Redskins' sense of entitlement leads to ‘overlooking’ the Rams -- gloom again in Snyder-ville

It is a cold, rainy and dreary Monday morning in Washington.

Which is perfect.

There is gloom again in the Snyder-ville. Do I sound a bit giddy? You bet. I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again: Dan Snyder can’t lose enough.

I really don’t have any issues with those who play for The Washington Redskins, other than perhaps Albert Haynesworth who had the nerve to tell a radio show last week that no matter how much money the Redskins paid him he didn’t have to be “a slave,”—his depiction of being asked to show up for offseason workouts like every other member of the team. Next thing you know Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will be demanding that Haynesworth be freed from bondage.

Actually it is the Redskins who are stuck—with Haynesworth who not only has made a total of two tackles all season in return for the $21 million bonus he was paid in April but continues to act like a complete dope. In the same interview he goes on to say the team ‘can’t buy his loyalty.’ They didn’t pay him to be loyal, they paid him to get into shape and play well; he’s done neither. Then after the game Sunday he said the team had probably overlooked the Rams.

A team that was 4-12 a year ago can overlook someone? Anyone? The Redskins shouldn’t overlook The Fordham Rams right now much less the St. Louis Rams.

All of which gets to a very smart column written this morning by my colleague Tom Boswell in The Washington Post. I tease Boz often about his unabashed loyalty to all of Washington’s teams even though it is perfectly understandable. He grew up here, suffered through the 34 seasons without Major League Baseball and is especially thrilled when the Nationals do anything right.

His enthusiasm is part of what makes Boz great—especially when writing on baseball. It was perhaps best described back in 2005 when The Nationals, in their first year in DC, got off to a very surprising start and actually led the National League East into July. When Tony Kornheiser said to Barry Svrluga, then the Nats beat writer during a radio interview that, “Boz had high hopes for this team early in the season,” Svrluga replied, “Boz had high hopes for this team when the bunting drills went well in February.”

It takes a lot for Boz to truly get down on a local team. A week ago he saw the glass at least half full after the Redskins lost in overtime to Houston. Sure the loss was disappointing he said, but what the game showed was that Donovan McNabb was going to be a productive quarterback in Washington for years to come.

This morning he wasn’t quite as upbeat. And he cut right to the heart of the matter when he pointed out that there is a unique sense of entitlement that surrounds the Redskins; that players seem to think they’re special and fans always think the Redskins simply SHOULD be good because they’re the Redskins.

That’s been true since George Allen took over in Washington but it has gotten worse since Snyder bought the team 11 years ago. We’re talking about a guy who sends out invitations to sit in his box for a FOOTBALL game that look like they’re for a royal wedding. (No, I’ve never received one but I’ve SEEN one).

This off-season, Snyder finally got rid of his bully-boy flak, Karl Swanson, in large part because not enough people bought Snyder’s story that it wasn’t his fault that Jim Zorn bombed as coach. He hired a young guy named Tony Wyllie, whose job is apparently Snyder image-repair. (If this works out maybe Tiger can hire him. That’s my one line for all you Tiger-lovers today). Wyllie spent a lot of the offseason inviting media types to Snyder charity ribbon-cuttings where Snyder would deign to speak to them. This was pretty smart: Snyder speaks—and says almost nothing—and the cameras show or the reporters write something like, “Snyder, speaking at a school where he is contributing x-dollars for scholarships…”

Wyllie has also taken to calling reporters who haven’t bought into Snyder to have lunch with them. Sally Jenkins got a call during pre-season. I got my call a few weeks ago. When I did I said, “Tony, I’d be glad to have lunch with you but why waste your time on me? I don’t even cover the team on a regular basis. You have to have more important things to do than talk to me.”

“Well,” Wyllie said, “you may not cover the team regularly but you certainly don’t mind criticizing Mr. Snyder on Washington Post Live.”

