"Sentiment is a luxury most teams can't afford in the hard-hearted salary cap era. When a player's age starts creeping up, even when's he's still performing at a high level, it's only natural for his team to wonder: How much longer can he keep doing this? Clubs especially think these things when the player comes to the end of his contract, as Santana Moss did this offseason.

Moss' 2010 was sterling: 93 catches (a career-high) for 1,115 yards (second-best of his career) and six touchdowns (third-best). It's hard to imagine what Mike Shanahan's scoring-challenged offense would have looked like without him. His speed — or enough of it, at least — was still there; he handled the hard knocks that came with running all those underneath routes in Shanny's scheme. He looked, pretty much, as good as ever.

But he also turned 32 in June, and the rebuilding Redskins have decided to "go young" at a lot of spots. As popular as Moss is with the fans, the coach and GM would have been perfectly within their rights to let him go and sink their money into a younger receiver, one who might still be a force five years from now — something Santana likely won't be. Moss-philes would have yelped for a while, but as Santana got older and the New Kid got better, they might have changed their minds about the efficacy of the move.

The Redskins didn't let Moss go, though. They re-signed him to a three-year, $15 million deal that may well keep him in Washington until the end of his playing days. Was this a wise decision? The proof will be in the pass-catching. But it makes perfect sense in one important respect: If Shanahan ever hopes to build anything here, he's going to need more players like Santana, high-performance/low-maintenance types who set a proper example for the younger ones."