Redskins wrap up Richmond camp after short session

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A day after treating young fans of the Washington Redskins with free snow cones to show his appreciation for their loyalty, defensive end Ricky Jean Francois treated his team to an abbreviated practice on Monday.

The Redskins wrapped up their training camp in Richmond after a workout that lasted less than half an hour. It ended when the 313-pound Jean Francois managed to catch a machine-generated punt after fellow defensive lineman Chris Baker couldn't.

"I'm going to clown Bake now," Jean Francois said after he and the rest of the team signed autographs for camp volunteers. "I'm going to get on him on Twitter, any type of social media that I caught the (punt) that let us go home. We could have still been out there doing 2-minute, but the man with the hands had to come through."

Quarterback Kirk Cousins was delighted that, after Baker failed, Jean Francois came through. The winning catch came after Jean Francois let several punts fall well short of where he was stationed, surrounded by teammates.

When he finally tried to catch one and gathered it in, he was mobbed by cheering teammates eager to get showered and head north to the team's headquarters in Ashburn, Virginia, where camp will continue on Tuesday.

"It sure took him a while," Cousins joked. "You'd like to see it on the first try but hey, it ended practice."

Baker said the team's nearly three weeks in Richmond gave them a great starting point for the season.

"I think we got closer as a team. It's always great to get away from home a little bit and bond with your teammates and I think we've grown a lot since we came here to Richmond, became a lot better on defense and I feel like we're competing at a high level," he said, noting that the team's fourth season in Richmond was less eventful.

Previous years were marked by questions about since-departed quarterback Robert Griffin III, the team's top draft choice in 2012. Griffin was supplanted as the Redskins' starting quarterback last year by Cousins.

"It was great not to have to deal with the outside distractions with the off-the-field stuff, quarterback issues," Baker said, "so hopefully we can keep a clean season with no distractions and hopefully everyone stays healthy and we have nothing bad to talk about."

Jean Francois agreed, and said, "Camp was better than it was last year. We were far ahead in the playbook, we were far ahead in the teaching and learning. We've got a lot to do being that in the first preseason game we killed ourselves with (14 penalties). We've got to get a lot better at that before we go inside the season."

And, he added, to make sure they have better punt returning options.

"There's a reason 300-pounders are not meant to be back there to do this," he said.

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