True, I don’t. That’s a local show here in DC that I’m on once a week and I do criticize Snyder—someone has to do it. That particular week I’d criticized the Redskins for firing Zach Bolno, who worked one slot down from Wyllie and who was one of the few people in the Redskins organization universally respected by everyone who dealt with the team. Bolno is bright, hard-working and honest. Needless to say, he had to be fired. That may be just about what I said about the firing on WPL.

I was actually sort of impressed that Wyllie would even bother to call me and talk about breaking bread until he said this: “Have you ever even met Mr. Snyder?”

Come on Tony, at least do some homework before you pick up a phone. “Yes, I’ve met DAN,” I answered. “We’ve spoken on a number of different occasions.”

Long pause. He’d clearly been going for the Snyder, ‘you don’t know me well enough to criticize me,’ line but that wasn’t going to work. He’d come un-prepared. Never good.

“Okay,” he said. “Um, well, why are you so critical of Mr. Snyder?”

“Because I think he’s a terrible owner.”

“Oh.”

“You still want to have lunch Tony?”

“Yes, sure I do. I’ll call you when we get back from Arizona.” (Last exhibition game).

Well, I know Wyllie got out of Arizona because I saw him standing almost on top of Clinton Portis last night making sure Portis didn’t say anything un-toward about his second half benching. Still no phone call. I guess that means I don’t have to buy.

I also don’t have any particular issues with Mike Shanahan. He comes from the secretive, humorless school of coaching and he was willing to give up about 47 seconds of his time to the media after the Redskins embarrassing 30-16 loss to the St. Louis Rams on Sunday. To me, he’s like most NFL coaches—except he does have a track record of success that makes it seem laughable that people here are already wringing their hands and claiming he’s another Zorn after three games.

That’s ridiculous of course. As Boz pointed out people forget how bad this team has been. The Redskins are now 7-20 since starting the 2008 season 6-2, under the now-hated by all Washington fans, Zorn. Shanahan hasn’t bowled anyone over yet—especially with four of his six draft picks getting cut—but you can’t judge any coach after three games. Not only is there a lot of this season left, but Shanahan has a five year contract and even Snyder isn’t going to be arrogant enough to not give a guy with his track record some time to get things turned around.

All of that said, how bad can a morning be when two of my local radio friends Andy Pollin and Kevin Sheehan, each an un-apologetic Redskins lover, play back audio of the opening kickoff in which Redskins kicker Graham Gano kicked the ball out-of-bounds.

“Maybe having to get ready to punt messed up his follow-through on the kickoff and he hooked it,” said play-by-play man/Snyder-Redskins Apologist No. 1 (that’s an official title) Larry Michael. Gano had to punt during the game because of a pre-game injury to the team’s punter. He had not yet actually punted except during those always grueling pre-game warmups.

“Oh come on Larry,” Pollin screamed. “You can’t start making excuses on the opening kickoff!”

Here in Washington you can and you do. Way to go Larry. You set a record that can be tied, but can't be broken.

Wide-ranging morning ---- Haynesworth, Strasburg, Zack Bolno, US Open tennis, Arjun Atwal, and the last note on rules officials

There was a lot going on this past weekend in sports. Lou Piniella retired. Vin Scully did not. (Thank God). Stephen Strasburg felt a twinge in his arm and everyone in Washington writhed in pain. Roger Federer won a tennis tournament. Serena Williams and defending men’s champion Juan Martin Del Potro withdrew from the U.S. Open. Fred Funk won an alleged major on The Senior Tour. (Are there any events on that tour that AREN’T ‘majors?’). Arjun Atwal, who was involved in a fatal accident in Florida three years ago won on The PGA Tour, the first player since Fred Wadsworth in 1986 to come through a Monday qualifier just to get IN to the tournament and then win.

Oh, and Albert Haynesworth is whining—which was apparently enough reason for the Washington Redskins to fire their PR guy on Sunday.

What a world.

