So I was out to dinner with Mrs. PFT and Florio Jr. when I got word, via Sprint device, that offensive lineman Artis Hicks had signed with the Redskins.
Moments later came word that 49ers offensive lineman Tony Pashos would be signing with the Redskins, too.
I posted it to Twitter, and then I saw that Mark Maske of the Washington Post had tweeted less than a minute earlier that Pashos was “about to sign.” (I muttered “Maske” in my best “Newman” voice, and my kid said, “Gesundheit.”) After making sure I was getting no dirty looks for using said Sprint device at the table, I sent the info via e-mail to MDS.
Moments after MDS posted the story came word from a source far closer to the action that Pashos had left D.C. without signing a deal, and that he was heading to Cleveland.
So after dinner I used said Sprint device to make a couple of phone calls to find out precisely what had happened. Without blaming my offensive line for the blunder regarding the offensive lineman, let’s just say that someone made a bad assumption.
The fact that Maske had Pashos as “about to sign” means that the bad assumption had some legs. However, this wasn’t a situation where a deal was done and then fell apart or anything remotely interesting. We just flat got it wrong, we apologize, and we move on to the next story.
The truth is that Pashos visited Washington, they talked numbers, and Pashos left as planned for Cleveland.
Don’t slam MDS on this one -- he just posted what I sent him. This mistake was all mine. Though explaining it and owning it doesn’t make it go away, we prefer accepting responsibility to deleting the erroneous posts and pretending that it never happened.
