Albert Haynesworth and His Trainer

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by GMScud

I want to like this post. I really do. And not that I'm questioning you, but can you throw out a few examples of "bad teams/organizations tend(ing) to pin their failures on their best players." ??

The most immediate examples I'm coming up with are actually in other sports: Cubs blamed Milton Bradley for their failures last year, Royals blamed Alex Gordon, the Suns were trying to deal Amari Stoudamire for the longest time.

I guess some examples of this happening in football would be what the Jags did w/Byron Leftwich, the Lions did with Shaun Rogers, the Broncos with anything they've done in the past two years, the Jets with Chad Pennington and John Abraham before him, Cowboys (fans) with Tony Romo, the Bills with Trent Edwards, the Eagles with Terrell Owens, the Cardinals with Thomas Jones, three different teams with Kurt Warner, and really, the Redskins with every quarterback of the last decade.

I don't really like any of my football examples because they all have dual reasoning, but I think a big reason is that if you're a productive player on a dysfunctional team, it's easy to just blame the most publicized players than to quietly address what's actually wrong. I think if Shanahan and Allen are going to be successful, the first thing they have to do is refrain from alienating our best players. Which is why this Haynesworth thing, while completely overblown by the media, really doesn't make a lick of sense.