Let’s start with the ridiculous—which is always the NFL team here in Washington. The Redskins should have conceded the folly of signing Haynesworth before training camp even started. It’s not as if Haynesworth was the first god-awful Dan Snyder free-agent signing, he was just the most recent and the most expensive. The minute Haynesworth refused to show up for mini-camps (or OTA’s or whatever the NFL calls them) that should have been a clear sign that he learned nothing from his embarrassing season a year ago, could care less about his teammates and was going to try to battle Mike Shanahan’s authority. Last I looked, Shanahan has pretty good credentials as both an authority-figure and as a coach.

We all know what’s gone on since. Haynesworth couldn’t pass the conditioning test he was required to take when he finally showed up for camp. He finally passed and began working out—occasionally. Then last week he didn’t work out, refused to speak to the media and the team said he had headaches. After he didn’t play until the second half in Saturday’s exhibition game, he whined that the team wasn’t telling the truth about his headaches and that he should have started the game.

I have two words for Haynesworth: SHUT UP. I have two words for the Redskins: CUT HIM. Sure, they’re going to take a huge financial hit but there’s an old saying about being penny-wise (okay in this case $21 million-wise) and pound foolish. The Redskins are trying to be good again; trying to get past all the embarrassments of recent seasons. This guy is a pox, who is likely to be unproductive. The sooner the Redskins get rid of him, the sooner the team can move on and focus on the future.

In the meantime, after Haynesworth mouthed off on Saturday, Redskins PR director Zack Bolno got fired on Sunday. For the past two years, most people who have to cover the team will tell you Bolno has been a voice of reason and (gasp) cooperation in a sea of stonewalling built by Snyder, former GM Vinny Cerrato and martinet-bully PR guy Karl Swanson. Cerrato and Swanson are finally gone but Bolno is being made the scapegoat for SOMETHING and it is clearly the team’s loss. Of course if the team wins, no one other than the people who know Zach (I got to know him when he was the Wizards PR director) will care.

The other Washington story is, of course, Strasburg. When he clutched his arm after pitching 4 and one-third shutout innings in Philadelphia on Saturday, you couldn’t help but go, ‘Oh God no, here comes surgery.’ It is now likely that bullet has been dodged but the Nats are also likely to shut him down for the rest of the season. After all WHY take any risk with him? The team is going nowhere, he’s proven he can pitch very well at the big league level already. The only reason to pitch him at all would be ticket sales and the Nats are smarter than that. If you pitch him now and God Forbid something happens, you will regret sending him out there forever.

On the tennis front: I think there’s a very good chance Roger Federer is going to win another U.S. Open. Del Potro has been hurt most of the year, so his withdrawal is no surprise. Rafael Nadal, as always seems to happen this time of year, is struggling on U.S. hard courts. Andy Roddick has had a so-so summer at best. In fact, the hottest player on tour this summer has been Mardy Fish, who lost a very good three set match to Federer in Cincinnati yesterday after beating Roddick for the second time in the last few weeks in the semifinals. For once, the Open is wide open. Someone like Novak Djokovic could get hot or Roddick could get on a roll in front of the New York fans.

As for the women, I don’t know, I think Chris Evert is the favorite now. Maybe Martina Navratilova or Steffi Graf? With Serena Williams out—foot surgery after she stepped on some glass—Venus Williams having been invisible all summer, Maria Sharapova who-knows-where with her game, Justine Henin out hurt (again) and defending champion Kim Clijsters looking shaky ANYONE can win. Billie Jean King maybe. Now that would be a story.

Arjun Atwal is a remarkable comeback story—sort of. Certainly coming back from injuries that caused him to lose his PGA Tour card and to go through a Monday qualifier—players call it a ‘four-spotter,’ because there are four spots in the field open, often with more than 100 players trying for them—to win his first tour event is remarkable.

But Atwal’s story is a little murkier than that. He had made a very good living playing around the world after leaving India as a teen-ager and had moved to Orlando, where he often played at Isleworth with Tiger Woods. On a March afternoon in 2007, after playing nine holes with Woods and John Cook, he was driving home on county road 535 when a car—driven, as it turned out by another Isleworth resident—fell in behind Atwal.

