You certainly can’t say that living in Washington is boring these days—and I’m not talking about the repeal of, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’
Think about the events of the last week:
--The much ballyhooed coach who was hired last January to (again) bring back the glory days of The Washington Redskins—remember the ‘are you in?’ marketing campaign—benches the much ballyhooed quarterback he brought in last April to lead those who decided they were in. He does so in favor of the immortal Rex Grossman who will be 31 by the time next season starts and is not exactly an untested rookie.
Grossman throws two interceptions and fumbles the ball away once in Dallas on Sunday. But he also throws four touchdown passes, including two in the fourth quarter to lead a comeback from 30-14 down to a 30-all tie before the Redskins (naturally) find a way to lose against a bad team that has also shown a knack for losing close games all season. These teams are basically mirror images of one another: Run by egomaniacal owners who have screwed up once-proud franchises almost beyond recognition.
So now, the Washington media is PRAISING Mike and Kyle Shanahan for benching McNabb in favor of Grossman. Really? Seriously? Did I miss the part where the Redskins won the game? Did I miss the part where they were playing the 12-2 Patriots and not the (now) 5-9 Cowboys? Does anyone in their right mind think that REX GROSSMAN is going to lead the Redskins to anywhere but (maybe) 8-8 if he’s the starting quarterback next year? Is that the goal now?
Here’s what the Shanahans and their out of control egos have done: They’ve taken away their flexibility to wait a year or two to draft a quarterback or sign one as a free agent. Now they’ve got to make a move right away. They’ve only got six draft picks as it is and now—when they probably need at least three offensive linemen—they’re going to have to spend one on a quarterback.
Brilliant. Still, what’s even better are the fawning media who think this was a good move. The only GOOD thing about Sunday for the Redskins was that they lost the game. Winning can only hurt them now since it moves them down in the draft.
--The man who was once the most popular athlete in town is gone. And almost no one is sorry to see him go.
With barely a whimper, Gilbert Arenas packed his bags on Saturday and left for Orlando. It is to the credit of Washington Wizards general manager Ernie Grunfeld that he was able to find someone—anyone—to take on Arenas’s contract, which calls for him to be paid more than $60 million through the 2014 season. In return the Wizards got back Rashard Lewis, who was a very good player once upon a time but seems to be fading into the NBA sunset at the age of 31. No matter. His contract will go off the books a year sooner than Arenas’s and could save the team as much as $30 million in cap space.
Arenas was once the biggest part of the Wizards solution. Ultimately though, he became the biggest problem they had.
He led the team to the playoffs for three straight seasons and was the key component in the only playoff series they have won since the 1980s. Then he started getting hurt—a lot. The Wizards managed to make the playoffs a fourth straight year but went downhill quickly after that. They hit rock bottom a year ago when Arenas brought guns into The Verizon Center locker room to settle some kind of disagreement that had sprung up during a card game on a chartered airplane with equally knuckleheaded teammate Javaris Crittendon. Arenas managed to make the situation worse by not understanding how serious it was and thinking he could laugh it off and joke about it.
That was pretty much the end for him in Washington even though he came back this season to play reasonably well—although he played his best when star rookie John Wall was hurt; not a good sign for the future.
My friend Tony Kornheiser coined the phrase, ‘curse of Les Boulez,’ years ago to describe the constant syndrome of injuries, bad draft picks and trades that seemed to follow the franchise. The curse appears to still be alive and well with Wall already missing multiple games with injuries and the team a train wreck yet again at 6-19. Losing by 100 to Orlando on opening night was probably not a good sign. Not having won a road game with Christmas looming is also probably not a good sign.
Arenas is gone. The curse of Les Boulez lives on.
--Ralph Friedgen is fired as Maryland’s football coach a little more than a month after it was announced he would return for at least one more season. What is it Lee Corso says?—not so fast my friend. When Athletic Director Kevin Anderson saw a chance to get Mike Leach and jump start interest in his football program, he pushed Friedgen out the door about as fast as you can push someone the Fridge’s size out any door.
A year ago, then Athletic Director Debby Yow wanted to fire Friedgen—who she had once taken so many bows for hiring her back must have been sore. She couldn’t come up with the $4 million it would have required—not to mention the extra $1 million she would have needed to buy out ‘coach-in-waiting,’ James Franklin who she inexplicably put in that position a year earlier.
Actually, there was an explanation: Yow was trying to get the Fridge gone without actually firing him. Fridge didn’t take the hint and told people HE would decide when he would retire. The 2-10 record in 2009 changed that and put him on the hot seat. The 8-4 record in 2010 seemed to put him back in control.
Then two things happened: Franklin got the Vanderbilt job, removing the $1 million Yow-created albatross from Anderson’s neck and he found out that Leach could be had as his next coach. Baggage or no baggage, Leach can coach AND he can sell tickets, something Friedgen simply couldn’t do anymore.
Out with the Fridge, in with the Pirate.
Look, the move makes sense. It is also pretty damn cold but college athletics is a cold world. Personally, I would have liked to have seen Friedgen ride off into the sunset under his own terms but I’m not responsible for the athletic budget at Maryland.
The irony in all this is that, in the end, Yow probably got Friedgen fired. It was her decision to push for an expanded stadium and over-priced luxury boxes that put so much pressure on Friedgen. For years, when Byrd Stadium seated 45,000 people, winning eight games and going to a second tier bowl was just fine for the football team. Most Maryland fans were just waiting for basketball season to start anyway.
But with the expanded stadium and all those empty boxes, people—notably potential recruits—noticed that Maryland football fever wasn’t exactly a contagious disease. Anderson is new to Maryland and has no reason to be loyal to Friedgen—Maryland grad or not. His loyalty is to the bottom line. Leach can probably make that look better.
--And finally: The Winter Classic is now 10 days away and part 2 of the HBO 24/7 four part series on the Capitals and Penguins airs Wednesday night. I saw the first part and I thought it was excellent. What strikes me about all the HBO documentaries is how well written they are. Sure, they have plenty of access but ESPN gets all sorts of access (did you see any of that truly AWFUL stuff on Duke’s pre-season; My God I WENT to Duke and it made me gag, I can imagine how other people felt) and never knows what to do with it. HBO knows what it’s doing.
Of course some people here in Washington were upset with all the f-bombs that were picked up coming out of Coach Bruce Boudreau’s mouth. What do people expect when a team is losing 8 straight? Hearts and flowers? My friend, Post columnist Mike Wise, decided HBO was making the Caps into the bad guys, the Penguins into the good guys. Um Mike: The Penguins had won 12 straight—who did you expect to come off as the happier-go-lucky team at this point? In fact, the end of part 1 makes the point about the rhythms of a season, the ups and downs that are part of it. Exactly right. I can’t wait to see part 2. Don’t worry DC fans it will be better: The Caps WON on Sunday night.
And Alex Ovechkin isn’t being traded, benched or fired anytime soon. Hallelujah.
Showing posts with label Mike Shanahan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Shanahan. Show all posts
Monday, December 20, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
The Rick Reilly Column
I wrote the blog on Thursday in the hope that a more detailed explanation of what I was trying to say about the Mike Shanahan-Donovan McNabb issue would put an end to it—or at least my involvement in it.
To a large degree it did. The posts and e-mails that came in were close to what I expected: Some people didn’t really read what I said; they just had a knee-jerk reaction to even raising the specter of race. (BTW, James Brown, Tom Jackson and Michael Wilbon have all raised it too but because they are African American people tend to not pay attention or say, ‘so what?’ They’re ignored when they bring it up because they’re black; I’m pilloried—by some— for bringing it up because I’m white). What was gratifying though was the fact that quite a few people completely understood the point I was making: that Shanahan raising issues about McNabb’s intelligence brings back some bad memories for a lot of people about the racial stereotyping that went on for years when it came to African Americans playing the quarterback position. That was why I found it unforgivable. A lot of people got that.
Of course some people—many in the media—didn’t or chose not to. Rick Reilly absolutely torched me in his ESPN column. What was upsetting about the column wasn’t that Reilly disagreed with me. I’m perfectly comfortable being on the opposite side from Reilly on almost any issue. What did bother me—as I said in a note I sent him on Friday—was that he accused me of committing a crime I didn’t commit and then ripped me for it. If you read Reilly, he goes on about how ridiculous it is to think Shanahan’s benching of McNabb was racially motivated.
He’s right. Of course I never said it was. Like most people I saw it as a coaching temper tantrum after McNabb made a bad play. The issue came up after the game, first with the ‘he didn’t know the terminology,’ comments; then with the ‘cardiovascular,’ comments—that was about his conditioning not his intelligence—and finally with the Chris Mortensen, ‘sources,’ story that the poor Shanahans had to cut their playbook in half to accommodate their dumb African-American quarterback.
One argument being made is that the Shanahans might not have been Mortensens’s source. I don’t buy that for a second but let’s play along here for a moment and pretend they weren’t. If Mortensen is half the reporter I think he is and someone whispers that to him what’s his next move? I would think it is to call Mike Shanahan, who you can bet is on his speed dial and say, “someone just said this.” And Shanahan, UNLESS he wants his quarterback lying in the road with tire tracks on his back, says something like: “Come on Mort, the guy is a six-time Pro Bowler, of course he knows the playbook.” If Shanahan doesn’t say that then he’s guilty of not protecting his quarterback—even if there’s truth in the leak, which I’m not buying either. If Shanahan did say that I don’t believe Mortensen would still go with the story.
Anyway, Reilly pilloried me for saying McNabb was benched because Shanahan’s a racist. One example he cited as proof that Shanahan’s not a racist is that Shanahan cried on the phone when he learned one of his African American players had died. Wow, what a humanitarian! Even so, the argument’s moot because I don’t think Shanahan’s a racist. I do think he’s absolutely capable of throwing out racial stereotypes to defend an indefensible decision he made. Which is what I said and what I wrote. Reilly, in his return note to me, asked me if I really thought Shanahan could be that Machiavellian. Are you kidding? I think Machiavelli studied Shanahan somewhere along the way.
Two points here: Reilly and I aren’t friends but I’ve never considered him an enemy. We’ve known each other a long time and I thought he should have picked up a phone and called me before he hammered me—especially since he might have gotten his facts straight had he done so. Then again, that might not have suited his purposes. Rick defended not calling me by pointing out that I publicly nailed him twice in the past. Once was seven years ago when we appeared on Bob Costas’s old HBO show together and, in discussing the Riggs-King match, he said that Riggs had only had one serve and King had been allowed to play the doubles alleys. He was wrong. I said he was wrong and he insisted he was right. I offered to bet him $100 and he took the bet. To his credit he sent me a check when he found that he—or his researcher—had it wrong. According to Rick I went, ‘three stops past the exit,’ that night. Really?
My second crime was different. When Rick left Sports Illustrated for ESPN, someone asked me if I was surprised. I said I wasn’t; that I knew ESPN had thrown a lot of money on the table but to me leaving SI for ESPN was a little bit like, “checking out of a Ritz-Carlton to move over to a Hampton Inn.”
Yup, it was a shot—at ESPN. Rick apparently took it as a shot at him even though I said I understood he’d been offered a lot of money. As I said in my return of his return note: “I’m guessing now you might think what I said was probably right—but I certainly don’t expect you to confide in me about THAT.” And I don’t. All I know is the guy was a GREAT take out writer at Sports Illustrated and now he’s hosting 2 a.m. sportscenters with some fourth string talking head at ESPN. Yes, that was a shot.
