It’s Good to See Albert Haynesworth Back in the News

Thank you, Phillip Daniels.

Seriously, why did it take so long for somebody within the Washington Redskins organization to call out Albert Haynesworth, and by extension head coach Mike Shanahan, for the disaster that situation has turned into?

The simple truth is Haynesworth and Shanahan have been a bad match from the beginning and the conflict has dragged the Redskins into something a shade below mediocrity.

It’s not that they were going to be an elite team. They weren’t. But for how long can the head coach allow one player to be an ongoing distraction to the rest of the players in the locker room?

Consider Sunday, not long before a 31-7 beat-down delivered by the New York Giants, players come in for the day’s game to find out that Haynesworth has been made inactive.

Is that really the best time for that kind of news to be circulating? Uh, no.

As we all know thanks to its non-stop media coverage this saga has been playing out since the summer when Haynesworth skipped various team functions then showed up so out of shape he couldn’t pass a basic conditioning test that most professional bowlers probably could have flown through.

Rather than get the situation under control, Shanahan has exasperated things at each turn. Hopefully no Redskins fans bet on the Super Bowl.

It has to be painfully obvious that Haynesworth won’t get his act together in Washington, but rather than cut him loose Shanahan has decided to keep him around.

Every team needs a distraction, apparently. Well, except those that actually win games.