The police believe to this day that Atwal and the man began racing. Apparently CR 535 was infamous for street racing. Atwal has admitted to going 85 miles per hour. The police say it was more like 94. The other man apparently got up close to 100. Both lost control on a curve. Atwal lived. The other man did not. Police wanted to charge Atwal with vehicular homicide but the Florida attorney general decided that making a case in court that Atwal was the CAUSE of the accident would be difficult.

There seems to be little doubt that Atwal was guilty of stupidity and was incredibly lucky to live and not go to trial—or to jail. He has told other reporters that as bad as he feels about what happened he knows he “did nothing wrong.” Maybe he’s talking—as instructed by his lawyers—about the death of Mr. Park, the other driver. Clearly he DID do something wrong based on the speed he was going so it is difficult to make his win on Sunday as much of a feel-good story as it might otherwise be.

I mean, good for him, hanging in through the injuries and the Monday qualifiers and the guilt he must feel after the accident. But, on a wholly different level, like his friend Woods, Atwal must bear some responsibility for the difficulties he went through after his accident. Totally different story—obviously—in fact one far more tragic.

*****

One final note: I couldn’t help but notice that some posters STILL think that there are waking rules officials only with SOME groups at majors championships. That is flat out wrong: At the U.S. Open, British Open and the PGA every group for all four days is assigned a walking rules official. The Masters does not assign a walking rules official to ANY group because of its tradition that no one goes inside the ropes except caddies, players and TV camera and sound men. Dustin Johnson had NO advantage over anyone on the golf course last Sunday. In fact, he had a disadvantage because David Price, his rules official, failed to warn him he was in a bunker as a good official would have done. I am really tired of hearing the apologists say he wasn’t ‘obligated,’ to do so. No he wasn’t. Often in life what is right is not what you are obligated to do it.

Even if you disagree with that opinion, let’s keep our facts straight. Everyone had a walking rules official that day. Johnson just drew the short straw when he was assigned Price.

Shanahan is loud and clear letting everyone know he is in charge of the Redskins

As most people know there are few things in life I find more boring than stories about NFL training camps. The other day on Washington Post Live, my friends Ivan Carter and Rick Maese were droning on about the Redskins receiving corps when I snapped out of my slumber and said, “enough already, let’s talk about Buck Showalter.” (Good hire by the way, the guy may be an insane micro-manager but he’s good. Tony LaRussa is insane that way too and he’s had some success last I checked).

Carter and Maese were both kind of stunned that I went completely off the TV-format reservation but I couldn’t stand it anymore. Thank goodness I’ll be out of town next week for The PGA Championship.

That said, it is impossible not to sit back and giggle at the whole Albert Haynesworth fiasco. There may be no one who defines the 21st century athlete better than Haynesworth: He is gifted, spoiled, defiant, could care less about his team and if I were a Redskins fan I would have trouble wanting to see him succeed. Of course those who still care about the Redskins have already sold their souls to the worst owner in sports history so Haynesworth is just another brick in the wall.

Haynesworth signed with the Redskins about 15 minutes after the free agency period began in 2009 for $107 million, $41 million of it guaranteed. The fact that the NFL could find no evidence of pre-free agency tampering (the deal was made at 5 a.m. on the morning when you could begin TALKING to free agents) is proof that their security department must be run by Inspector Clouseau.

Haynesworth proceeded to be an even bigger bust last season than the rest of the team, which was quite a feat given the Redskins 4-12 record that led to the firing of both their coach and general manager., not to mention the beat-up starting quarterback. He was never in shape, constantly exhausted and often-injured. At least for one season he was as bad a signing as Jeff George—another brilliant Dan Snyder move—and that is saying a lot.

But then Snyder decided that 11 years of playing Fantasy Football (badly) was enough. Someone finally got in his ear and told him that he had done the impossible: he had turned Washington against the Redskins in large part because people were sick of his ridiculous football moves; his constant gouging of his fans; the awful stadium experience they had to put up with every week and, perhaps most of all, Snyder’s arrogance.

