(AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)“I think you guys are reading way too much into this,” said Redskins head coach Mike Shanahan this afternoon. Of course they are, Coach. That’s what tends to happen when your fanbase sees their team’s season diving headfirst into the toilet.
We tried to spare you Redskins fans from talking about the end of yesterday’s debacle, in which Shanahan, with possession, his team trailing by six points and a little under two minutes to go in the game, sat Donovan McNabb in favor of Rex Grossman. But Shanahan’s flip-flopping in the press this afternoon just had to be examined. To start, Shanahan had the following to say on the Redskins Radio Network after the game yesterday:
“It was just that last drive, there was no timeouts, I thought it gave us the best chance to win,” Shanahan told Michael. “I’ve got a quarterback who’s very familiar, he’s run the two-minute offense probably 100 more times than Donovan has run it, and we were going with different formations, and so I thought it was the best thing for our football team to give it a chance to win. Obviously the pressure got to us on the first play.”
Today, Shanahan switched gears, blaming McNabb’s benching on the quarterback’s health:
Shanahan said he met with McNabb last Tuesday to discuss the quarterback’s various injuries – sore hamstrings and a shin contusion among them – and asked McNabb whether he was healthy enough to play at Detroit.
“He’s a warrior and wants to go,” Shanahan said.
But McNabb wasn’t able to fully practice and Shanahan said that from a “cardiovascular standpoint,” McNabb couldn’t handle the fast-paced two-minute offense.
All I’ve learned from that is that if I have to hear the term “cardiovascular endurance” one more time, I might lose it and eat the entire bowl of Snickers in front of me. But regardless of how Shanahan wants to spin it (he later said something about McNabb’s composure being the reason he benched him — which sounds like his best argument yet, even if it is his third crack at justifying the move), there’s little doubt that the guy screwed up. It’s hard to get every pundit covering the NFL to agree about anything, but benching McNabb for Sexy Rexy being stupid has reached about as close to a consensus as you’re going to get.
Shanahan also said today that McNabb would start after the Redskins’ bye week, when they take on the Eagles at home in a huge game, but who knows. After all, the most depressing thing is that we’re going to have to listen to this. Ad naseum. For the next fourteen days. Ugh.
