When ESPN’s Mike Golic, many years and many more Twinkies removed from his playing days, passed the conditioning test that Redskins defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth consistently has failed, the notion that Haynesworth is merely being picked on by coach Mike Shanahan took a major hit.
It would have been even worse if owner Daniel Snyder had passed the thing.
In an interview with HogsHaven.com, Snyder says that he once tried -- and apparently failed -- to demonstrate that he’s in what Shanahan calls “football shape.”
“First of all, it is hard,” Snyder said. “A couple years back, I tell [linebacker] London Fletcher I am going to run this thing. He gets me a pair of cleats and I go out there and try to do it. . . . I am no athlete. London was just about peeing his pants he was laughing so hard at me as I dry-heaved. I felt like I was going to die.”
Almost as intriguing, in our view, is the fact that the guys who did the interview entered the room with no intention of asking any questions about Haynesworth, and Snyder simply blurted this out. (Reasonable minds may differ on whether questions should have been asked about Haynesworth, but we can understand why a site that caters to the fans of the Redskins would exercise discretion in a manner that avoids potentially alienating a large chunk of the readership by dredging up stuff that could ultimately make a very bad situation even worse. Or maybe one of the conditions of the interview was that they couldn’t ask questions about Haynesworth, and that they also had to make it look like it was their idea not to. Either way, it’s hard to make a plausible case for completely avoiding the hottest-button issue this side of Brett Favre’s maybe, could be, possible Third Annual Retirement.)
So Mike Golic can pass the test. Dan Snyder can’t. More importantly, Haynesworth can’t -- and he’ll stop trying to do so until his knee is healed. At which time he likely won’t be in any better shape than he was when he tried unsuccessfully to pass it the first time around. Meanwhile, coach Mike Shanahan has to decide whether to stick to his guns, to the ongoing detriment of getting Haynesworth ready for Week 1.
Yeah, we can see why the subject isn’t newsworthy.