This one you deserve
So in case you missed it, before last Sunday's Redskins game against the Buccaneers, a blog post went up on Redskins safety Chris Horton's personal blog, it ripped Redskins coaches and players, among them defensive coordinator Greg Blache and defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth, it was written in the third person, not the first as you might expect a personal blog to be written.
By the time I went for the link it was already gone, luckily Jamie Mottram caught it and posted it up, I spotlighted this giant gaffe in the Buccaneers game preview. I like Chris but this was an unforced error and as such I could not let it go.
The post mysteriously disappeared before the Tampa Bay game, later in the week we learned that Chris had gotten a phone call from the Redskins public relations office wondering why he had posted up a piece attacking his teammates and coaches. Chris promptly had the post taken down.
Turns out there was a contest at some point to let a fan post up on Chris' blog for the season, it looks from the history of posts that a guy named Matt Wallace won the job, in this post from 17 September Matt gushes about how lucky he was to win the job and how Chris is his favorite player. There are a couple of Matt Wallace claimed posts before that, it is not uncommon to see a writer post up a few pieces out of the gate then circle back and introduce himself.
The last Matt Wallace piece is dated 28 September, the date of the now deleted post was from the third or fourth of October, fitting with Matt's posting schedule.
A post has been published since Matt's last piece, it has the same meta title, Hunting with the Predator, but is not signed by Matt Wallace. My guess is fanboy got his walking papers for writing a great piece that was published in the wrong place.
If not and if Matt is still posting or if Chris or anyone associated with this operation would like to get on record or clarify I will be happy to post it up.
I am nobody, a fan with a blog, as such I have no limits on what I can say. If you are official team media, or a player then you have limits, regardless of whether you are told about the limits or not.
Having a contest to let a fan post up on your blog may have seemed like a good idea at the time to someone though I cannot see how. It is lazy and disrespectful to the fans. People will be reading Chris' blog to read about what Chris has to say, not some flunkie or fanboy, for gods sake at least get a ghost writer and have him or her write as Chris and have Chris clear it, no one wants to read anything on the blog, no matter how good it is if it is not actually purporting to be Chris Horton.
If you must go with the lame approach of having someone writing essentially Chris Horton's Not The Blog Of Chris Horton All About Chris Horton then for gods sake if Chris cannot take the time from his busy day to review the onerous once weekly 500 word posts before they go up then someone from his publicist, agent's or manager's office should.
Letting that crap slide through to the open web is Chris' fault alone.
Matt if you are reading this, man what were you thinking? That was the official piehole for a Redskins player you had control of and you just fucked him.
As I sit here I wonder if players on the other NFL teams are fucking up social media as hard as the Redskins.
Hey Matt, let me know if you want to write for Curly R.
Chris Horton: AP photo from here.
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