ASHBURN - As the Redskins season comes to a close, it'll soon be time for the team to concern itself with the 2012 NFL Draft. More specifically, they'll have to go into the process trying to find the player they believe can be the team's franchise quarterback.
But according to Mike Shanahan, he's already started looking.
The coach said Friday after practice that around the midseason mark, he began looking at tape of college's top signal callers.
"I've already looked at 10 or 15 of them," he said. "I'll take a half hour a day. Early in the morning tapes are made up. I'll take a look at 75 or 80 plays of just a guy throwing the football in game situations."
Shanahan said he's received the game tapes from the team's personnel department per his request.
As the college season comes to a close, there are several names out there at the position that could attract a quarterback-needy team like the Redskins. There's Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III out of Baylor, Oklahoma's Landry Jones, and of course, Stanford's Andrew Luck. It's not certain whether or not Griffin or Landry - both juniors - will declare for the draft. They have until January 15th to do so.
"You got names," Shanahan said of the top quarterback prospects. "Sometimes you can't relate to how a guy's playing because you hear a lot about it on TV. A lot of it's hype and it's not evaluation, so you like to go back and kinda put a play with a name."
The question is: Which QB will be the one Shanahan ultimately covets?
With four months left until the draft, it appears he may have already started the process towards figuring that out.