College scouting coordinator Trent Baalke

[skinshog]

is no longer with the team.

Are the 'Skins not pleased with their picks so they fired their college scout coordinator and brought in another? Just a thought...

http://www.redskins.com/news/newsDetail.jsp?id=4087

Redskins Round Out Personnel Staff

By Gary Fitzgerald

Redskins.com

June 17, 2004

The Redskins have completed the hiring of the 2005 personnel and front office staff, the team announced on Friday. Headed by Vice President of Football Operations Vinny Cerrato, the staff has added pro scout Terry Ray, national scout Russ Bolinger and area scouts Jim Zeches and Mike Faulkiner.

Also, the team hired former Redskin Don Warren on May 23 to serve as a pro scout.

Scott Campbell, Vinny Cerrato

The personnel staff also includes the recently promoted Louis Riddick to director of pro personnel, Scott Campbell to director of college scouting and Eric Schaffer to director of football adminstration.

Other returning members of the personnel department include national scout Joel Patten, area scouts Tim Gribble and Shemy Schembechler and college scouting assistant Chip Flanagan. The Redskins have also added Ryan Kessenich as Pro Personnel Assistant and Matt Jacobson as Salary Cap Assistant.

Pro scout Mike Kelly, college scouting coordinator Trent Baalke and area scout Hal Athon are no longer with the team.

The bios of the new Redskins personnel officials are as follows:

Terry Ray joins the Redskins front office following a solid playing career in the Canadian Football League and the NFL.

Originally a sixth round selection of the Atlanta Falcons in the 1992 NFL Draft at safety, Ray went on to play for the New England Patriots for four seasons (1993-96) and appeared in Super Bowl XXXI. He ended his NFL career appearing in 73 games with 26 starts and recording 193 tackles (123 solo), one sack and four interceptions.

After five seasons in the NFL, he continued his career in the CFL at linebacker and safety. During his six CFL seasons, Ray spent time with the Edmonton Eskimos and finished off his career with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 2004.

Among Ray's many honors, he was named the Eskimos' Most Outstanding Defensive Player three times, a West Division All-Star three times and a CFL All-Star twice. He totaled 448 tackles (382 solo), seven interceptions for 109 yards and 12 pass deflections in 92 games. Born in Shape, Belgium, Ray played his college ball at Oklahoma.

Russ Bolinger joins the Redskins in 2005 as a national scout after spending the past nine seasons in the personnel department of the Detroit Lions.

From 1994-95, Bolinger served a two-year stint as a scout for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Prior to that, he spent three seasons at the University of Utah--serving as a graduate assistant in 1991 and as recruiting coordinator in 1992 and 1993.

Bolinger began his NFL career on the field as an offensive lineman for the Lions from 1976-1982. He finished his playing career with the Los Angeles Rams from 1983-85 and also had a stint with the USFL Memphis Showboats in 1985.

A standout player at the University of California-Riverside and Long Beach State, Bollinger won the Lynn Hoyem Outstanding Senior Award and played in the 1976 East-West Shrine All-Star Game. He graduated from Long Beach State in 1975 with a bachelor's degree in liberal arts. He is an inductee into both the University of California-Riverside Hall of Fame and Long Beach State Hall of Fame.

Mike Faulkiner rejoins the Redskins front office as an area scout. He served in the same capacity with Washington from 1974-78 and as director of college scouting in 2000.

For the past four seasons, Faulkiner served as an area scout for the New Orleans Saints, the last two as Western Regional Supervisor. He brings 29 years of experience back to Washington including stints with the New York Giants (1980), New York Jets (1983-89), Cleveland Browns (1990), San Francisco 49ers (1991-97), and Seattle Seahawks (1998-99).

Faulkiner coached in the CFL with Toronto (1979) and Montreal (1982) and was a college coach at Eastern Illinois in 1981. He started coaching in the prep ranks at West Virginia in 1972. He played quarterback and defensive back at West Virginia Tech from 1965-69.

Jim Zeches joins the Redskins front office as an area scout. He spent the past four seasons in the same capacity with the San Francisco 49ers.

Zeches joined the 49ers staff after spending 12 years in various positions with Washington State. He served as the recruiting coordinator for the Cougars during the last seven years of his tenure there. He originally joined the WSU staff in 1989 as defensive line coach and moved to outside linebackers from 1991-1994. In addition to coordinating the recruiting, Zeches also coached the tight ends his final two seasons.

A Los Angeles native, Zeches earned two varsity letters while playing center at Cal-State Northridge (1971-72). Following five years of coaching preps, Zeches served as a graduate assistant at UCLA from 1978-1980 under Terry Donahue. He joined Dennis Green's staff at Northwestern in 1981 coaching the defensive line until 1986.

In 1987, Zeches began his 14-year tenure under Mike Price by taking the inside linebackers coaching spot on Weber State's staff. He was hired as defensive line coach when Price was named the Washington State head coach in 1989.

[barry wilburn]

Interesting question. I have a few thoughts on the personnel staff movements:

1) We lost three scouts and replaced them w/ five people, so that's good. Our scouting staff is the smallest in the NFL so any additions help.

2) Baalke was responsible for the charachter evaluation of Sean Taylor and according to PFT he advised the team not to draft Taylor. It's possible that either a) someone tried to scapegoat the guy for the Taylor selection, or he left because the team didn't value his recomendations.

3) Not encouraged with the fact that 2 of the 5 scouts we've hired this year have no previous scouting experience.

4) I keep looking for signs that Ceratto is losing power and influence. No indications of that in any of these moves.

5) I'd like to see guys coming in from places like Philly, New England and Baltimore. Detroit and San Fran are hardly the best palces to be recruiting scouts from.

[whitejimmy]

2) © PFT is talking out of their a$$.