Michael Grant News

If there was a surprise among the five players cut by the Washington Redskins on Sunday, it was four-year veteran Alfred Fincher.

The Redskins have cut five players, according to a Tweet by the team's official blogger.

With a solid training camp, two preseason touchdown catches and just the right amount of feistiness, seventh-round draft pick Marko Mitchell is on the verge of playing his way onto the Washington Redskins roster.

Redskins Coach Jim Zorn, as is his wont, found positive things to say in the wake of Thursday night's 23-0 loss to the Ravens in Baltimore.

But he also heaved at least one very deep sigh. His always-hip hair looked genuinely mussed, not strategically mussed. And then there was the word 'soft.' He used it at least five times in Friday's postmortem news conference at Redskins Park.

'We missed tackles, we were soft in other areas, both offensively and defensively, soft playing with that kind of intensity,' he said. 'I thought there was a lot of guys out there playing, but they didn't realize how difficult a game this really is and we paid for it in some of the situations.'

BALTIMORE, Aug. 13 -- Despite the final score and the final statistics, Redskins defensive coordinator Greg Blache did not look like a man who was worried.

Though his team had lost, 23-0, and his defense had given up 500 yards, Blache said he got what he wanted out of the team's first preseason game. Even before looking at film, he could tell, 'some guys rose, some guys sunk.'

'I wanted the young kids to go in and play and see who could do what,' Blache said following Thursday night's loss to the Ravens. 'In the preseason, if I go in and worry about calling the game and not worry about finding out who people are, I'm wasting the preseason. We wanted to see how guys responded to things.'