Oops

We are in the 'clarification and amplification' part of the story

Mike Wise pretty well captures my take on this latest soap opera with the Redskins so go and read it. It is hard to know what is worse, that the Redskins do not know a week after a game whether their players are injured or that coaches cannot communicate this to one another. A brief timeline recap:

Sunday 23 September: Clinton Portis fumbles a 4th quarter handoff in the Giants game, does not carry the ball again as the team marches down the field and the Redskins cannot get in the end zone with three tries from the one yard line.

Monday 24 September: we all wonder why Clinton was not in the game, was he in the doghouse for fumbling?

Tuesday 25 September: Joe Gibbs insists things went the way he wanted at the end, that Ladell and Clinton are interchangeable and that only execution lacked at the end of the game, there were no injuries and no doghouse (as I suspected, from Clinton fumbling away a possession late in the game). Dan Steinberg and Curly R are skeptical.

Same day, Clinton appears on sportstalk radio and calls himself a team player, does not second guess Jo Gibbs (loudly I might add) and makes a vauge reference to getting knocked in the second quarter. This injury reference is not picked up as the story but rather Clinton's score-settling with former Redskin Brian Mitchell and Clinton's insistence that he doesn't make the calls when he is in and out (which would be a reversal of 2005 and presumably 2006 if Clinton was not injured).

Monday 1 October: Jason La Canfora reports on the slowness of the Redskins running game to regain its 2006 form, the run game was really the bright spot of the team last season. In this piece Clinton reaffirms he is comfortable switching in and out with Ladell and there is no mention of any injury or other reason why Clinton was out and Ladell was in, other to reinforce Joe Gibbs' story from a week earlier.

Tuesday 2 October: in his Redskins Notebook Jason La Canfora reports that Joe Gibbs says that in the Giants game Clinton had a 'flare-up' of tendinitis in his right knee, the same one that held him out all preseason, nice and comfy on the sidelines.

Wednesday 3 October: Redskins head of sports medicine Bubba Tyer 'clarifies' Clinton's injury status and says it is a grade one knee sprain, likely suffered in the 1st quarter of the Giants game. He takes one for the team and says that he did not notify Joe Gibbs in time to prevent Joe from reporting the injury incorrectly to the media the previous week. Sounds a bit like an aide taking the fall for the gaffe of a politician.

This part of the story sounds suspiciously like the Shawn Springs mini controversy over his hamstring from week one, a scenario that sounded a lot like team staff not communicating very well.

Thursday 4 October, today: Mike Wise writes a column (op. cit.) summing it up: although teams need to be able to keep the competition guessing as to player injuries week to week, the manner in which Clinton's situation has been handled has been pretty clumsy and not inspiring a lot of confidence in a fan base that has taken to seeing the trees not the forest.

The team still looks like it does not have its act together and Clinton Portis continues to look like a decaying option at feature back.


And for the record Mike, the blogs, the sports talk radio, the message boards, the only thing they are trafficking in is the stuff the Post had the franchise on for so many years and is now losing: content, comment, opinion, speculation. As I've said a thousand million times, everything you read and so breathlessly report on, that mean old 'blogosphere' is just moving the water cooler and happy hour talk that has obsessed Washingtonians and their Redskins into a larger space. Permanently.



Clinton Portis: Greg Fiume / Getty Images from here.