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Washington Diary: Aiming for perfection

Five-star defensive end R.J. Washington of Keller (Texas) Fossil Ridge has agreed to do a diary for Rivals.com about his experiences leading up to and following the U.S. Army All-American Bowl. The game will be played at 1 p.m. EST on Jan. 5 and broadcasted live on NBC. Players reported to San Antonio on Sunday, and they will begin practices on Monday. Washington will share his thoughts from San Antonio with Rivals.com each day.
SAN ANTONIO - I thought the first day of practice was pretty good, it was pretty much like my high school practices, you know it was up-tempo for a shorter period of time, and then we get out and we're done. It was pretty much the exact same, just better people playing.
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As for my own performance I think I can do better, I slipped on one of my one-on-ones and I got out of position a little bit. The offensive lines splits are a little wider, I haven't done one-on-ones in so long; my get offs are fine but I need to get my angles right.
In some of the individual match-ups honestly, I didn't know who Matt Kalil was, I knew who Stephen Good and those guys are but I thought Michael Brewster was No. 1. It really doesn't matter though because we're all the same, you wouldn't be here if you weren't good. Anybody can get beat, its little things that build up to a win or a loss.
I was looking forward to going against Stephen but right when we were going to they called practice. Now they've moved him to the right side so I don't even know if we will be able to do it.
There is nothing really during practice that I need to improve on, I feel like I did good. I did alright in one-on-ones; I made up for the one loss. I think I want to get the linemen thinking about speed, speed, speed, and then just spin back inside. I'm trying to make people feel stupid.
I don't like losing one-on-ones, they are hard to lose. Losing two because I slipped on one, that bothers me. I'm going to try and go undefeated tomorrow.
Against an offensive tackle it's about outthinking each other, only thing is I have the advantage cause I know where I'm going.
We were talking some with the Texas guys today but we made an agreement, we're actually pretty cool the OU and UT guys. We wear some OU stuff and they were some of their stuff and they'll say 'why you got that on' and we'll say 'why you got that on'. We got into our little arguments at the beginning but we said 'alright we need to focus' cause we need to beat the East cause the West never loses to the East and if we do that's embarrassing. Now on Jan. 5 that's when the trash talking will begin.
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