Chris Cooley

What happened to Chris Cooley last week [ "Chris Cooley is cut, and Redskins fans bleed," front page] was a disgrace to the Washington Redskins — an organization that in recent years has compiled a notorious record of disgraceful and unprofessional behavior. Clearly, from what The Post has reported, Coach Mike Shanahan decided a long time ago that Mr. Cooley was no longer in his plans. It would have been decent for Mr. Shanahan to have given Mr. Cooley a fair chance months ago to find another team.

Bubba Tyer, the Redskins ' longtime athletic trainer, met a man on the golf course not long ago who said he helped carry Joe Theismann off the field that night in 1985 when the Washington quarterback suffered a gruesome broken leg injury during a game against the New York Giants. "I said, ‘You did? Who are you with?' " Tyer recalled recently. "He says, ‘No one. I just jumped out of the stands and helped carry Joe off the field.' Sure enough, I dug out pictures and there was this one guy helping...

Captain Chaos is settling down! Redskins tight end Chris Cooley will marry former Redskins cheerleader Christy Oglevee tonight in Loudoun County. "I'm crazy about her," Cooley, 25, told us yesterday. "She's the most influential person in my life. We're extremely good friends as well as in love. " The couple met three years ago when he briefly dated another Skins cheerleader, and fell hard: "If looks were bait then I was hooked," Cooley posted on his blog this week. "She dressed to make men panic, but beyond that she was beautiful.

The lesson of the previous two NFL postseasons is that the playoffs aren't necessarily about which team is best. They're about which team is the hottest. The Washington Redskins say they paid attention to that and learned their recent history well. As they prepare to enter the playoffs on a seven-game winning streak that carried them to an NFC East title, they say they believe they're positioned to make some noise in the postseason. "I think we got hot at the right time, the second half of the...

You pull into the driveway of the stone mansion off a gravel road in Leesburg at 6:59 a.m. Wednesday morning. The garage is open. A light flickers on inside the kitchen. Chewy and Moose, the adopted mutts, scamper out to do their business. Two cats nuzzle against your leg, begging for attention. "What's up?" Chris Cooley says, stretching his arms out, yawning. He's been getting up at 8 a.m., but it was 7 today because he has to be at work by 8 a.m. — going back to his old job at an Ashburn factory.

On South King St. in Leesburg, the shop front reads, "The Cooley Gallery. " Kiln-fired vases, bowls and mugs, all signed and bearing a small No. 47 insignia, sit atop a small table in the showroom window. Handmade jewelry and pastoral oil paintings of Wyoming, some the work of a certain Pro Bowl tight end, can also be purchased inside — along with an autographed jersey if you like. When the owner of the gallery is not here, he is said to be out jogging five miles with his wife to the soundtrack of the first...

A Washington Redskins team in desperate need of more weapons instead has lost another key offensive component. For the second time in three years, tight end Chris Cooley's season will end early due to injury. The Redskins announced Tuesday that Cooley, an eight-year veteran, had become Washington's third offensive starter in two weeks to join the season-ending injured reserve list. The Redskins also have lost guard Kory Lichtensteiger and running back Tim Hightower to ACL tears.

Chris Cooley finished up his workday at Redskins Park earlier this week, showered, changed and wandered into the film room. He wanted to compare that afternoon's practice to one a couple of weeks earlier. The eighth-year tight end knew he felt different — though his ailing left knee was certainly sore — but he needed to see the visual evidence. While Cooley has waited for his knee to fully recover, his friend and teammate Fred Davis has quickly emerged as the team's leading receiver with 191 yards on 11...

The Washington Redskins cut ties with one of the most productive and popular players in their history Tuesday when they released tight end Chris Cooley . Cooley said an emotional goodbye to the Redskins after eight seasons with a team that failed to recapture the glory of its past even as he carved a niche as a beloved player who squeezed the most out of his ability. Cooley caught more passes than any other tight end who has played for the franchise and was a charismatic figure who...

