WASHINGTON — Generally speaking, when people start comparing your NFL team to Zimbabwe, it’s not that good a sign.
At least Redskins fans, living in and around the nation’s capital, know their foreign affairs.
“The general atmosphere around the team suggests Zimbabwe — a failed state, an intractable dictator, and an impotent and suffering populace,” Steve Coll, a former managing editor of the Washington Post and a lifelong ‘Skins fan, wrote recently in his blog.
For a proud franchise with a devoted fan base that borders on the obsessive, Daniel Snyder’s tenure as owner has passed through the bizarre and arrived at the embarrassing.
When he wasn’t suing season-ticket holders who couldn’t make their payments because of personal hardship, he was banning banners and signs critical of him at FedEx Field and meddling in football decisions about which, it seems safe to say after a decade of futility, he doesn’t have a clue.
In February 2008, he hired a coach in Jim Zorn who had never been so much as a coordinator. Then he publicly embarrassed Zorn this season by stripping him of play-calling responsibilities and giving them to 67-year-old Sherm Lewis, who was retired and calling bingo games at his local senior center in the suburbs of Detroit.
John Riggins, a former Super Bowl MVP for the ‘Skins, blew up the happy talk on Showtime’s “Inside the NFL” by calling Snyder “a bad guy” whose “heart is dark.”
Even the famously self-impressed Snyder seemed to understand that some damage control was necessary. He broke his usual in-season silence to tell a local television station: “I feel sorry for the fans. . . . I mean, we just feel terrible. We’re disappointed and we’re embarrassed.”
All of which provides the Broncos with a chance to get well today coming off two straight losses. Their 6-2 record is a mirror image of the Redskins.
The likable Zorn is caught in the middle of the soap opera. First he was a beneficiary of Snyder’s wackiness, getting a job for which he was underqualified. Then he was a victim of Snyder’s scapegoating. And now, as the public face of the franchise, he’s in the awkward position of being Snyder’s defender.
“It’s been difficult,” Zorn said last week. “It can be very distracting. It can be very divisive.
“I wasn’t privy to all the comments that John Riggins made, but it seemed like he was attacking the person. That part’s hard because I’m around Dan. I see personally the things Dan does for other people. He really reaches out to a lot of different people. It’s an amazing thing to watch, really.”
The same might be said of his football team, though not in a good way. Persistent rumors have linked Snyder with former Broncos coach Mike Shanahan. One suggested that if Snyder had succeeded in acquiring Jay Cutler from the Broncos before the season began, Shanahan might have taken over the Redskins this year. With Jason Campbell under center, the ‘Skins have one of the worst offenses in football, averaging 14.1 points per game.
“I want our team to stay together,” Zorn said. “I don’t want our team to splinter. We’ve had a really tough first eight games, only winning two of them. And our offense has been not to the excellence that we’re demanding and not to the excellence that we need to come out as winners. We’ve been in each game, but it’s been very difficult.”
Defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth, the beneficiary of Snyder’s latest offseason spending spree, insists the players pay no attention to the cacophony surrounding the team. But he admits the fans are more passionate than at his last stop.
“It’s completely different than Tennessee,” Haynesworth said. “They’ll come up to you and ask for pictures and kiss babies and do just all kind of different stuff. In Tennessee, people might wave at you or maybe ask for your autograph occasionally, but here it is a big difference. They really take pride in being Redskins fans.”
Well, pride might not be quite the right word at the moment. Former linebacker LaVar Arrington was on the radio recently saying the Redskins “lack heart, lack character and lack accountability.” Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post and ESPN calls them “a really truly stinky team.”
Riggins, meanwhile, refused to take back his personal indictment of Snyder, saying it’s ironic the owner of a team called the Redskins “is leading his people on a trail of tears.”
Coll wrote that Snyder has created a culture “of greed, expediency and mean-spiritedness.”
On the bright side, nobody has compared him to the Taliban. Not yet, anyway.
Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297 or dkrieger@denverpost.com or