In all though, I’ve been gratified by the number of people whose opinions I respect who have understood what I said and why I said it. I also have a little clearer understanding of why REAL public figures (I consider myself a semi-public figure) get frustrated when they say something and it morphs into something completely different. But hey, that’s life.
There was one thing though that really did upset me. On Thursday night Rich Eisen described me on the NFL Network as the, “venerable Washington Post columnist.”
Venerable? Now THAT hurts.
To a large degree it did. The posts and e-mails that came in were close to what I expected: Some people didn’t really read what I said; they just had a knee-jerk reaction to even raising the specter of race. (BTW, James Brown, Tom Jackson and Michael Wilbon have all raised it too but because they are African American people tend to not pay attention or say, ‘so what?’ They’re ignored when they bring it up because they’re black; I’m pilloried—by some— for bringing it up because I’m white). What was gratifying though was the fact that quite a few people completely understood the point I was making: that Shanahan raising issues about McNabb’s intelligence brings back some bad memories for a lot of people about the racial stereotyping that went on for years when it came to African Americans playing the quarterback position. That was why I found it unforgivable. A lot of people got that.
Of course some people—many in the media—didn’t or chose not to. Rick Reilly absolutely torched me in his ESPN column. What was upsetting about the column wasn’t that Reilly disagreed with me. I’m perfectly comfortable being on the opposite side from Reilly on almost any issue. What did bother me—as I said in a note I sent him on Friday—was that he accused me of committing a crime I didn’t commit and then ripped me for it. If you read Reilly, he goes on about how ridiculous it is to think Shanahan’s benching of McNabb was racially motivated.
He’s right. Of course I never said it was. Like most people I saw it as a coaching temper tantrum after McNabb made a bad play. The issue came up after the game, first with the ‘he didn’t know the terminology,’ comments; then with the ‘cardiovascular,’ comments—that was about his conditioning not his intelligence—and finally with the Chris Mortensen, ‘sources,’ story that the poor Shanahans had to cut their playbook in half to accommodate their dumb African-American quarterback.
One argument being made is that the Shanahans might not have been Mortensens’s source. I don’t buy that for a second but let’s play along here for a moment and pretend they weren’t. If Mortensen is half the reporter I think he is and someone whispers that to him what’s his next move? I would think it is to call Mike Shanahan, who you can bet is on his speed dial and say, “someone just said this.” And Shanahan, UNLESS he wants his quarterback lying in the road with tire tracks on his back, says something like: “Come on Mort, the guy is a six-time Pro Bowler, of course he knows the playbook.” If Shanahan doesn’t say that then he’s guilty of not protecting his quarterback—even if there’s truth in the leak, which I’m not buying either. If Shanahan did say that I don’t believe Mortensen would still go with the story.
Anyway, Reilly pilloried me for saying McNabb was benched because Shanahan’s a racist. One example he cited as proof that Shanahan’s not a racist is that Shanahan cried on the phone when he learned one of his African American players had died. Wow, what a humanitarian! Even so, the argument’s moot because I don’t think Shanahan’s a racist. I do think he’s absolutely capable of throwing out racial stereotypes to defend an indefensible decision he made. Which is what I said and what I wrote. Reilly, in his return note to me, asked me if I really thought Shanahan could be that Machiavellian. Are you kidding? I think Machiavelli studied Shanahan somewhere along the way.
Two points here: Reilly and I aren’t friends but I’ve never considered him an enemy. We’ve known each other a long time and I thought he should have picked up a phone and called me before he hammered me—especially since he might have gotten his facts straight had he done so. Then again, that might not have suited his purposes. Rick defended not calling me by pointing out that I publicly nailed him twice in the past. Once was seven years ago when we appeared on Bob Costas’s old HBO show together and, in discussing the Riggs-King match, he said that Riggs had only had one serve and King had been allowed to play the doubles alleys. He was wrong. I said he was wrong and he insisted he was right. I offered to bet him $100 and he took the bet. To his credit he sent me a check when he found that he—or his researcher—had it wrong. According to Rick I went, ‘three stops past the exit,’ that night. Really?
My second crime was different. When Rick left Sports Illustrated for ESPN, someone asked me if I was surprised. I said I wasn’t; that I knew ESPN had thrown a lot of money on the table but to me leaving SI for ESPN was a little bit like, “checking out of a Ritz-Carlton to move over to a Hampton Inn.”
Yup, it was a shot—at ESPN. Rick apparently took it as a shot at him even though I said I understood he’d been offered a lot of money. As I said in my return of his return note: “I’m guessing now you might think what I said was probably right—but I certainly don’t expect you to confide in me about THAT.” And I don’t. All I know is the guy was a GREAT take out writer at Sports Illustrated and now he’s hosting 2 a.m. sportscenters with some fourth string talking head at ESPN. Yes, that was a shot.
In all though, I’ve been gratified by the number of people whose opinions I respect who have understood what I said and why I said it. I also have a little clearer understanding of why REAL public figures (I consider myself a semi-public figure) get frustrated when they say something and it morphs into something completely different. But hey, that’s life.
There was one thing though that really did upset me. On Thursday night Rich Eisen described me on the NFL Network as the, “venerable Washington Post columnist.”
Venerable? Now THAT hurts.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
My thoughts on McNabb and the Shanahan explanations
The incident began, as the police like to say, when ESPN came out with one of its patented, ‘sources say,’ reports last Sunday. This one came from Chris Mortensen, someone I’ve known for years and someone who has absolute credibility when it comes to reporting what he’s been told. Mortensen reported that sources had told him that Mike and Kyle Shanahan had been forced to cut their playbook in half for Donovan McNabb.
That’s when I really got angry.
This came one week after the Shanahans had benched McNabb with 1:45 left in the Redskins game at Detroit with Washington trailing 31-25. They brought Rex Grossman into the game in McNabb’s place. Grossman hadn’t taken a single snap from center all season and isn’t exactly known for his mobility. In fact, McNabb had been dodging Lions all day because the Redskins STILL haven’t fixed their problems on the offensive line.
On his first snap, Grossman got sacked, fumbled and the Lions picked the ball up and ran into the end zone to end any chance the Redskins had to win the game.
Once it became clear that McNabb wasn’t hurt, that the Shanahans had simply decided to bench him, it was just as clear they had made a mistake. Check the results.
But that’s really not that big a deal. Coaches make mistakes all the time, just like players, officials and writers make mistakes. Here’s what you do when you make a mistake: You say, “I made a mistake,” and you move on. If Mike Shanahan had done that it would have been a one-day story.
But football coaches have more trouble saying the words “I made a mistake,” than any group of humans on earth this side of the BCS Presidents. So, instead of coming in after the game and saying, “Hey, I got mad at Donovan for a poor decision on an interception and played a hunch with Rex and it didn’t work,” Shanahan came in with some sort of hooey (a kind word) about McNabb not knowing the ‘two minute terminology.’ As if two minute terminology appears in the playbook in Swahili. I’ve read NFL playbooks. They are NOT that complicated in spite of what coaches try to tell you.
No one bought that story. So, the next day Shanahan tried something different. This time he said he was worried because McNabb had been hurt going into the game—he was the Redskins leading rusher in the game and had a 36-yard run at one point—and (I love this one) he was worried about his ‘cardiovascular,’ because he might have to call two plays in the huddle at once.
My first thought at that moment was that Shanahan must think the average IQ of people in Washington is about 12.
But okay, I wrote it off to Shanahan being one of those God-like football coaches who will do anything to avoid admitting a mistake. He’s like Fonzi in ‘Happy Days,’ when he used to try to say, ‘I’m ssssssssssssssssssssssorry.’
Then I saw Mortensen’s ‘report.’ That’s when I went on Washington Post Live and accused Shanahan of racial coding because I believe if he was Mortensen’s source that is absolutely what he was doing. In the last few days people have suggested to me that there are many, many people who could have fed Mort the information on McNabb’s alleged playbook inadequacies. In theory, I guess that’s true. I don’t buy it. Shanahan (Mike) has a direct pipeline to ESPN through Adam Schefter, who WROTE HIS BOOK. He negotiated with the Redskins through Schefter all of last fall: “ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports Buffalo Bills will offer him ONE BILLION DOLLARS.’ That sort of thing. Drive up the price, make it look as if everyone is after you. If someone told Schefter, ‘exclusively,’ that the moon was made of swiss cheese, he’d report it. Maybe that’s why the Shanahans didn’t go to Schefter this time. Mort certainly has far more credibility in general and especially in a Shanahan-related story. So, someone whispered to Mort that McNabb couldn’t learn the playbook.
I don’t think it was a player and I don’t think it was another assistant—unless he was acting under orders. I believe it was someone named Shanahan.
And if it was, Shanahan is a despicable human being and, yes, I think he’s using racial coding and yes I think he should be fired. If anyone wants to disagree with me about that; fine, just don’t give me the Steve Czaban (WTEM) copout that I’ve, ‘lost my mind.’
Really? Remember this was a week later. It wasn’t postgame frustration or even trying to cover yourself the next day. Shanahan had time to think about it and he decided that rather than continue to listen to people rip him not so much for making the move (everyone agrees he had an absolute right to bench his quarterback if saw fit) but for his ridiculous explanations as to why he made the move. So, somehow, someway, he got word to Mortensen that McNabb couldn’t learn the playbook. If someone was going under the bus it was going to be McNabb.
Now, I have serious problems with ‘according to sources,’ stories that simply allow one guy to rip another. The only time to use a blind quote as far as I’m concerned is if someone’s safety or job would be endangered by going on the record. Check my history you won’t see a lot of blind quotes. If I had a dollar for every time a coach told me NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION that someone was a cheat, I wouldn’t be writing this blog; I’d be sitting on my estate someplace warm deciding whether to start my day with a swim, a round of golf or by sitting by my pool reading a book.
But the way of the world today is ‘sources say.’ If the Shanahans were NOT the source—which I don’t believe—Mort should have called them to say, ‘true or not true?’ If they denied it, there’s no story. If they ‘no commented,’ and you HAD to go with the story—ESPN puts ridiculous pressure on these guys to produce alleged ‘news,’ all the time—you quote Mike Shanahan as saying ‘no comment.’ And then you call Donovan McNabb for a comment or a no comment. (His comment to the media when he came back after the bye week was that the notion that he couldn’t learn the entire playbook was, ‘hilarious.’)
But this isn’t about Mortensen. He’s a damn good reporter almost all the time. I’d like to have his batting average. This is about Shanahan. And if he did what I think he did it means, after giving it a week of thought, he was willing to have it put out there that his African-American quarterback wasn’t smart enough to learn the playbook. One week after FIRST calling him too dumb to learn the two-minute terminology he goes back to the same well.
Inexcusable.
And please don’t tell me he could have said the same thing about a white quarterback. He didn’t. Even in 2010 there are people who are going to instantly buy into the ridiculous stereotype. In fact, many of the e-mails I’ve gotten have been saying, ‘well what if he didn’t know the playbook?’ Let me tell you something: Donovan McNabb hasn’t had a borderline Hall of Fame career because he’s stupid. Let me tell you something else: before he traded a second and third round draft pick for McNabb, Mike Shanahan looked at tape of him running the Eagles offense; running their two minute drill and making decisions. He also talked to people about McNabb and what he could or could not do. And THEN he traded for him. So if McNabb is so damn stupid he can’t learn the playbook, how stupid is Shanahan for trading for him?
