Overrated/Underrated Redskins

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Darrel Young is a pretty important contributor, for a fullback.

Is this like, a question of contract overvalued, fan overvalued, or overvalued by coaches/announcers? Because you'd get a lot of different answers.

The player who is most overvalued from a contract perspective is London Fletcher, but the team is very clear that the main reason he's getting paid a disproportionate amount of the salary cap is because you can't ask the emotional leader to take a pay cut. You either uphold your end of the contract to him, or you release him. Fletcher is not overrated on the field though because I think people (coaches and fans) realize that he's aging and that you have to take the bad with the good. And his good is still very, very good.

So I'll go with Stephen Bowen as most overrated, not because he's a bad player, but because the Redskins signed him as a $4.5 mil/year interior lineman and the return has been mixed. Quality starters are quality starters, and I don't want to make it seem like the Redskins would be better without him. They wouldn't. He's an important piece of the defense. But he's a bit out of position as a two-gapping end, and tends to be much better as a defensive tackle in our forty fronts. There's some monetary value to positional versatility, but he usually gets engulfed by bigger tackles when he plays on the edge.

That's not his fault, he's just doing what he's being paid and coached to do, but it does make him a bit overrated in my assessment.

As far as being underrated, the first name that popped to my mind is Leonard Hankerson, because I don't think people realize how difficult it is to come into the NFL ready to beat coverages and Hankerson is pretty natural as a route runner. He did have a big drop in a playoff game, but I don't think a dropped pass is necessarily any worse than any other kind of incompletion. He's a lot better than people believe.

But after thinking a bit longer, the answer is easy: Brian Orakpo is the most underrated Redskin, and it's not close. He's basically had similar production to Clay Matthews through his first three seasons, and there's no reason that his career wouldn't be as good as Matthews going forward. He does have something to prove this year, which is why the Redskins are waiting around on the contract extension, but I think he's going to be a lot more expensive to sign because we're waiting than he would be if they just extended him now.