Washington Redskins tight end Chris Cooley, who was placed on season-ending injured reserve this week , said Thursday he was "a casualty" of the NFL lockout because he was barred from consulting with team trainers and doctors while rehabilitating from offseason knee surgery. Cooley had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee the day after the 2010 season ended. But because the NFL players and owners spent the offseason at a labor impasse, he was not allowed into the Redskins'...

For a record price that most NFL executives would gladly pay in retrospect, the Washington Redskins ' drafting of quarterback Robert Griffin III has rehabilitated the rash-spending reputation of owner Daniel Snyder, revitalized a long-suffering fan base and reversed the fortunes of Coach Mike Shanahan , whose teams stumbled to an 11-21 record his first two seasons in Washington. But the more surprising payback came far deeper in April's college draft, when the Redskins plucked an...

He came in with a plan, and the plan was to have no plan, or at least not one that was obvious. In the NFL, they can sniff out a wannabe-leader, a bold-faced climber, a fraud from a mile away. All the way back in the spring, Robert Griffin III knew he wanted to make the Washington Redskins his team, that he needed to do so — to mold it to his will — in order to take the franchise where he wanted to take it. But he had to do it the right way — slowly,...

My second year we go to the playoffs. I'm like, ‘We got a team. We're going to be building. We're going to go every year.' That's what I actually thought.' — Reed Doughty, drafted 2006 At some juncture over the past six to eight seasons, they all believed what Reed Doughty did in 2007. London Fletcher . Chris Cooley . Santana Moss . Lorenzo Alexander . Kedric Golston . Chris Wilson . The holdovers, the last remnants of Joe Gibbs's...

It's Dallas Week in Washington, and after what has been mostly a decades-long hiatus for one of the more celebrated and combative rivalries in sports, the game this time has meaning far beyond nostalgia. The Washington Redskins made certain of that by winning six in a row to set up a decisive, prime-time showdown for the NFC East title at home against their bitter adversary. The Cowboys, meanwhile, won three straight to climb back into playoff contention and...

Just about every superlative has been attached to quarterback Robert Griffin III during his dynamic rookie season with the Washington Redskins . Now, after two brilliant performances in wins last week that put the Redskins back in the NFC playoff chase, some knowledgeable pro football observers are using a new term to describe Griffin: NFL most valuable player candidate. Whether he rightfully belongs in that conversation is a matter of debate. Some experts say...

Some of Robert Griffin III 's best moves of the past few weeks didn't come against Eagles or Cowboys. They occurred only in the presence of Redskins . Despite being Joe Montana-good in consecutive victories over NFC East foes, Griffin was also effective when all he moved were his lips. With the Redskins reeling two weeks ago after returning from their bye week, Griffin challenged his teammates to salvage their season during a rousing team address about...

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. —Chris Cooley has agreed to rejoin the Washington Redskins , a person familiar with the situation said Sunday night, hours after the team lost fellow tight end Fred Davis to a season-ending torn left Achilles' tendon suffered during a loss to the New York Giants . Cooley is scheduled to undergo a physical Monday and, barring any unexpected last-minute snags, his re-signing will become official after that, the...

The writing is always on the wall in professional sports, particularly in the no-guaranteed-contract National Football League. Indeed, long before he fought back tears and his voice quivered at his farewell news conference, Chris Cooley knew how the NFL worked. One day, you're a rumbling mass of humanity, seeing the ball into your large, soft hands, cradling that leather and mowing over smaller, weaker men, who clutch at your heels after being felled by essentially a beer...

When the Washington Redskins lost their highly productive tight end, Fred Davis , to a season-ending Achilles' tendon tear last month, then promptly re-signed popular veteran Chris Cooley , some observers figured the team might simply plug Cooley into Davis's spot in the lineup and try to keep the offense moving. It hasn't come close to working out that way. Cooley has been given few chances to contribute to the offense since returning, and he remains without a catch in the four games since the...

Bye weeks produce amnesia. In the 14 days between the next game entire NFL communities forget the team they left for dead two weeks ago. In that vein, many delusional souls have this week navigated a probable postseason path for the Washington Redskins , who we forget have lost three straight and not won consecutive games since September — of 2011 . Look, I dream in psychedelic colors too. But just for today, people, cool your jets....