The funny thing about all this is Redskins fans will forgive Shanahan for this despicable behavior if McNabb performs well the second half of the season and the Redskins make the playoffs. Of course if McNabb DOESN’T perform well people will say Shanahan was right all along. In a sense, Shanahan can’t lose on this one. And I think he knew that even before Mortensen ‘broke,’ his story.
Trust me, I don’t think he's stupid. But I do think he's a very bad guy.
-------------------
One note: I've been behind reading posts because of baby-duties (Jane, for those who asked was just a name my wife and I liked and I was a big Blythe Danner fan years ago and thought the two names combined were cool) but someone reading my BCS column asked why I don't rip my colleague in the AP for being a part of the BCS conspiracy: Here's the problem: The AP dropped out of the BCS several years ago BECAUSE it didn't want to be part of the system anymore, believing it should not have any influence on the national championship. That said, I DID plead with my colleagues publicly before the final vote last January to vote for Boise State to send a message to the BCS that they don't completely control the sport. I think Boise State got two votes. Ouch.
That’s when I really got angry.
This came one week after the Shanahans had benched McNabb with 1:45 left in the Redskins game at Detroit with Washington trailing 31-25. They brought Rex Grossman into the game in McNabb’s place. Grossman hadn’t taken a single snap from center all season and isn’t exactly known for his mobility. In fact, McNabb had been dodging Lions all day because the Redskins STILL haven’t fixed their problems on the offensive line.
On his first snap, Grossman got sacked, fumbled and the Lions picked the ball up and ran into the end zone to end any chance the Redskins had to win the game.
Once it became clear that McNabb wasn’t hurt, that the Shanahans had simply decided to bench him, it was just as clear they had made a mistake. Check the results.
But that’s really not that big a deal. Coaches make mistakes all the time, just like players, officials and writers make mistakes. Here’s what you do when you make a mistake: You say, “I made a mistake,” and you move on. If Mike Shanahan had done that it would have been a one-day story.
But football coaches have more trouble saying the words “I made a mistake,” than any group of humans on earth this side of the BCS Presidents. So, instead of coming in after the game and saying, “Hey, I got mad at Donovan for a poor decision on an interception and played a hunch with Rex and it didn’t work,” Shanahan came in with some sort of hooey (a kind word) about McNabb not knowing the ‘two minute terminology.’ As if two minute terminology appears in the playbook in Swahili. I’ve read NFL playbooks. They are NOT that complicated in spite of what coaches try to tell you.
No one bought that story. So, the next day Shanahan tried something different. This time he said he was worried because McNabb had been hurt going into the game—he was the Redskins leading rusher in the game and had a 36-yard run at one point—and (I love this one) he was worried about his ‘cardiovascular,’ because he might have to call two plays in the huddle at once.
My first thought at that moment was that Shanahan must think the average IQ of people in Washington is about 12.
But okay, I wrote it off to Shanahan being one of those God-like football coaches who will do anything to avoid admitting a mistake. He’s like Fonzi in ‘Happy Days,’ when he used to try to say, ‘I’m ssssssssssssssssssssssorry.’
Then I saw Mortensen’s ‘report.’ That’s when I went on Washington Post Live and accused Shanahan of racial coding because I believe if he was Mortensen’s source that is absolutely what he was doing. In the last few days people have suggested to me that there are many, many people who could have fed Mort the information on McNabb’s alleged playbook inadequacies. In theory, I guess that’s true. I don’t buy it. Shanahan (Mike) has a direct pipeline to ESPN through Adam Schefter, who WROTE HIS BOOK. He negotiated with the Redskins through Schefter all of last fall: “ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports Buffalo Bills will offer him ONE BILLION DOLLARS.’ That sort of thing. Drive up the price, make it look as if everyone is after you. If someone told Schefter, ‘exclusively,’ that the moon was made of swiss cheese, he’d report it. Maybe that’s why the Shanahans didn’t go to Schefter this time. Mort certainly has far more credibility in general and especially in a Shanahan-related story. So, someone whispered to Mort that McNabb couldn’t learn the playbook.
I don’t think it was a player and I don’t think it was another assistant—unless he was acting under orders. I believe it was someone named Shanahan.
And if it was, Shanahan is a despicable human being and, yes, I think he’s using racial coding and yes I think he should be fired. If anyone wants to disagree with me about that; fine, just don’t give me the Steve Czaban (WTEM) copout that I’ve, ‘lost my mind.’
Really? Remember this was a week later. It wasn’t postgame frustration or even trying to cover yourself the next day. Shanahan had time to think about it and he decided that rather than continue to listen to people rip him not so much for making the move (everyone agrees he had an absolute right to bench his quarterback if saw fit) but for his ridiculous explanations as to why he made the move. So, somehow, someway, he got word to Mortensen that McNabb couldn’t learn the playbook. If someone was going under the bus it was going to be McNabb.
Now, I have serious problems with ‘according to sources,’ stories that simply allow one guy to rip another. The only time to use a blind quote as far as I’m concerned is if someone’s safety or job would be endangered by going on the record. Check my history you won’t see a lot of blind quotes. If I had a dollar for every time a coach told me NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION that someone was a cheat, I wouldn’t be writing this blog; I’d be sitting on my estate someplace warm deciding whether to start my day with a swim, a round of golf or by sitting by my pool reading a book.
But the way of the world today is ‘sources say.’ If the Shanahans were NOT the source—which I don’t believe—Mort should have called them to say, ‘true or not true?’ If they denied it, there’s no story. If they ‘no commented,’ and you HAD to go with the story—ESPN puts ridiculous pressure on these guys to produce alleged ‘news,’ all the time—you quote Mike Shanahan as saying ‘no comment.’ And then you call Donovan McNabb for a comment or a no comment. (His comment to the media when he came back after the bye week was that the notion that he couldn’t learn the entire playbook was, ‘hilarious.’)
But this isn’t about Mortensen. He’s a damn good reporter almost all the time. I’d like to have his batting average. This is about Shanahan. And if he did what I think he did it means, after giving it a week of thought, he was willing to have it put out there that his African-American quarterback wasn’t smart enough to learn the playbook. One week after FIRST calling him too dumb to learn the two-minute terminology he goes back to the same well.
Inexcusable.
And please don’t tell me he could have said the same thing about a white quarterback. He didn’t. Even in 2010 there are people who are going to instantly buy into the ridiculous stereotype. In fact, many of the e-mails I’ve gotten have been saying, ‘well what if he didn’t know the playbook?’ Let me tell you something: Donovan McNabb hasn’t had a borderline Hall of Fame career because he’s stupid. Let me tell you something else: before he traded a second and third round draft pick for McNabb, Mike Shanahan looked at tape of him running the Eagles offense; running their two minute drill and making decisions. He also talked to people about McNabb and what he could or could not do. And THEN he traded for him. So if McNabb is so damn stupid he can’t learn the playbook, how stupid is Shanahan for trading for him?
The funny thing about all this is Redskins fans will forgive Shanahan for this despicable behavior if McNabb performs well the second half of the season and the Redskins make the playoffs. Of course if McNabb DOESN’T perform well people will say Shanahan was right all along. In a sense, Shanahan can’t lose on this one. And I think he knew that even before Mortensen ‘broke,’ his story.
Trust me, I don’t think he's stupid. But I do think he's a very bad guy.
-------------------
One note: I've been behind reading posts because of baby-duties (Jane, for those who asked was just a name my wife and I liked and I was a big Blythe Danner fan years ago and thought the two names combined were cool) but someone reading my BCS column asked why I don't rip my colleague in the AP for being a part of the BCS conspiracy: Here's the problem: The AP dropped out of the BCS several years ago BECAUSE it didn't want to be part of the system anymore, believing it should not have any influence on the national championship. That said, I DID plead with my colleagues publicly before the final vote last January to vote for Boise State to send a message to the BCS that they don't completely control the sport. I think Boise State got two votes. Ouch.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Touching on the elections, Shanahan-McNabb, Randy Moss and Tiger Woods before moving to the sad news on Sparky Anderson
I had all sorts of topics to write on this morning ranging from the elections—I know some of you don’t like it when I write about politics but, what the heck, you can take the day off and it is MY blog—to the continuing Mike Shanahan/Donovan McNabb fiasco to (yawn) Randy Moss to how remarkably un-important Tiger Woods losing the number one ranking to Lee Westwood truly is.
Then I saw an item in this morning’s New York Times—if it was in The Washington Post I missed it. It said that Sparky Anderson had been placed in a hospice by his family. It also said that he was suffering from dementia at the age of 76.
Reading that made me think the other subjects weren’t quite as important. NOT that the election is un-important. It is and I happen to believe as disturbing as some of the results are and as tough as it is to listen to the crowing of my Republican friends, this will be a good thing for President Obama, much the way getting beaten up in midterm elections helped Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. I’m also one of those who thinks that history shows the country runs better when the parties share power. I happen to think this is especially true now since The Republicans can no longer sit back and blame President Obama for everything that has gone wrong dating back to The French and Indian War. And good luck to the Republican leadership controlling those tea party types who got elected. They will be more trouble for The Republicans than for The Democrats when all is said and done.
That ends today’s political message. As for Shanahan and McNabb, well, I’m actually not completely finished with politics because Shanahan really does sound like Richard Nixon when he tries to explain benching his quarterback with under two minutes to play on Sunday in Detroit.
Shanahan is a very good football coach and, in fact, the Redskins are clearly better this year in large part because of his presence. They’re also better because of McNabb’s presence; PLEASE don’t cite statistics to me. McNabb’s a player. Is he an elite quarterback ala Peyton Manning or Tom Brady or Brett Favre when healthy and not sending text messages he shouldn’t be sending? No. Those are first ballot, no-brainer Hall of Fame guys. Drew Brees may get there or he may not. McNabb is a full level down but he’s been very good and he’s still in the top half of NFL quarterbacks—which is why I thought Andy Reid was nuts to trade him within the division. It’s already cost him one game and may cost him another a week from Monday.
Shanahan took McNabb out because he was angry that he’d made a poor decision when throwing an interception and he was hoping Rex Grossman might, somehow (having not taken a snap all season) get lucky and put together a drive so Shanahan would look like a genius. Instead, he looked like a dope because the immobile Grossman was instantly sacked, fumbled and gave up a game-clinching touchdown. One play, end of story.
All Shanahan had to do afterwards was say, “I got upset with Donovan, I took a gamble and it backfired. I made a mistake.”
If he says that it’s a one-day story. Coaches make mistakes in the heat of the game all the time just like players do and officials do. They’re human. But Shanahan isn’t built to admit mistakes. He’s MIKE SHANAHAN and he’s never wrong. So, he first came out with some hoo-ha about McNabb not knowing the two minute terminology. No one bought that for a second. The next day it was about his cardiovascular ability to call two plays at once. Oh, and he was injured too; might not have played Sunday. Except he’d spent 58 minutes dodging the Lions rush because the Redskins offensive line STILL isn’t any good and all of a sudden he was injured? Please. Shanahan did everything but say, “I am not a crook.”
He’s not. But he IS a liar and a raging egomaniac. That said, if McNabb plays well enough for the Redskins to beat the Eagles, everyone in Washington will forgive him. If I’m McNabb, regardless of what happens the rest of the season, I’m on the first bus (okay, chartered airplane) out of town when the season’s over.
