New Guys In Town

The Washington Redskins made significant changes to their initial 53-man roster compared to the team that limped to the finish of the 2016 season.

- Chris Russell

While everybody knew that things would be different no matter the finish, those changes occurred much faster than expected.

There were major coaching staff changes along with general manager Scot McCloughan’s firing, but on the field nobody thought they would allow two 1,000-yard receivers go.

Yet they did. With DeSean Jackson and Pierre Garcon gone, the Redskins rolled the dice on a relatively young and big receiver that could go one of two ways in Terrelle Pryor, Sr.

Pryor was the real star of the free-agent show because of his high upside, but relative low risk. Pryor had no clue how to play receiver until the summer of 2015. Think about that. He’d already been a star quarterback at Ohio State, was selected by the Raiders in the 2011 supplemental draft to play quarterback, which he did in stretches until 2013 when Oakland parted ways.

Despite some of the promise and a lot of drama, Pryor was released and bounced around with various teams like Seattle and Kansas City, while also working out for a rookie coach stuck in a miserable season of turmoil.

That coach was Jay Gruden and like some others, Gruden asked Pryor to give the receiver position a try.

Eventually, Pryor relented and went to a high school field in his native Pennsylvania and asked a local coach he knew to team him the basics.

That was just over two years ago. In his first year learning the receiver position, Pryor initially made the opening roster only to be cut five days later. The learning curve would be taught and mastered elsewhere. Cleveland brought him back late in the 2015 season and Pryor started two games while catching one pass.

Fast forward to last year, when Pryor played in all 16 games, catching 77 passes for 1,007 yards with the Browns. He was targeted 140 times, which is a lot of misses, but only had four drops, per FOXSports.com statistics.