It’s 5 o’clock somewhere…
The 5 o’clock club is published from time to time during the season, and aims to provide a forum for reader-driven discussion at a time of day when there isn’t much NFL news being published. Feel free to introduce topics that interest you in the comments below.
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Darryl Tapp
Any Washington fan could be forgiven for not knowing who Darryl Tapp is. He played in Washington for only one season, 2013, that magical year when the coaching staff included Kyle Shanahan, Matt LaFleur, Mike McDaniel, Sean McVay, Bobby Slowik, and Raheem Morris guiding the team to a 3-13 record.
In 2013, DE/OLB Darryl Tapp was one of three significant offseason free agent signings along with CB E.J. Biggers and LB Nick Barnett in a season where free agency was deeply constrained by the second year of the league-imposed $36m salary cap penalty. In an effort to deal with the penalty, the team essentially re-signed as many players as possible, and went into the ‘13 season with substantially the same team that they’d had in 2012.
Probably because the free agency period was so restrained that year, I paid a lot of attention to Darryl Tapp, and during the season, I thought he played well.
Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images
Overall, Tapp played for 12 seasons in the NFL. He played for 6 teams, appearing in 165 games with 39 starts. He finished his career with 332 tackles, 100 QB hits and 29 sacks, having played over 1,300 snaps.
Ryan Kerrigan
If you’re a Washington fan who is old enough to remember any games before the COVID pandemic, then you’ll know who Ryan Kerrigan is.
Kerrigan went to 4 Pro Bowls as a Redskin, and he holds the official franchise record for career sacks. He is a member of the “90 Greatest” list for the Washington franchise. Of course, he and Darryl Tapp were teammates on that memorable 2013 team that was the last of Mike Shanahan’s coaching career.
Photo by Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images
Kerrigan played ten seasons in Washington, but didn’t quite manage to be a “Redskin for life”; in his final NFL season, he went to Philadelphia where he was a rotational pass rusher.
In his ten seasons in burgundy & gold, Kerrigan played 7,700 defensive snaps (and, surprisingly, 610 special teams snaps). He tallied 457 tackles, 149 QB hits, and 95.5 sacks along with 26 forced fumbles. One oddity that could end up helping you win a trivia contest is that Kerrigan had 3 career interceptions, and every one of them was a pick-6. When your friends tell you that every Washington fan knows that, you can drop the mic on them by telling them that Kerrigan’s only career interception in a preseason game was also returned for a touchdown. Boom.
Sharrif Floyd
Sharrif Floyd played defensive tackle in the NFL, but never for the Washington franchise. Floyd played only for the Vikings. Officially, he was a Viking for 5 years, but he only saw the field in the first 4 seasons with the team.
After being drafted in the first round of the 2013 draft, Sharrif Floyd appeared in 43 games in his first three NFL seasons, with 24 starts, and when the time came, the Vikings exercised his 5th year option.
Things didn’t go as planned, however. In 2016, Floyd injured his knee in the opening game of the season. He never played another down of football.
He was diagnosed with nerve damage in his knee following meniscus surgery in September 2016. With the lingering nerve damage, he ended up on IR until the the clock ran out on his contract at the end of the 2017 season, bringing an end to his NFL playing career.
Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images
(Floyd successfully sued the surgeon who performed the operation, winning an award of damages of $27m, though he apparently remains in litigation against the malpractice insurer in an effort to recover the full amount.)
Playing about 50% of the Vikings’ defensive snaps, Floyd was on the field for over 1,600 plays, and finished his interrupted career with 95 tackles and 9.5 sacks.
So, what do Tapp, Kerrigan and Floyd have in common?
Clearly, these players have a lot in common. All three were drafted inside the top-65 players of their respective draft years, and each played multiple seasons on the defensive front seven. Floyd, of course spent his entire abbreviated career with the Vikings; Kerrigan spent ten years with Washington and eleven total seasons in the NFC East; Tapp was a bit more of a journeyman, playing for 6 different NFC teams with at least one stop in each division.
Nowadays, though, all three are position coaches with the Washington Commanders defensive coaching staff.
After coaching for three seasons at the college level (Central Michigan, Vanderbilt, Va Tech), Darryl Tapp began his NFL coaching career with the 49ers — not one of the teams he played for — where he was the assistant defensive line coach for 3 years. He came to Washington as part of the Adams/Quinn era. He is the team’s defensive line coach.
After finishing his playing career in 2021, Ryan Kerrigan expressed an interest in coaching, and was welcomed to Washington in 2022 by Ron Rivera. He spent 2 years as an assistant defensive line coach under Jack Del Rio, and was one of the few members of that coaching staff that was retained by Dan Quinn & Joe Whitt. Kerrigan’s current title is Assistant Linebackers and Pass Rush Specialist coach
Of the three, Sharrif Floyd is the most recent entry to the coaching ranks, having started his coaching career with the Cowboys last season as an Assistant Defensive Line and Quality Control coach. He came to Washington with Dan Quinn and Joe Whitt, and holds the title of Assistant Defensive Line coach here.
Not all former players will be good coaches, but there seem to be reasons to believe that Tapp, Kerrigan and Floyd are among those who have transitioned well into the role. In a recent interview, Commanders’ 7th round draft pick, Javontae Jean-Baptiste, was asked what it was like to come to Ashburn and find himself in the room with these coaches, each of whom had a successful NFL career:
“Man, walkin’ in a room like that — I ain’t gonna lie — is so much of a blessing because…you know, some coaches haven’t been through it. [These coaches] have been through it; they know where you’re at and they can kinda understand where you’re going.”