Moss doesn’t really deserve any space here because he’s a jerk and, at this point in time, he’s not that good a football player anymore. That’s why Bill Belichick was willing to let him go—talk about a steal, he got a third round pick for him and the Vikings got an embarrassing tirade aimed at some poor guy feeding the team in return—and why the Vikings didn’t put up with his insufferable behavior.
What got me this morning was hearing Chris Carter—or “CC,” as he’s known to the morning pitchmen—saying this: “Randy Moss is a man of principal.” Really, seriously? Here’s what’s more accurate: He’s a jerk who once upon a time could REALLY play. “CC,” also said Moss just can’t tolerate coaches who are ‘wishy-washy,’ and ‘don’t take responsibility when things go bad.’ You can say anything you want about Bill Belichick but wishy-washy? Doesn’t step up when things go bad? One of the morning PM’s (guess which one) acted like Carter had just found a cure for cancer after this, ‘analysis.’ My God. While I’m at my ESPN-bashing it was amazing to see one of the Hasselbeck’s (Elizabeth perhaps?) actually claiming that ‘the Shanahan’s,’ weren’t happy with McNabb’s practice habits. Gee, wonder where he heard that—as if it is at all relevant. Is there ANYONE in the NFL these ESPN guys won’t be apologists for?
And, briefly on Tiger Woods and number one: It REALLY doesn’t matter. The World Rankings are bogus the way they’re calculated and all that matters is when Woods wins his next major. If he wins in Malaysia this week and goes back to No. 1, that’s fine. There should also be a rule that you can’t be No. 1 in the world unless you’ve won at least one major.
Last, but certainly not least: Sparky Anderson. I won’t claim to know him well but I spent a lot of time with him in 1992 when I was writing my first baseball book, “Play Ball.” Sparky was a modern-day Casey Stengel: a great manager; he won World Series in both leagues and managed two of the great teams of the last 50 years: the ’75 and ’76 Reds and the ’84 Tigers who started 35-5 and never looked back.
Sparky loved to tell stories, one of the things that makes it even sadder that he’s dealing with dementia at the age of 76. He was funny and he loved having people sit around his office so he could entertain them. In that sense he was a bit like Tommy Lasorda but Lasorda had a mean streak Sparky never had. In fact, Sparky liked going out of his way to point out good things about people.
Early in the ’92 season the Tigers came to Baltimore for a four game series and got swept, which turned out to be the beginning of an awful season. I had met Sparky during spring training and we had agreed to get together that weekend. When I walked in to his office Friday night, I wondered if he’d remember. He did. “How about two o’clock tomorrow,” he said. That early for a 7 o’clock game I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “You said you wanted some time, right?”
He was there right on the dot of 2 o’clock and talked for almost three hours. One person he brought up during the conversation was Johnny Oates, who was managing the Orioles.
“That kid, (Sparky called almost everyone kid) is a hell of a manager and a hell of a guy,” he said. “He had us way down last night. He’s got a young team, they probably want to pile it on. He wouldn’t do it. He’s up 8-1, he’s not running anybody, he’s just playing to get the game over. That’s a pro. He’s one of the good ones.”
I was lucky enough to get to know Johnny Oates quite well that season. He WAS a hell of a guy. And a good manager. Sparky was also a hell of a manager and one of the true good guys.
Then I saw an item in this morning’s New York Times—if it was in The Washington Post I missed it. It said that Sparky Anderson had been placed in a hospice by his family. It also said that he was suffering from dementia at the age of 76.
Reading that made me think the other subjects weren’t quite as important. NOT that the election is un-important. It is and I happen to believe as disturbing as some of the results are and as tough as it is to listen to the crowing of my Republican friends, this will be a good thing for President Obama, much the way getting beaten up in midterm elections helped Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. I’m also one of those who thinks that history shows the country runs better when the parties share power. I happen to think this is especially true now since The Republicans can no longer sit back and blame President Obama for everything that has gone wrong dating back to The French and Indian War. And good luck to the Republican leadership controlling those tea party types who got elected. They will be more trouble for The Republicans than for The Democrats when all is said and done.
That ends today’s political message. As for Shanahan and McNabb, well, I’m actually not completely finished with politics because Shanahan really does sound like Richard Nixon when he tries to explain benching his quarterback with under two minutes to play on Sunday in Detroit.
Shanahan is a very good football coach and, in fact, the Redskins are clearly better this year in large part because of his presence. They’re also better because of McNabb’s presence; PLEASE don’t cite statistics to me. McNabb’s a player. Is he an elite quarterback ala Peyton Manning or Tom Brady or Brett Favre when healthy and not sending text messages he shouldn’t be sending? No. Those are first ballot, no-brainer Hall of Fame guys. Drew Brees may get there or he may not. McNabb is a full level down but he’s been very good and he’s still in the top half of NFL quarterbacks—which is why I thought Andy Reid was nuts to trade him within the division. It’s already cost him one game and may cost him another a week from Monday.
Shanahan took McNabb out because he was angry that he’d made a poor decision when throwing an interception and he was hoping Rex Grossman might, somehow (having not taken a snap all season) get lucky and put together a drive so Shanahan would look like a genius. Instead, he looked like a dope because the immobile Grossman was instantly sacked, fumbled and gave up a game-clinching touchdown. One play, end of story.
All Shanahan had to do afterwards was say, “I got upset with Donovan, I took a gamble and it backfired. I made a mistake.”
If he says that it’s a one-day story. Coaches make mistakes in the heat of the game all the time just like players do and officials do. They’re human. But Shanahan isn’t built to admit mistakes. He’s MIKE SHANAHAN and he’s never wrong. So, he first came out with some hoo-ha about McNabb not knowing the two minute terminology. No one bought that for a second. The next day it was about his cardiovascular ability to call two plays at once. Oh, and he was injured too; might not have played Sunday. Except he’d spent 58 minutes dodging the Lions rush because the Redskins offensive line STILL isn’t any good and all of a sudden he was injured? Please. Shanahan did everything but say, “I am not a crook.”
He’s not. But he IS a liar and a raging egomaniac. That said, if McNabb plays well enough for the Redskins to beat the Eagles, everyone in Washington will forgive him. If I’m McNabb, regardless of what happens the rest of the season, I’m on the first bus (okay, chartered airplane) out of town when the season’s over.
Moss doesn’t really deserve any space here because he’s a jerk and, at this point in time, he’s not that good a football player anymore. That’s why Bill Belichick was willing to let him go—talk about a steal, he got a third round pick for him and the Vikings got an embarrassing tirade aimed at some poor guy feeding the team in return—and why the Vikings didn’t put up with his insufferable behavior.
What got me this morning was hearing Chris Carter—or “CC,” as he’s known to the morning pitchmen—saying this: “Randy Moss is a man of principal.” Really, seriously? Here’s what’s more accurate: He’s a jerk who once upon a time could REALLY play. “CC,” also said Moss just can’t tolerate coaches who are ‘wishy-washy,’ and ‘don’t take responsibility when things go bad.’ You can say anything you want about Bill Belichick but wishy-washy? Doesn’t step up when things go bad? One of the morning PM’s (guess which one) acted like Carter had just found a cure for cancer after this, ‘analysis.’ My God. While I’m at my ESPN-bashing it was amazing to see one of the Hasselbeck’s (Elizabeth perhaps?) actually claiming that ‘the Shanahan’s,’ weren’t happy with McNabb’s practice habits. Gee, wonder where he heard that—as if it is at all relevant. Is there ANYONE in the NFL these ESPN guys won’t be apologists for?
And, briefly on Tiger Woods and number one: It REALLY doesn’t matter. The World Rankings are bogus the way they’re calculated and all that matters is when Woods wins his next major. If he wins in Malaysia this week and goes back to No. 1, that’s fine. There should also be a rule that you can’t be No. 1 in the world unless you’ve won at least one major.
Last, but certainly not least: Sparky Anderson. I won’t claim to know him well but I spent a lot of time with him in 1992 when I was writing my first baseball book, “Play Ball.” Sparky was a modern-day Casey Stengel: a great manager; he won World Series in both leagues and managed two of the great teams of the last 50 years: the ’75 and ’76 Reds and the ’84 Tigers who started 35-5 and never looked back.
Sparky loved to tell stories, one of the things that makes it even sadder that he’s dealing with dementia at the age of 76. He was funny and he loved having people sit around his office so he could entertain them. In that sense he was a bit like Tommy Lasorda but Lasorda had a mean streak Sparky never had. In fact, Sparky liked going out of his way to point out good things about people.
Early in the ’92 season the Tigers came to Baltimore for a four game series and got swept, which turned out to be the beginning of an awful season. I had met Sparky during spring training and we had agreed to get together that weekend. When I walked in to his office Friday night, I wondered if he’d remember. He did. “How about two o’clock tomorrow,” he said. That early for a 7 o’clock game I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “You said you wanted some time, right?”
He was there right on the dot of 2 o’clock and talked for almost three hours. One person he brought up during the conversation was Johnny Oates, who was managing the Orioles.
“That kid, (Sparky called almost everyone kid) is a hell of a manager and a hell of a guy,” he said. “He had us way down last night. He’s got a young team, they probably want to pile it on. He wouldn’t do it. He’s up 8-1, he’s not running anybody, he’s just playing to get the game over. That’s a pro. He’s one of the good ones.”
I was lucky enough to get to know Johnny Oates quite well that season. He WAS a hell of a guy. And a good manager. Sparky was also a hell of a manager and one of the true good guys.
Monday, September 27, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Can’t escape the Redskins; Winning will fill diminished bandwagon
One of the many pleasures about being on the eastern end of Long Island at this time of year is that I’m not bombarded every time I turn on a radio or a TV with talk of The Washington Redskins.
To be fair, Washington has improved as a sports town since the arrival of The Nationals, because a baseball team—even a bad one—gives people something to talk about and write about every day from March to October. This year, with signs of hope and the arrival of Stephen Strasburg, there has been interest in the Nats that goes beyond the hard-core baseball fans. Even the usually Redskins-obsessed sportstalk radio hosts in D.C. are willing to talk baseball on occasion.
That’s a major improvement. I still remember going on vacation to Boston in September of 1978. That was the year, of course, of the classic Yankees-Red Sox race that culminated in the Bucky Bleeping Dent one-game playoff won by the Yankees. Being in Boston that week was thrilling. Reading The Boston Globe every morning was fabulous. One Sunday afternoon a friend of mine and I drove to Salem and Gloucester. Along the way we switched back and forth between the Red Sox game and the Yankees game—picking up the Yankees signal on a Connecticut station. I think BOTH teams won in extra innings that day.
When I went back to Washington I walked into sports editor George Solomon’s office. He asked how my week off had been. “It was great,” I said. “The baseball writing in Boston is SO good. You know, it’s sad, you can’t really be a good sports town without a baseball team to write about.”
George went ballistic, told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and banished me from the office. I went back to my desk, picked up the sports section and counted EIGHT Redskin stories. There were brief wire stories on the Yankees and Red Sox. Case closed.
How important were the Redskins then—and now? My friend Terry Hanson was the publicity director in those days for The Washington Diplomats, the NASL soccer team—which was my first beat at The Post. Needless to say ANY publicity from The Post was a big deal for the Diplomats. The Diplomats offices were in RFK Stadium, a few yards away from the press box that was used for both soccer and football. It was just a little bit more crowded on football game days.
One morning Terry was in his office when his secretary came in to say George Solomon was on the phone. Terry practically jumped out of his chair. Maybe The Post wanted to do a long story on new coach Alan Spavin? Whatever it was, this was BIG—the sports editor of The Washington Post was calling HIM.
