One of these is a made guy, the other is a dead man walking
Merry Christmas to Curly R readers, most of the country may be shut down for a major national holiday, not the NFL, in fact the Redskins had a practice just today, it was just another practice in a long and miserable season.
And defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth was late for it and got sent home for his trouble. He arrived an unspecified amount of time late for pre-practice team meetings and was told he would not be practicing with the team as a result of his tardiness.
In other words, sending Albert home was a disciplinary action. Suddenly the Redskins are all tight ass with their star players.
After he was told to go home he still went into the locker room and dressed in for practice, as the players stretched before practice Albert got into a quote heated debate unquote with head coach Jim Zorn, after defensive coordinator Greg Blache came and joined the discussion Albert finally relented and went home.
Coach Zorn has said Albert would be welcome back at practice tomorrow, Saturday, and that he would play Sunday night against the Cowboys.
Now here we are supposed to believe that Albert getting sent home as a disciplinary measure today has naaahhhhthing at all with the fact that Albert called out the team and coaches for lack of leadership following the Monday night blowout loss to the Giants. Nope, nothing at all.
Obviously we do not know exactly what happened, and there may be some more detail emerging tomorrow, questions I would want answered are ones like these:
- How late was Albert to the team meetings?
- What was his attitude when he arrived?
- Was he insubordinate or giving lip at the points where he should have been contrite and or silent?
- What exactly were the highlights of the exchange between coach and player? Were Albert's previous comments about quality of leadership revisited?
So given that we do not know more of the details we can only generalize and here is my generalization: Albert, like everyone else inside or outside the building has known since game five against the Chiefs that Jim Zorn was done in Washington and while coach Zorn thinks he is being some noble never say die guy that can just pretend the owner does not want to get rid of him asap, can just pretend that having his balls cut off again and again is not emasculating and that his humiliation is not obvious to his players, to everyone else he just looks like a mumbling incompetent.
Shit man the team is already interviewing for coach Zorn's replacement, secondary coach Jerry Gray is not even waiting for the corpse to cool before feasting on it (op. cit.). Rock Cartwright said he hopes he never sees Vinny Cerrato again. Jason Campbell is pretty sure the team is quitting on itself.
What Albert said after Monday night's debacle has long been on the minds of the players and the fans. Albert is in the first year of a lucrative and long term contract; Albert is not going anywhere and so he is free to say whatever the hell he wants to whomever the hell he wants.
One of Albert's teammates anonymous teammates attempted to draw some sort of professional irony that days after calling out the coaches for not being leaders that Albert, a team leader based on his role and salary, would demonstrate his own non leadership by showing up to practice late, unfortunately that misses the point.
The point is that Jim Zorn has lost this team, and did weeks ago, Albert has no respect for coach Zorn because he does not have to, coach Zorn does not command respect with his authority or with his presence.
Whatever is keeping Jim Zorn in the job, the money, the commitment, some sense of football nobility, whatever it is does not mean anything to anyone else, no one is modeling on Jim Zorn right now.
The Redskins continue to decay in orbit and rip apart violently, the wreckage is falling dangerously to Earth.
Jim Zorn and Albert Haynesworth: Uncredited image from here via here.
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