Redskins' Doughty dealing well with difficult time

Sometime after the football season, young Micah Doughty will receive a new kidney, donated by his mother, Katie. Happy as that event will be, it figures to be the first of several Micah will need during the course of a life that will never be “normal” in the conventional sense. That’s what doctors have informed Micah’s dad, Reed Doughty.

Nonetheless, it will represent a huge breakthrough for 15-month-old Micah, assuming he can gain the pound or so necessary to show that his tender physique is strong enough to pump sufficient blood to the new organ as well as his heart. Doctors also want Micah to walk before they perform surgery, something he has not been inclined to attempt thus far.

Until those goals are met, Reed Doughty will finish the season as the Washington Redskins’ starting free safety and prepare to win the job in 2008. Those are conceivably the last two positions on earth Doughty expected to occupy one month ago.

Call it what you will: Tragically bad luck, perversely cruel fate or a divine providence indecipherable by man. Reed Doughty has faced more of it than any 25-year-old has a right to expect.

Micah has been on dialysis practically since birth, weighs just 21 pounds and never has had much of an appetite. Getting him to the surgery is a goal, certainly attainable, but not a given.

Meanwhile, Doughty is standing in for the late Sean Taylor, who died Nov. 27, about a day after being shot in this home in Florida. A former top draft pick, Taylor has been universally memorialized as one of pro football’s great young talents. His absence creates a void impossible to fill. Yet that’s exactly what Doughty, who was the 173rd player drafted in 2005, has been charged with doing.

“I’m not replacing Sean,” Doughty said, “I’m just playing free safety.”

In Washington’s first nine games this season, Doughty made seven tackles. Since stepping into the starting lineup after Taylor suffered a knee injury Nov. 11 against Philadelphia,, he has recorded 24, including nine each in two of the past three games.

“Everyone gets tested,” he said. “Obviously, this is a situation where some teams are going to pick on one man. But I don’t think teams are going to change their whole game plan for just one person.”

Assistant head coach/defense Gregg Williams said Doughty’s play has improved dramatically during the past two games, and Williams feels more comfortable using him in blitzes.

“We’re seeing more of his personality come out,” Williams said. “He’s stepping up.”

Doughty, a Division I-AA All-America at Northern Colorado, earned a half-sack last week against Chicago and threw his weight around, Taylor-like, on a couple of tackles. He’s more comfortable and confident, he said, and with that “comes the ability to be who you are on the football field.”

Standing maybe 30 feet from the team’s glass-encased shrine to Taylor, Doughty pauses for a moment when asked if dealing day after day with the fragility of Micah’s life has somehow aided him in coping with Taylor’s death. He’ll always cherish his friendship with Taylor, always miss him, says Doughty, a deeply religious man. But Micah’s struggle has transcended grief.

“It’s helped me in how I live my life,” he said. “God has blessed me with a wonderful family. I wish my son’s kidneys were healthy, but I’m blessed to have this little boy, and I wouldn’t change anything about him, his great smile or his great personality. You learn that things don’t always happen the way you anticipate. You learn that God blesses you in many different ways.”

Jim Ducibella, (757) 446-2364 jim.ducibella@pilotonline.com