Hanson picked up the phone. George was almost breathless. This really was BIG he thought. “Terry I need a favor,” George said.
Trying to sound cool, Hanson said, “Well George, if I can arrange something, I’ll certainly try to help. What is it?”
“The Redskins play their first exhibition game tonight. I need to be sure our phone in the press box is working. Can you walk out there and check it for me?”
It was at that moment that it occurred to Hanson that George had probably never HEARD of Alan Spavin.
Even though I’ve lived in Washington since graduating from college, I’ve always felt somewhat adrift because I’ve never been able to wrap my arms around the local teams. I have come to like and enjoy the Capitals even though the Islanders will always be my hockey team—unless they move to Kansas City because the politicians on Long Island refuse to cooperate on a desperately needed new building—and I enjoy any success the Nats have unless it involves beating the Mets. I’m ambivalent about the Wizards because the last time I really cared about the NBA, Willis Reed and Walt Frazier were still suiting up for the Knicks.
Nowadays, with the internet and TV packages, someone like me can easily keep track of the Mets and the Islanders even while living in DC. What’s different being here (Long Island) versus being in DC is simple: the Redskins. Being in DC there is no escaping from them 12 months a year. They are a monolith and they know it, which is one reason why owner Dan Snyder can treat the media with disdain 90 percent of the time and get away with it.
Snyder came onto my radar—sadly—yesterday when I was in my car after hosting Jim Rome from a studio in Southampton and flipped on WFAN, expecting to hear talk about whether the Mets were going to trade for a starting pitcher. Instead, for some reason, the hosts were interviewing new Redskins coach Mike Shanahan.
I was about to hit a button to change the station when one of the hosts asked Shanahan about his decision to go work for Snyder. Look, there are about eight million reasons (a year) why Shanahan went to work for Snyder. Nothing wrong with that. Of course Shanahan wasn’t going to say that so he reverted to the old, “you know no one wants to win more than Dan Snyder,” line.
Almost all owners want to win. Some don’t have the kind of money Snyder has but they all want to win. Snyder wants to win for Snyder; for his ego and for no other reason. Clearly he has no respect for his fans because he has gouged them every chance he’s gotten since day one and last year, when they finally turned on him after 11 years of mis-management, he had his security people treat them like suspicious-looking characters trying to board an airplane.
The Redskins will be better this year—they pretty much have to be after last year’s 4-12 debacle. Donovan McNabb is a clear upgrade at quarterback; they finally drafted a left tackle and made improvements in the offensive line and Shanahan is an upgrade at coach. It finally occurred to Snyder that being the most hated man in Washington wasn’t really a good thing and he has been trying to rehab his image this offseason—staying in the background during free agent signings; talking to the media on occasion (almost always at a charity event so people HAVE to mention that a billionaire is doing charity work as if that somehow makes him a good guy) even jettisoning his long-time pit-bull PR guy who loved threatening the media members with banishment from Redskins Park if they didn’t behave properly.
I know if the Redskins start to win this fall, people in DC will jump back on their bandwagon so fast it will make heads spin. George Steinbrenner went from constantly booed to canonized in New York not so much because he changed—although he clearly did—but because the Yankees became winners. Snyder has none of Steinbrenner’s charm OR his sense of humor. But if his team wins this fall, few in Washington will care.
Maybe I’ll take another vacation in Boston in September.
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
To be fair, Washington has improved as a sports town since the arrival of The Nationals, because a baseball team—even a bad one—gives people something to talk about and write about every day from March to October. This year, with signs of hope and the arrival of Stephen Strasburg, there has been interest in the Nats that goes beyond the hard-core baseball fans. Even the usually Redskins-obsessed sportstalk radio hosts in D.C. are willing to talk baseball on occasion.
That’s a major improvement. I still remember going on vacation to Boston in September of 1978. That was the year, of course, of the classic Yankees-Red Sox race that culminated in the Bucky Bleeping Dent one-game playoff won by the Yankees. Being in Boston that week was thrilling. Reading The Boston Globe every morning was fabulous. One Sunday afternoon a friend of mine and I drove to Salem and Gloucester. Along the way we switched back and forth between the Red Sox game and the Yankees game—picking up the Yankees signal on a Connecticut station. I think BOTH teams won in extra innings that day.
When I went back to Washington I walked into sports editor George Solomon’s office. He asked how my week off had been. “It was great,” I said. “The baseball writing in Boston is SO good. You know, it’s sad, you can’t really be a good sports town without a baseball team to write about.”
George went ballistic, told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and banished me from the office. I went back to my desk, picked up the sports section and counted EIGHT Redskin stories. There were brief wire stories on the Yankees and Red Sox. Case closed.
How important were the Redskins then—and now? My friend Terry Hanson was the publicity director in those days for The Washington Diplomats, the NASL soccer team—which was my first beat at The Post. Needless to say ANY publicity from The Post was a big deal for the Diplomats. The Diplomats offices were in RFK Stadium, a few yards away from the press box that was used for both soccer and football. It was just a little bit more crowded on football game days.
One morning Terry was in his office when his secretary came in to say George Solomon was on the phone. Terry practically jumped out of his chair. Maybe The Post wanted to do a long story on new coach Alan Spavin? Whatever it was, this was BIG—the sports editor of The Washington Post was calling HIM.
Hanson picked up the phone. George was almost breathless. This really was BIG he thought. “Terry I need a favor,” George said.
Trying to sound cool, Hanson said, “Well George, if I can arrange something, I’ll certainly try to help. What is it?”
“The Redskins play their first exhibition game tonight. I need to be sure our phone in the press box is working. Can you walk out there and check it for me?”
It was at that moment that it occurred to Hanson that George had probably never HEARD of Alan Spavin.
Even though I’ve lived in Washington since graduating from college, I’ve always felt somewhat adrift because I’ve never been able to wrap my arms around the local teams. I have come to like and enjoy the Capitals even though the Islanders will always be my hockey team—unless they move to Kansas City because the politicians on Long Island refuse to cooperate on a desperately needed new building—and I enjoy any success the Nats have unless it involves beating the Mets. I’m ambivalent about the Wizards because the last time I really cared about the NBA, Willis Reed and Walt Frazier were still suiting up for the Knicks.
Nowadays, with the internet and TV packages, someone like me can easily keep track of the Mets and the Islanders even while living in DC. What’s different being here (Long Island) versus being in DC is simple: the Redskins. Being in DC there is no escaping from them 12 months a year. They are a monolith and they know it, which is one reason why owner Dan Snyder can treat the media with disdain 90 percent of the time and get away with it.
Snyder came onto my radar—sadly—yesterday when I was in my car after hosting Jim Rome from a studio in Southampton and flipped on WFAN, expecting to hear talk about whether the Mets were going to trade for a starting pitcher. Instead, for some reason, the hosts were interviewing new Redskins coach Mike Shanahan.
I was about to hit a button to change the station when one of the hosts asked Shanahan about his decision to go work for Snyder. Look, there are about eight million reasons (a year) why Shanahan went to work for Snyder. Nothing wrong with that. Of course Shanahan wasn’t going to say that so he reverted to the old, “you know no one wants to win more than Dan Snyder,” line.
Almost all owners want to win. Some don’t have the kind of money Snyder has but they all want to win. Snyder wants to win for Snyder; for his ego and for no other reason. Clearly he has no respect for his fans because he has gouged them every chance he’s gotten since day one and last year, when they finally turned on him after 11 years of mis-management, he had his security people treat them like suspicious-looking characters trying to board an airplane.
The Redskins will be better this year—they pretty much have to be after last year’s 4-12 debacle. Donovan McNabb is a clear upgrade at quarterback; they finally drafted a left tackle and made improvements in the offensive line and Shanahan is an upgrade at coach. It finally occurred to Snyder that being the most hated man in Washington wasn’t really a good thing and he has been trying to rehab his image this offseason—staying in the background during free agent signings; talking to the media on occasion (almost always at a charity event so people HAVE to mention that a billionaire is doing charity work as if that somehow makes him a good guy) even jettisoning his long-time pit-bull PR guy who loved threatening the media members with banishment from Redskins Park if they didn’t behave properly.
I know if the Redskins start to win this fall, people in DC will jump back on their bandwagon so fast it will make heads spin. George Steinbrenner went from constantly booed to canonized in New York not so much because he changed—although he clearly did—but because the Yankees became winners. Snyder has none of Steinbrenner’s charm OR his sense of humor. But if his team wins this fall, few in Washington will care.
Maybe I’ll take another vacation in Boston in September.
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Review of a six item news morning – Arenas, Hall of Fame, Redskins, Cornell, PGA Tour and the Islanders
News Item 1: David Stern finally gets mad—justifiably—and suspends Gilbert Arenas indefinitely.
News Item 2: Andre Dawson is voted into The Hall of Fame—good job by the voters. Robert Alomar is not—he should have been but will be next year. Bert Blyleven is not for the 13th straight year. I just don’t get it.
News Item 3: Mike Shanahan is introduced as the new Redskins coach. He deftly ducks questions about who will be in charge and does everything but kiss Dan Snyder on the lips during his press conference. Of course for $35 million most of us would kiss almost anyone on the lips.
News Item 4: Kansas comes from eight points down AT HOME to beat CORNELL. I was a little stunned at game’s end based on the way the fans were acting in Allen Field House that they didn’t storm the court.
News Item 5: The PGA Tour begins the 2010 season today on Maui. Hallelujah. It might be possible to talk about golf for at least a sentence or two without using the words Tiger Woods.
News Item 6: The Islanders come from behind in Colorado, then blow a lead but beat the Avalanche 3-2. They are now at .500. Okay, this may only be a news item to me but what the heck. I went to bed happy.
Now, to review.
Item one--I have no doubt that David Stern would have preferred to wait for the legal process to move further along (he is, after all, a lawyer) before taking action on Gilbert Arenas. But after Arenas’s idiotic behavior on Tuesday in Philadelphia, he had no choice but to act.
The photo of Arenas pretending to ‘shoot,’ his teammates with his fingers—while they all stood around laughing—may have been the most damning moment in this entire debacle. Arenas then made it worse (if possible) with his postgame comment that, if he felt as if he’d done anything wrong, then he’d apologize.
There are some guys in sports who need John McEnroe following them around repeatedly saying, “You cannot be serious!.” (Quick aside: Years ago I was in a hotel room with McEnroe after a match. Mary Carillo was also there as was a friend of McEnroe’s whose name I honestly can’t remember. Room service had been ordered and hadn’t shown up after 45 minutes. McEnroe finally told his friend to call and find out what the hell was going on. The friend picked up the phone and said to McEnroe, “do you want me to just ask what’s going on or, you know, give them the ‘You can NOT be serious,’ bit?’ McEnroe opted for the latter. The food showed up about five minutes later).
Once Stern saw the photo and the quote he had to get Arenas off the court right away. If he hadn’t, he would have looked foolish. Flip Saunders looked pretty bad not taking action right away in Philadelphia but Stern seems to be covering for the Wizards and their inaction by saying he had ordered them not to take action until he did.
My guess is Arenas doesn’t get it and isn’t going to get it. He still thinks his mistake in bringing guns into The Verizon Center was akin to forgetting to slow down in one of those camera speed traps—pay the 40 bucks and move on. It’s pretty clear his teammates haven’t gotten it yet either even though they tried to act as if they did in Cleveland Wednesday night. Still, you could hear them clinging to the, “when the truth comes out it won’t be so bad,” line.