Snyder’s a bad guy and he has surrounded himself with enough enablers that he no doubt blames the media for everything that’s gone wrong with his team. But he’s not a fool and when his security people had to start removing home-made signs from fans entering the stadium because not all of them were shout-outs to soldiers in Iraq, a bell went off in his head somewhere.

He FINALLY fired Vinny Cerrato, who as a general manager did his best work as a lousy talk-show host. He fired Jim Zorn, who was more an innocent bystander in the Snyder-Cerrato fiasco than anything else but clearly never had the authority or the cojones to lay down the law to slackers like Haynesworth—among others.

Then Snyder hired Bruce Allen, who at least had a legitimate resume in personnel and, finally, to no one’s surprise, he hired Mike Shanahan as the coach and to actually be in charge of the football operation. No more watching tape with the owner; no more comments like, “I’ll consult with Mr. Snyder about what to do next.”

There are some who will note that Shanahan only won one playoff game in Denver after John Elway retired. That’s a little bit like saying Joe Torre never won a World Series until he managed the Yankees. The best coaches and managers need players. It isn’t as if the Broncos were awful post-Elway, they just weren’t as good. Check and see how good the Colts are in the five years after Peyton Manning retires.

Shanahan made it clear from the outset that, if nothing else, the Redskins were going to be run like a real football team. He stopped all the silly talk that the offensive line was fine and used the No. 4 pick in the draft to take a left tackle—something Cerrato and Snyder never quite got around to doing even as their quarterback was getting pummeled on a weekly basis. Prior to that, Shanahan somehow got the Philadelphia Eagles to trade Donovan McNabb for a second round draft pick.

McNabb isn’t Manning or Tom Brady but he’s pretty damn good and a major upgrade from what the Redskins have had at QB in the Snyder era. IF the line blocks for him he will make plays.

Shanahan also made it clear he wouldn’t play any silly games with players who didn’t want to show up for mini-camps or OTA’s. You can call them voluntary all you want, if the coach says be there, you need to be there. Even Joe Gibbs played that game with the late Sean Taylor when he no-showed. So, when Haynesworth no-showed, largely because he was sulking about having to play in a 3-4 defense, Shanahan bided his time—knowing HIS turn would come.

And now it is here. Haynesworth has no choice but to be in training camp. The Redskins could void his $21 million bonus—paid this offseason—if he failed to show up. Shanahan has declared that anyone who missed the pre-season camps has to pass a conditioning test to practice. Everyone knows he made this up to humiliate Haynesworth who, even if he is 30 pounds lighter, can’t run across the street without huffing and puffing. So, Haynesworth failed the test twice. Now he says his knee hurts and he can’t take it again until it stops hurting.

And Shanahan just smiles. He knows Haynesworth is the ideal nose-tackle for a 3-4 defense because he’s huge, takes up space and can occupy two blockers per play. Haynesworth doesn’t like that idea because there’s no glory in taking two guys out of a play while someone else gets a sack or makes the tackle. But he’ll be good at it when he finally starts to play.

And he will play. The whole notion that he missed valuable time is hooey. The only thing more overrated than training camp is ESPN’s ‘exclusive,’ reporting on Brett Favre’s retirements and un-retirements. Even with a new system a player needs about a week to ten days to learn what he’s supposed to do on the field. This is NOT rocket science by any stretch of the imagination. Many veteran players hold out just to miss training camp. In his final season with the Giants, Michael Strahan insisted throughout August he was retired. He came back the week before the season began and helped the Giants win The Super Bowl.

There’s no reason Haynesworth won’t be ready on September 12th, which is the only time it matters if he’s ready. Shanahan knows that. Which is why he’s letting him know loud and clear right now who’s in charge of the Redskins. It isn’t Danny Snyder and it sure as hell isn’t Albert Haynesworth. If nothing else, it’s pretty entertaining stuff for the month of August.