With the signing of DeAndre Carter with the Chargers, will Washington bring back other footballers?

Goodbye DeAndre, we’ll always have Atlanta

The DeAndre Carter watch has come to an end. Ian Rappaport announced Thursday night that the running back/receiver has signed a contract with the LA Chargers, joining former WFT teammate Dustin Hopkins and former Redskins tight end Donald Parham in the land of sunshine and movie stars .

The financial details of the deal belie the value that many Washington fans seemed to feel Carter had for NFL teams. Reported details of a 1-year, $1.1 million deal + incentives are barely above a minimum-wage deal for the 6th-year player, and less than the 2-year, $3 million deal I had planned for Carter.

Washington would have had no trouble matching or even beating those terms, so either Ron Rivera, Nate Kaczor and Scott Turner agreed that Carter wasn’t worth trying to stay on the roster or Carter really wanted to quit. the city.

Carter became a fan favorite in Week 4 when he rushed for 101 yards for a touchdown on a kickoff return, but even without that play he was a capable running back who took on good decisions and helped set up the offense in “more” positions with most of his returns. He was slightly less effective as a punt returner, but had a decisive style of north-south returns that fans appreciated.

With Carter’s loss to the Chargers, the seemingly annual search for reliable punt/kick returners will resume in Washington.

A look back at Washington’s free agents

When the football team‘s season ended in January, I took a look at the roster and identified 22 players I thought the front office might want to re-sign. Here is my list:

Faded away

Of the 22 players, 5 have now been signed by other teams. I must say that I expected Scherff and Settle to both go to free agency; I wasn’t shocked by Ricky Seals-Jones (I see him as a replaceable TE); I was a bit taken aback by Kyle Allen, who I expected them to keep through training camp, and I thought Carter would only go to free agency if he got a better contract than the commanders were ready to offer. With that in mind, I guess it’s fair to say that Carter was the only surprise.

Resigned

Of the remaining 17 on my list, 14 have signed agreements to return to Washington. HQ also brought back players that weren’t on my roster, like Milo Eifler and De’Jon Harris.

Unsigned

That leaves 3 guys I identified in January as possible re-signings who remain in limbo – not on any NFL roster 3 weeks before the draft. I bolded them and highlighted them at the bottom of the left column.

Adam Humphries
Humphries is a 7-year-old veteran slot receiver who signed a one-year contract with the Washington football team a year ago. Humphries had his best two NFL seasons at Tampa Bay in 2017-18, when he drove in for over 1,400 total yards and seven touchdowns. His quarterback for those two seasons was Ryan Fitzpatrick; the idea seemed to be that Humphries would provide Fitzpatrick with a receiver he knew to help him with an unknown offense.

Fitzpatrick’s season lasted just 26 minutes, and Humphries never really had much traction in 2021, catching 41 balls for 383 yards and no touchdowns on 62 targets. He did seems to have a knack for finding the winning line in clutch situations, and 23 of his 41 receptions have ended in first downs. For that reason (along with his thrifty contract — he had capped $1.19 million in 2021), I figured he might return for the inaugural Commanders season.

So far, Humphries remains a free agent. He’s only 29, and even a minimum wage deal would net him around $1 million, so I imagine he’ll want to enroll somewhere in 2022. Depending on how things go in the draft I wouldn’t bet against the possibility that he could return to Washington for a 2nd season, but at this point it seems more likely that he will eventually compete for the backup slot receiver position in one of 31 other NFL training camps.

Daryl Roberts
I was in the minority of WFT fans who expected signing Roberts to be good for the player and the team last season. I saw him as an all-around DB who would likely see a lot of rotation time for forfeits and injury relief. I thought it had a chance of being the #1 option at the slots corner.

It never really worked. Roberts saw the pitch in just 6 games and only got meaningful snaps in 3 of them (Weeks 15, 16 & 18) when the roster was depleted by COVID and injuries.

DJ Hayden was signed by the Commanders in December, then signed a future contract in January. Hayden is an 8-year veteran with essentially the same skills as Roberts, which means there’s really no reason the team should have them both on the roster.

Washington appears to have a hole in the corner of the buffalo nickel slot/position that will likely be resolved in the draft. Otherwise, I would expect the team to seek a free agency solution in May, but, at this point, I don’t expect Roberts to return.

Torry Mc Tyer
The really interesting player still unsigned is CB Torry McTyer.

McTyer had an undistinguished 3-year career in the NFL before joining the Washington Football Team ahead of the 2021 season. He had just 420 career defensive snaps, but had only been on the field during an NFL regular season game for 8 snaps in 2019 and 2020 combined; in those two seasons, he was primarily a practice squad player who was brought up for two early-season games in 2020.

Arriving in Washington a year ago, he seemed like a 26-year-old cornerback who was just filling the 90-man roster. But the reports out of camp were that McTyer looked great. Day after day Beat reporters would say he was making games. He was something of a camp sensation and made the 53-man roster to start the season.

For the first 3 games of 2021, McTyer saw the pitch sparingly, getting just 13 snaps in 3 games. When Ben St-Juste was injured in Week 4, however, McTyer’s playing time increased and he played 29 snaps (nearly half of the total defensive snaps for the game).

That Week 4 game against the Falcons ended with a desperate 40-yard pass into the end zone that was broken by Bobby McCain. TV coverage ended almost immediately, and few realized McTyer suffered a season-ending ACL injury on that game, in the same game Jon Bostic lost for the season.

McTyer is now 27 years old. He was a substitute CB last year, but the one who shone in camp. In his only significant action of Season 21, he earned a 73.2 rating from PFF.

Honestly, I expected to hear that McTyer would return to Washington this season. Instead, there’s really nothing reported at all. I’ve spent a lot of time with Google, trying a number of different searches, but can’t find any updates beyond the first injury reports from October last year. This may be an indication that McTyer’s rehabilitation is not progressing as well as it should. It could also be an indication of the realities of the NFL; there are younger, cheaper and more talented players who aren’t trying to come back from an ACL injury.

As I mentioned in the Darryl Roberts status discussion, the team seems likely to look to the draft for a young cornerback or LB/S hybrid capable of playing in the slot, and if they fail to find one of the team’s 6 picks, there will almost certainly be free agent options available in early May capable of replacing or upgrading Roberts and McTyer.

While I initially expected McTyer to return to training camp in Washington in 2022, the lack of rumors or reports leads me to believe that the team will have a young player drafted or a free post-draft free agent. to boot camp instead.