Wrong. This is already really bad and, in all likelihood, the more truth that comes out the worse it is going to be for Arenas.
It’s truly a sad story because this was a guy who lit up a bleak sports skyline when he first came to Washington. And, as if so often the case, the reaction to the mistake has been at least as costly as the mistake itself. If Arenas had instantly thrown himself on the mercy of the court of public opinion and said, ‘My God, what was I thinking, I’m so sorry,” and NOT twittered jokes and NOT shrugged it off as no big deal and NOT still been playing it off as a joke the day after his lawyer released his clearly insincere apology, people would be saying by now, ‘hey, leave him alone, he made a mistake and he acknowledged it.’
Now, even the perpetual jock-defenders are shaking their heads and saying, ‘what was he thinking?’
We all know the answer to that question.
Item Two: I’m happy Andre Dawson made it to the Hall of Fame. In the years that I voted, I always put him on my ballot. (The Washington Post no longer allows writers to vote for Halls of Fame which I think is silly but, hey, they’re writing the checks and I’m cashing them so I don’t vote). He was a great two-way player for a long time, a superb base runner who had a long, productive career. I think his batting average (.279) held him back but all his other numbers were so good—including eight gold gloves—I thought he was deserving.
Alomar is a lock Hall of Famer. The only reason he came up just short this time (73.7 percent of the votes when 75 percent is needed) is because some voters are still punishing him for the 1996 John Hirschbeck spitting incident (Hirschbeck BTW has forgiven him and endorsed his candidacy) and because there are some guys who will not vote for a guy his first time on the ballot.
The second reason is a joke: You either are a Hall of Famer or are not a Hall of Famer. I had this argument with Bill Conlin, for whom I have great respect, when he didn’t vote for Nolan Ryan the first (and only) time he was on the ballot. I’ve always believed that if a voter leaves certain players off the ballot for any reason—like a Cal Ripken or a Tony Gwynn to give two recent examples—he should lose his vote for the next year. Seriously, who died and made any of us God?
The Hirschbeck incident is different. The ballot DOES say that a player’s actions as a person can be taken into account. Alomar—surprise—was initially unrepentant when the incident occurred in 1996. In fact, one of the sadder scenes I’ve ever seen was the first game of the playoffs that year when Oriole fans, normally among the best in baseball, booed the UMPIRES when they came on the field because Alomar was going to be suspended to begin the next season.
That was Alomar’s one truly bad moment and you don’t wipe out an entire career for that. (Steroids is another story entirely).
Blyleven is the mystery to me. He came up a little shy of 300 wins—287—but had some other great numbers, notably the fact that he pitched SIXTY shutouts. Just as one means of comparison, that’s more shutouts than Tom Glavine had complete games (57). Sure, different era, but not THAT different—Glavine was in the big leagues for several years before Blyleven retired.
I’m not picking on Tom—obviously—and he is and should be a lock Hall of Famer since he won 305 games. But sixty shutouts? Are you kidding? Blyleven pitched on a lot of bad teams but on good ones too. There are parts of his record you can nit-pick but overall? He should have been in years ago.
For the record, this isn’t personal at all. The couple of times I dealt with Blyleven as a player he wasn’t especially pleasant. I remember in 1992 when I was doing my first baseball book trying to set a time to talk to him when he was pitching for the Angels. I was in Anaheim for three days and asked if he could give me some time on any of those days since he had just pitched the day before. “I’ve done my media for the week,” he said. (He had done Roy Firestone’s show the day before).
So, I went instead to talk to Jim Abbott, who you may remember became a solid big league pitcher even though he was born without a right hand. “I’ll make you a deal,” Abbott said. “I’ll talk to you for as long as you want about whatever you want if you tell me everything you know about Steffi Graf.” (I’d just written ‘Hard Courts.’)
Jim Abbott is a Hall of Fame guy. Blyleven is a Hall of Fame pitcher.
Item three: Shanahan arrives. Building of monument begins. There’s not much to say about this except that everyone knows if Dan Snyder doesn’t get out of the way it won’t matter how good a coach Shanahan is. When Shanahan was asked who was in charge he answered the question as if the issue was whether he or Bruce Allen had final say. Good answer even though that wasn’t the question.
He also kept saying over and over that he had never met anyone who was more enthusiastic about the Washington Redskins than Dan Snyder. Wow, that’s out on a limb. It’s a little bit like saying you’ve never met anyone more enthusiastic about my books than me. Then he said Joe Gibbs had told him no one had been more supportive of him than Snyder. Last I looked Jack Kent Cooke gave Gibbs everything he could possibly want to help him win three Super Bowls AND chose him in a power struggle with Bobby Beathard—which was probably a mistake. Then again, Snyder did FINANCIALLY support Gibbs better than anyone ever did.
Oh, one more thing: Word today is that Jerry Gray may become the defensive coordinator. What a surprise, the guy Snyder used to get around The Rooney Rule, who stood there and stonewalled for three weeks not only keeps his job but gets promoted. So unlike Snyder.
Item 4—I wrote here last week that Cornell is really good. The Big Red came very close to becoming national darlings last night but couldn’t quite hold on against the No. 1 ranked team in the country. ESPN correctly switched to the late stages of the game from a desultory Duke-Iowa State game and I swear I thought I was watching Kansas-Texas the last five minutes based on the crowd reaction to the rally.
No doubt they were relieved at dodging what they thought would be an embarrassing loss. But really it wouldn’t have been that embarrassing: Cornell’s good. Of course now they will be everyone’s first round upset darling in March. That’s IF they can beat Harvard to win The Ivy League. And if you think the committee is giving the Ivy League an at-large bid you should apply for a job at The Fritz Pollard Alliance and oversee the Rooney Rule.
Item 5—I did my Golf Channel Essay this week on the start of the new season and the fact that it would be nice to be able to watch golf and talk about golf without Tiger coming up in every other sentence. I was trying to make the point that while Tiger is no doubt the face of the game to MANY, there are lots of us who liked golf before Tiger and will continue to like it without Tiger—however long that may be during his ‘leave of absence.’ I brought up the fact that when ‘A Good Walk Spoiled,’ reached number one on The New York Times bestseller list in 1995, the name Tiger Woods appeared once—for two sentences.
One of the better regular posters on the blog, Vince, accused me yesterday of being self-serving by bringing up the book. Maybe, but I honestly thought it tangibly made my point. He said if I’d written the book five or six years later with Tiger as a major character the book would have been on The Times list for three years instead of seven months. Again, maybe. But I’ve written golf books since then that featured Tiger and, while they’ve sold well, they didn’t outsell ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ And, for the record Vince, I was making fun of the 50 percent who only watch golf when Tiger’s playing when I said, “50 percent of us who watch golf do so with or without Tiger.”
Item 6—There was a Rick DiPietro spotting on the Islanders bench last night. He’s been out so long his 15 year contract may be up soon. Dwayne Roloson has been great all year but if DiPietro could actually come back healthy…No, not going there, too far out on a limb.
News Item 2: Andre Dawson is voted into The Hall of Fame—good job by the voters. Robert Alomar is not—he should have been but will be next year. Bert Blyleven is not for the 13th straight year. I just don’t get it.
News Item 3: Mike Shanahan is introduced as the new Redskins coach. He deftly ducks questions about who will be in charge and does everything but kiss Dan Snyder on the lips during his press conference. Of course for $35 million most of us would kiss almost anyone on the lips.
News Item 4: Kansas comes from eight points down AT HOME to beat CORNELL. I was a little stunned at game’s end based on the way the fans were acting in Allen Field House that they didn’t storm the court.
News Item 5: The PGA Tour begins the 2010 season today on Maui. Hallelujah. It might be possible to talk about golf for at least a sentence or two without using the words Tiger Woods.
News Item 6: The Islanders come from behind in Colorado, then blow a lead but beat the Avalanche 3-2. They are now at .500. Okay, this may only be a news item to me but what the heck. I went to bed happy.
Now, to review.
Item one--I have no doubt that David Stern would have preferred to wait for the legal process to move further along (he is, after all, a lawyer) before taking action on Gilbert Arenas. But after Arenas’s idiotic behavior on Tuesday in Philadelphia, he had no choice but to act.
The photo of Arenas pretending to ‘shoot,’ his teammates with his fingers—while they all stood around laughing—may have been the most damning moment in this entire debacle. Arenas then made it worse (if possible) with his postgame comment that, if he felt as if he’d done anything wrong, then he’d apologize.
There are some guys in sports who need John McEnroe following them around repeatedly saying, “You cannot be serious!.” (Quick aside: Years ago I was in a hotel room with McEnroe after a match. Mary Carillo was also there as was a friend of McEnroe’s whose name I honestly can’t remember. Room service had been ordered and hadn’t shown up after 45 minutes. McEnroe finally told his friend to call and find out what the hell was going on. The friend picked up the phone and said to McEnroe, “do you want me to just ask what’s going on or, you know, give them the ‘You can NOT be serious,’ bit?’ McEnroe opted for the latter. The food showed up about five minutes later).
Once Stern saw the photo and the quote he had to get Arenas off the court right away. If he hadn’t, he would have looked foolish. Flip Saunders looked pretty bad not taking action right away in Philadelphia but Stern seems to be covering for the Wizards and their inaction by saying he had ordered them not to take action until he did.
My guess is Arenas doesn’t get it and isn’t going to get it. He still thinks his mistake in bringing guns into The Verizon Center was akin to forgetting to slow down in one of those camera speed traps—pay the 40 bucks and move on. It’s pretty clear his teammates haven’t gotten it yet either even though they tried to act as if they did in Cleveland Wednesday night. Still, you could hear them clinging to the, “when the truth comes out it won’t be so bad,” line.
Wrong. This is already really bad and, in all likelihood, the more truth that comes out the worse it is going to be for Arenas.
It’s truly a sad story because this was a guy who lit up a bleak sports skyline when he first came to Washington. And, as if so often the case, the reaction to the mistake has been at least as costly as the mistake itself. If Arenas had instantly thrown himself on the mercy of the court of public opinion and said, ‘My God, what was I thinking, I’m so sorry,” and NOT twittered jokes and NOT shrugged it off as no big deal and NOT still been playing it off as a joke the day after his lawyer released his clearly insincere apology, people would be saying by now, ‘hey, leave him alone, he made a mistake and he acknowledged it.’
Now, even the perpetual jock-defenders are shaking their heads and saying, ‘what was he thinking?’
We all know the answer to that question.
Item Two: I’m happy Andre Dawson made it to the Hall of Fame. In the years that I voted, I always put him on my ballot. (The Washington Post no longer allows writers to vote for Halls of Fame which I think is silly but, hey, they’re writing the checks and I’m cashing them so I don’t vote). He was a great two-way player for a long time, a superb base runner who had a long, productive career. I think his batting average (.279) held him back but all his other numbers were so good—including eight gold gloves—I thought he was deserving.
Alomar is a lock Hall of Famer. The only reason he came up just short this time (73.7 percent of the votes when 75 percent is needed) is because some voters are still punishing him for the 1996 John Hirschbeck spitting incident (Hirschbeck BTW has forgiven him and endorsed his candidacy) and because there are some guys who will not vote for a guy his first time on the ballot.
