Warriors in the Pros: Samson, Bess, Colt

Steve Murray has a cover story on Samson Satele in this week's Midweek. Here's an excerpt:

Satele is the first center to start every game as a Miami rookie - a feat that hall of famers Jim Duchowny and Dwight Stevenson failed to accomplish.

“I haven’t really thought about it,” he says of his historic achievement. “I met Dwight Stevenson. Everyone says he was the best, and I told myself that one day I hope they remember me like they remember him. I want to be better than those two guys.”

Great profile of "The King."

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Samson's teammate Davone Bess has had a good week of practice coming off of his first preseason game for the Dolphins. From a Sun-Sentinel practice report:

Davone Bess made a couple of nice catches during the afternoon practice. After one along the sideline Bill Parcells stopped him and showed the proper way to give a cornerback a stiff arm after the catch.

The coaches are clearly investing in Bess, who I think is a safe bet to make the 53-man roster unless some receiver that's really talented hits the waiver wire. But I think Bess is really talented too. One one play during the two-minute drill he caught a pass in-between Nathan Jones and Chris Crocker that got them called to the teachers desk, as Todd Bowles was instructing them how to play the shifty receiver who is effective at finding open zones.

From Ben Volin of the Palm Beach Post:

Davone Bess went undrafted in April after leaving Hawaii a year early, and he is listed sixth on the Dolphins' receiver depth chart. But Bess has been catching passes all over the place the past two days and seems to be developing a nice rapport with new quarterback Chad Pennington. Quick slants, deep outs, bombs over the middle - Bess is catching them all. He set school and WAC records with 293 career receptions in just three years at Hawaii and is making a case to earn one of the final receiver spots over David Kircus and Jayson Foster.

From Volin's liveblog of yesterday's practice:

Pennington hits Davone Bess on an out pattern. Nice catch by Bess on a low throw.

Henne stepped in and completed his first four passes, coming back nicely after struggling int he two-minute drill. Mostly short stuff toward the sidelines. Davone Bess got a lot of work today.

And from today's practice:

The quarterbacks start working with the receivers. Lining up alongside First Teamers Ted Ginn and Derek Hagan is rookie Davone Bess, who by all accounts has had a great training camp.

Pennington ends with a dump-off to Ricky, a playaction roll-out screen to Ricky and a slant to Davone Bess. Nice finger-tip catch.

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Adam Schefter of the NFL Network predicts that Colt Brennan has locked up a spot on the Redskins 53-man roster.

With his performance in Washington's first two preseason games, Redskins quarterback Colt Brennan has all but clinched a spot on his team's 53-man roster. Brennan has shown too much for Washington to release him and hope to get him back on to its practice squad. Despite being maligned in the process leading up to the draft, Brennan will make the Redskins' roster.

Colt Brennan talks to Corey Masisak of the Washington Times about his game against the Bills and his tight hamstring.

"The first game [against Indianapolis], the last play I was in I kind of landed awkwardly kind of right where the base of my butt and hamstring are, and it just inflamed that hamstring injury that I had," Brennan said. "It made it hard to practice last week, and during the game I was worried it might give out or blow out on me."

After a weekend of rehab, Brennan said he's moving around better at practice. He hopes to find some consistency and improve his decision-making during the next three weeks.

In today's practice, Colt led the offense to a touchdown during a two-minute drill, but the actual TD was disputed by the defense.

Colt Brennan may have driven the offense to a touchdown in a two-minute drill, threading a pass to James Thrash in the back of the endzone as time ran out, but the defensive players argued that rookie Rob Jackson would’ve had Brennan sacked if he had been allowed to touch the QB. For what it’s worth, I tend to agree with the defense on this one. Still a nice throw and catch by Brennan and Thrash, though.

That post also has some photos of Colt participating in another "throw-crap-at-the-QB" drill coach Jim Zorn is fond of.

Thanks to Jim (not Zorn) and fuzzylogic for some of the links.