surgery.

Although Micah, who works with an occupational therapist, is a little behind the curve developmentally for children in his age group, "he's doing really good," Doughty said. "He crawls all over the place. He tries to get into stuff he's not supposed to just like every other little boy. It's discouraging only when you take him to the doctor and he hasn't gained weight that month. Otherwise, it's been pretty normal.

The doctors "feel he's doing really, really well and he'll catch up to speed and be fine," Doughty said. "He's close. Yeah, some kids walk at 10 months but that's not him and that's fine. If he ends up walking it doesn't really matter how fast he walked."

Doughty had a non-guaranteed base salary of $275,000 last season and received an $85,000 signing bonus. His salary, which still is non-guaranteed, increased to $360,000 for the 2007 season.

The lack of job security in the NFL takes on added significance for a player with the medical expenses of a special-needs child. Taylor is expected to miss at least one more game, and Doughty apparently did enough against Dallas to get another opportunity this week to show the coaches that he is capable of being a long-term contributor.

"There's always a play or two that you'd like to have back, those are things that you have to learn on the fly, and you've got to get experience in ballgames to do some of those things," said Gregg Williams, the Redskins' assistant head coach-defense. "But when I look back on the ballgame in a whole, 56, 57 plays are as good as we've played all year long.

"There were four plays in the ballgame we wish we had back. Those were the four that counted, and he was involved in a couple of 'em. He's come a long way. He's improved a lot. He's had a good week of practice. He's made some of the corrections that he needs to make going into this ballgame. He played well in a lot of aspects of the game."