The second reason is a joke: You either are a Hall of Famer or are not a Hall of Famer. I had this argument with Bill Conlin, for whom I have great respect, when he didn’t vote for Nolan Ryan the first (and only) time he was on the ballot. I’ve always believed that if a voter leaves certain players off the ballot for any reason—like a Cal Ripken or a Tony Gwynn to give two recent examples—he should lose his vote for the next year. Seriously, who died and made any of us God?
The Hirschbeck incident is different. The ballot DOES say that a player’s actions as a person can be taken into account. Alomar—surprise—was initially unrepentant when the incident occurred in 1996. In fact, one of the sadder scenes I’ve ever seen was the first game of the playoffs that year when Oriole fans, normally among the best in baseball, booed the UMPIRES when they came on the field because Alomar was going to be suspended to begin the next season.
That was Alomar’s one truly bad moment and you don’t wipe out an entire career for that. (Steroids is another story entirely).
Blyleven is the mystery to me. He came up a little shy of 300 wins—287—but had some other great numbers, notably the fact that he pitched SIXTY shutouts. Just as one means of comparison, that’s more shutouts than Tom Glavine had complete games (57). Sure, different era, but not THAT different—Glavine was in the big leagues for several years before Blyleven retired.
I’m not picking on Tom—obviously—and he is and should be a lock Hall of Famer since he won 305 games. But sixty shutouts? Are you kidding? Blyleven pitched on a lot of bad teams but on good ones too. There are parts of his record you can nit-pick but overall? He should have been in years ago.
For the record, this isn’t personal at all. The couple of times I dealt with Blyleven as a player he wasn’t especially pleasant. I remember in 1992 when I was doing my first baseball book trying to set a time to talk to him when he was pitching for the Angels. I was in Anaheim for three days and asked if he could give me some time on any of those days since he had just pitched the day before. “I’ve done my media for the week,” he said. (He had done Roy Firestone’s show the day before).
So, I went instead to talk to Jim Abbott, who you may remember became a solid big league pitcher even though he was born without a right hand. “I’ll make you a deal,” Abbott said. “I’ll talk to you for as long as you want about whatever you want if you tell me everything you know about Steffi Graf.” (I’d just written ‘Hard Courts.’)
Jim Abbott is a Hall of Fame guy. Blyleven is a Hall of Fame pitcher.
Item three: Shanahan arrives. Building of monument begins. There’s not much to say about this except that everyone knows if Dan Snyder doesn’t get out of the way it won’t matter how good a coach Shanahan is. When Shanahan was asked who was in charge he answered the question as if the issue was whether he or Bruce Allen had final say. Good answer even though that wasn’t the question.
He also kept saying over and over that he had never met anyone who was more enthusiastic about the Washington Redskins than Dan Snyder. Wow, that’s out on a limb. It’s a little bit like saying you’ve never met anyone more enthusiastic about my books than me. Then he said Joe Gibbs had told him no one had been more supportive of him than Snyder. Last I looked Jack Kent Cooke gave Gibbs everything he could possibly want to help him win three Super Bowls AND chose him in a power struggle with Bobby Beathard—which was probably a mistake. Then again, Snyder did FINANCIALLY support Gibbs better than anyone ever did.
Oh, one more thing: Word today is that Jerry Gray may become the defensive coordinator. What a surprise, the guy Snyder used to get around The Rooney Rule, who stood there and stonewalled for three weeks not only keeps his job but gets promoted. So unlike Snyder.
Item 4—I wrote here last week that Cornell is really good. The Big Red came very close to becoming national darlings last night but couldn’t quite hold on against the No. 1 ranked team in the country. ESPN correctly switched to the late stages of the game from a desultory Duke-Iowa State game and I swear I thought I was watching Kansas-Texas the last five minutes based on the crowd reaction to the rally.
No doubt they were relieved at dodging what they thought would be an embarrassing loss. But really it wouldn’t have been that embarrassing: Cornell’s good. Of course now they will be everyone’s first round upset darling in March. That’s IF they can beat Harvard to win The Ivy League. And if you think the committee is giving the Ivy League an at-large bid you should apply for a job at The Fritz Pollard Alliance and oversee the Rooney Rule.
Item 5—I did my Golf Channel Essay this week on the start of the new season and the fact that it would be nice to be able to watch golf and talk about golf without Tiger coming up in every other sentence. I was trying to make the point that while Tiger is no doubt the face of the game to MANY, there are lots of us who liked golf before Tiger and will continue to like it without Tiger—however long that may be during his ‘leave of absence.’ I brought up the fact that when ‘A Good Walk Spoiled,’ reached number one on The New York Times bestseller list in 1995, the name Tiger Woods appeared once—for two sentences.
One of the better regular posters on the blog, Vince, accused me yesterday of being self-serving by bringing up the book. Maybe, but I honestly thought it tangibly made my point. He said if I’d written the book five or six years later with Tiger as a major character the book would have been on The Times list for three years instead of seven months. Again, maybe. But I’ve written golf books since then that featured Tiger and, while they’ve sold well, they didn’t outsell ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ And, for the record Vince, I was making fun of the 50 percent who only watch golf when Tiger’s playing when I said, “50 percent of us who watch golf do so with or without Tiger.”
Item 6—There was a Rick DiPietro spotting on the Islanders bench last night. He’s been out so long his 15 year contract may be up soon. Dwayne Roloson has been great all year but if DiPietro could actually come back healthy…No, not going there, too far out on a limb.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Let’s talk DC area sports – Redskins, Wizards and others…
This has been said before by me and many others but it continues to amaze me just how bad a sports town Washington, D.C. is except on the high school level.
I realize as I write this that a lot of you who live around the country are starting to yawn—although you should find Letterman’s list on Gilbert Arenas’s 10 excuses because it is fall down funny—but it really is remarkable how often things go wrong and how consistently poorly they are handled by the people allegedly in charge.
The town’s obsession is with the Redskins. The way the local media kowtows to the team is remarkable. On Tuesday I was doing a local cable sports show and Redskins rookie Brian Orakpo was scheduled to appear. Five minutes before air time we were told that Orakpo was balking at doing the interview because it was too cold outside.
Let’s be honest, Orakpo wasn’t going to say anything newsworthy: he was going to say Jim Zorn was a good coach but gee Mike Shanahan is a great coach and we’re just SO close to being a really good team. Rather than lose those five minutes with him the producers agreed to let him SIT IN HIS CAR with a mike on while the cameraman shot him through the window of the car.
It was Saturday Night Live parody TV and Orakpo was every bit as predictable as you might expect.
And Orakpo is one of the GOOD guys on the Redskins.
What is most remarkable though is the way every new coaching hire is treated as the second coming. (Of course Joe Gibbs WAS the second coming). People do everything but dance in the streets. No doubt there are Redskins fans checking out flights to Dallas for February 2011 and next year’s Super Bowl, now that Mike Shanahan has been announced as the next second coming.
Is Shanahan a good coach? Based on his track record, absolutely. He won two Super Bowls and I really don’t buy the nay-sayers who say “how many did he win without John Elway?” Okay, how many did Vince Lombardi win without Bart Starr? Bill Belichick without Tom Brady? Chuck Noll without Terry Bradshaw? Don Shula without Bob Griese? Last I looked they were pretty good coaches. The only real exception to that rule might be Gibbs who won Super Bowls with Joe Theisman, Doug Williams and Mark Rypien at quarterback. Only Theisman was much better than ordinary and he wasn’t exactly a Hall of Famer. There are others but for the most part you don’t win Super Bowls unless your quarterback is better than ordinary. The Super Bowl winners in this century have been The Rams (Kurt Warner); the Ravens (Trent Dilfer); the Buccaneers (Brad Johnson); the Patriots (three times with Brady); the Steelers (twice with Ben Roethlisberger) the Colts (Peyton Manning); and the Giants (Eli Manning).
That’s seven wins for quarterbacks who either will be in the Hall of Fame or will come very close to it; one for a young quarterback who may yet become special (Eli) and two for guys considered competent—Dilfer and Johnson. Dilfer was working with arguably the greatest defense in the history (at least statistically it was) and Johnson, who many believe was very underrated) was helped by having his counterpart, Rich Gannon, throw five interceptions.
But I digress. Shanahan can coach—no ifs ands or buts. And let’s all stop with the, “he wasted a pick taking Maurice Clarett,” in the third round. So what? Third round picks flame out all the time—so do first round picks for that matter. He took a gamble and it didn’t work. Big deal.
Shanahan’s not the major issue with the Redskins. The owner is the major issue the same way he’s been the issue since he bought the team in 1999. There seems to be an assumption that because Shanahan and Bruce Allen signed on that Snyder is finally going to stop meddling in every football decision.
I’ll believe it when I see it. So far, Snyder is still acting like Snyder.
He completely humiliated poor Jim Zorn, who handled a ludicrous situation with total class, in his final weeks as coach. Forget stripping him of play-calling duties, that was bad enough. He then “interviewed,” one of Zorn’s own assistants with the season still going on in order to subvert the Rooney Rule so he could hire Shanahan as soon as the season ended. It’s a shame NFL commissioner Roger Goodell didn’t step to the plate and call the sham interview of Jerry Gray a sham, because that’s what it was.
Gray was obviously told by Snyder that if he wants to be considered for employment on the new staff he better keep his mouth shut. Gray initially lied when he was asked if he’d been interviewed; then the Redskins staff put out a written, “he meant to say no comment,” release and then he simply refused to answer questions even after John Wooten, who runs the Fritz Pollard Alliance announced that Gray’s interview had satisfied the parameters of the Rooney Rule (which was a joke in itself).
Snyder is paying Shanahan an outrageous amount of money--$7 million a year for five years according to today’s Washington Post. What’s more, he simply HAD to get on his plane and fly to Denver to pick Shanahan up and fly him to DC.
Why? Because he has to be in the middle of all this. He has to show off his wealth every chance he gets. This is an organization that laid close to 100 people off earlier this year citing the need to cut costs. How much did it cost to fly that jet back and forth to Denver? Snyder couldn’t have sent Shanahan a first class ticket and said, “We’ll have a car meet you at the airport?”
No, he had to play his silly game with “Redskins 1,” (oh please) knowing that the DC media would run out to the airport to cover the airplane’s landing. He LIVES for this stuff.
So what makes anyone think he’s not going to be sitting in the draft room talking about, “Redskin grades,” or trailing along with Shanahan and Bruce Allen on scouting trips the way he did ONE MONTH AGO with Vinny Cerrato. Maybe Shanahan and Allen have told him that’s over as a condition of their employment. Maybe.
And maybe Snyder made that pledge like he did with Marty Schottenheimer nine years ago and it will stick for about 20 minutes. We’ll see. The Redskins have the fourth pick in the draft. If they do anything other than draft a left tackle (especially if they take a quarterback instead) then you’ll know Snyder’s still involved in the decision-making and, if you’re a Redskins fan, you better dig in for even more disappointment.
Of course these days—remarkably enough—there is actually a team in Washington in more disarray than the Redskins and that’s the Wizards. Everyone now knows about the Gilbert Arenas guns saga. On Monday, when someone explained to him that he could actually go to jail, Arenas stopped joking about the situation and put out a lawyer-written statement saying he was sorry. That appeared to be a step in the right direction until Tuesday in Philadelphia when Arenas, upon being introduced by the PA announcer, jokingly pointed his fingers at his teammates as if he was shooting them.
My God Gilbert when will you learn? This isn’t funny (okay, Letterman was funny but that’s because he was saying Arenas was a joke not that Arenas’s joke was funny) and every time you act as if it is you look like a dope AND you send a terrible message to every single kid who has ever worn your jersey top—and in DC that’s a lot of kids.
You know what Flip Saunders should have done at that moment? He should have said to Arenas, ‘go sit on the end of the bench and watch the game.’ But the Wizards management has been virtually silent since this whole thing began, only putting out statements about waiting for the investigation to run its course. The given excuse has been that the collective bargaining agreement doesn’t allow a player to be punished twice for a violation of the CBA (which carrying a gun into the arena very much is) and they don’t want to suspend Arenas when clearly Commissioner David Stern is going to suspend him at some point.
You know what, that’s crap. Pick up a phone, talk to Stern and find out what he’s thinking. The facts in the story are clear here. There’s no he said/he said, Arenas has admitted he did it. His guns weren’t even registered in Virginia where carrying a gun is akin to carrying a wallet in most places as long as you register the gun. Even gun-owners will tell you that one of the responsibilities that comes with owning a gun (or guns) is following the laws of your jurisdiction and other jurisdictions if you carry a gun out of state.
If Stern says, “I’m going to suspend him for the season,” the Wizards should go ahead and do that NOW. If he says 20 games, same thing. You can’t just keep sending him out there when he’s admitted his guilt but clearly has no real remorse about it. And let’s not even get into the, “well they could still make the playoffs even at 11-21 because the East is so lousy,” argument. Forget being the eighth place team in the conference with a 37-45 record and take a look at your long-term future—which right now doesn’t look any better than the short term.
Things aren’t a lot better on other DC sports fronts: Tom Boswell, The Post’s superb baseball columnist who may be the all-time Nationals optimist, thinks the moves made so far this winter MIGHT get them to 75 wins. Maryland football is awful. The basketball team looks like it will be fighting for an NCAA bid—again. Navy football is terrific but not enough people understand why they SHOULD be paying more attention—including the editors at my newspaper. Georgetown basketball is very good but it’s hard to wrap your arms around a team that keeps itself shrouded in secrecy all the time.
There are lots of good college basketball programs locally but Georgetown won’t even play in a charity event that has raised almost $10 million for kids-at-risk in the DC area and hasn’t played George Washington in more than 30 years. DC could have local rivalries every bit as much fun as Philadelphia’s Big Five but no one wants to do anything about getting it done.
Heck, even DC United has been so mediocre recently that their fans can’t scream, “what about United?” when someone does a breakdown of sports in DC.
At least the Capitals have a very good team that is filled with appealing people. Fans here have jumped on their bandwagon since they started winning.
Overall though, this is a pretty bleak place. Have no fear though Redskins fans: March isn’t far away and that’s usually the best month of the year for your team. One hint: the less free agents you see Danny having his picture taken with, the better it is going to be for you and for the future of your team.
I realize as I write this that a lot of you who live around the country are starting to yawn—although you should find Letterman’s list on Gilbert Arenas’s 10 excuses because it is fall down funny—but it really is remarkable how often things go wrong and how consistently poorly they are handled by the people allegedly in charge.
The town’s obsession is with the Redskins. The way the local media kowtows to the team is remarkable. On Tuesday I was doing a local cable sports show and Redskins rookie Brian Orakpo was scheduled to appear. Five minutes before air time we were told that Orakpo was balking at doing the interview because it was too cold outside.
Let’s be honest, Orakpo wasn’t going to say anything newsworthy: he was going to say Jim Zorn was a good coach but gee Mike Shanahan is a great coach and we’re just SO close to being a really good team. Rather than lose those five minutes with him the producers agreed to let him SIT IN HIS CAR with a mike on while the cameraman shot him through the window of the car.
It was Saturday Night Live parody TV and Orakpo was every bit as predictable as you might expect.
And Orakpo is one of the GOOD guys on the Redskins.
What is most remarkable though is the way every new coaching hire is treated as the second coming. (Of course Joe Gibbs WAS the second coming). People do everything but dance in the streets. No doubt there are Redskins fans checking out flights to Dallas for February 2011 and next year’s Super Bowl, now that Mike Shanahan has been announced as the next second coming.
Is Shanahan a good coach? Based on his track record, absolutely. He won two Super Bowls and I really don’t buy the nay-sayers who say “how many did he win without John Elway?” Okay, how many did Vince Lombardi win without Bart Starr? Bill Belichick without Tom Brady? Chuck Noll without Terry Bradshaw? Don Shula without Bob Griese? Last I looked they were pretty good coaches. The only real exception to that rule might be Gibbs who won Super Bowls with Joe Theisman, Doug Williams and Mark Rypien at quarterback. Only Theisman was much better than ordinary and he wasn’t exactly a Hall of Famer. There are others but for the most part you don’t win Super Bowls unless your quarterback is better than ordinary. The Super Bowl winners in this century have been The Rams (Kurt Warner); the Ravens (Trent Dilfer); the Buccaneers (Brad Johnson); the Patriots (three times with Brady); the Steelers (twice with Ben Roethlisberger) the Colts (Peyton Manning); and the Giants (Eli Manning).
That’s seven wins for quarterbacks who either will be in the Hall of Fame or will come very close to it; one for a young quarterback who may yet become special (Eli) and two for guys considered competent—Dilfer and Johnson. Dilfer was working with arguably the greatest defense in the history (at least statistically it was) and Johnson, who many believe was very underrated) was helped by having his counterpart, Rich Gannon, throw five interceptions.
But I digress. Shanahan can coach—no ifs ands or buts. And let’s all stop with the, “he wasted a pick taking Maurice Clarett,” in the third round. So what? Third round picks flame out all the time—so do first round picks for that matter. He took a gamble and it didn’t work. Big deal.
Shanahan’s not the major issue with the Redskins. The owner is the major issue the same way he’s been the issue since he bought the team in 1999. There seems to be an assumption that because Shanahan and Bruce Allen signed on that Snyder is finally going to stop meddling in every football decision.
I’ll believe it when I see it. So far, Snyder is still acting like Snyder.
He completely humiliated poor Jim Zorn, who handled a ludicrous situation with total class, in his final weeks as coach. Forget stripping him of play-calling duties, that was bad enough. He then “interviewed,” one of Zorn’s own assistants with the season still going on in order to subvert the Rooney Rule so he could hire Shanahan as soon as the season ended. It’s a shame NFL commissioner Roger Goodell didn’t step to the plate and call the sham interview of Jerry Gray a sham, because that’s what it was.
Gray was obviously told by Snyder that if he wants to be considered for employment on the new staff he better keep his mouth shut. Gray initially lied when he was asked if he’d been interviewed; then the Redskins staff put out a written, “he meant to say no comment,” release and then he simply refused to answer questions even after John Wooten, who runs the Fritz Pollard Alliance announced that Gray’s interview had satisfied the parameters of the Rooney Rule (which was a joke in itself).
Snyder is paying Shanahan an outrageous amount of money--$7 million a year for five years according to today’s Washington Post. What’s more, he simply HAD to get on his plane and fly to Denver to pick Shanahan up and fly him to DC.
Why? Because he has to be in the middle of all this. He has to show off his wealth every chance he gets. This is an organization that laid close to 100 people off earlier this year citing the need to cut costs. How much did it cost to fly that jet back and forth to Denver? Snyder couldn’t have sent Shanahan a first class ticket and said, “We’ll have a car meet you at the airport?”
No, he had to play his silly game with “Redskins 1,” (oh please) knowing that the DC media would run out to the airport to cover the airplane’s landing. He LIVES for this stuff.
So what makes anyone think he’s not going to be sitting in the draft room talking about, “Redskin grades,” or trailing along with Shanahan and Bruce Allen on scouting trips the way he did ONE MONTH AGO with Vinny Cerrato. Maybe Shanahan and Allen have told him that’s over as a condition of their employment. Maybe.
And maybe Snyder made that pledge like he did with Marty Schottenheimer nine years ago and it will stick for about 20 minutes. We’ll see. The Redskins have the fourth pick in the draft. If they do anything other than draft a left tackle (especially if they take a quarterback instead) then you’ll know Snyder’s still involved in the decision-making and, if you’re a Redskins fan, you better dig in for even more disappointment.
Of course these days—remarkably enough—there is actually a team in Washington in more disarray than the Redskins and that’s the Wizards. Everyone now knows about the Gilbert Arenas guns saga. On Monday, when someone explained to him that he could actually go to jail, Arenas stopped joking about the situation and put out a lawyer-written statement saying he was sorry. That appeared to be a step in the right direction until Tuesday in Philadelphia when Arenas, upon being introduced by the PA announcer, jokingly pointed his fingers at his teammates as if he was shooting them.
My God Gilbert when will you learn? This isn’t funny (okay, Letterman was funny but that’s because he was saying Arenas was a joke not that Arenas’s joke was funny) and every time you act as if it is you look like a dope AND you send a terrible message to every single kid who has ever worn your jersey top—and in DC that’s a lot of kids.
You know what Flip Saunders should have done at that moment? He should have said to Arenas, ‘go sit on the end of the bench and watch the game.’ But the Wizards management has been virtually silent since this whole thing began, only putting out statements about waiting for the investigation to run its course. The given excuse has been that the collective bargaining agreement doesn’t allow a player to be punished twice for a violation of the CBA (which carrying a gun into the arena very much is) and they don’t want to suspend Arenas when clearly Commissioner David Stern is going to suspend him at some point.
You know what, that’s crap. Pick up a phone, talk to Stern and find out what he’s thinking. The facts in the story are clear here. There’s no he said/he said, Arenas has admitted he did it. His guns weren’t even registered in Virginia where carrying a gun is akin to carrying a wallet in most places as long as you register the gun. Even gun-owners will tell you that one of the responsibilities that comes with owning a gun (or guns) is following the laws of your jurisdiction and other jurisdictions if you carry a gun out of state.
If Stern says, “I’m going to suspend him for the season,” the Wizards should go ahead and do that NOW. If he says 20 games, same thing. You can’t just keep sending him out there when he’s admitted his guilt but clearly has no real remorse about it. And let’s not even get into the, “well they could still make the playoffs even at 11-21 because the East is so lousy,” argument. Forget being the eighth place team in the conference with a 37-45 record and take a look at your long-term future—which right now doesn’t look any better than the short term.
Things aren’t a lot better on other DC sports fronts: Tom Boswell, The Post’s superb baseball columnist who may be the all-time Nationals optimist, thinks the moves made so far this winter MIGHT get them to 75 wins. Maryland football is awful. The basketball team looks like it will be fighting for an NCAA bid—again. Navy football is terrific but not enough people understand why they SHOULD be paying more attention—including the editors at my newspaper. Georgetown basketball is very good but it’s hard to wrap your arms around a team that keeps itself shrouded in secrecy all the time.
There are lots of good college basketball programs locally but Georgetown won’t even play in a charity event that has raised almost $10 million for kids-at-risk in the DC area and hasn’t played George Washington in more than 30 years. DC could have local rivalries every bit as much fun as Philadelphia’s Big Five but no one wants to do anything about getting it done.
Heck, even DC United has been so mediocre recently that their fans can’t scream, “what about United?” when someone does a breakdown of sports in DC.
At least the Capitals have a very good team that is filled with appealing people. Fans here have jumped on their bandwagon since they started winning.
Overall though, this is a pretty bleak place. Have no fear though Redskins fans: March isn’t far away and that’s usually the best month of the year for your team. One hint: the less free agents you see Danny having his picture taken with, the better it is going to be for you and for the future of your team.
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