Tag: Washington Post

Dwayne Haskins reportedly benched in part because of his practice and study habits

According to the Washington Post, former Ohio State QB Dwayne Haskins in part because of poor study and practice habits.

By now, you’re aware that former Ohio State quarterback and Heisman finalist Dwayne Haskins has been benched by the Washington Football Team, falling all the way down to 3rd string. And while these things rarely happen for one reason in particular, there are oftentimes things that stand out more than others.

In the case of Haskins, reports have surfaced (take them for what they’re worth) that his study and practice habits weren’t up to expectations in our nation’s capital according to a report from the Washington Post’s Les Carpenter.

From the Washington Post:

“(Coach Ron) Rivera’s benching of Haskins, the once-presumed quarterback of the future, after just four games was a surprise, given the seeming commitment the coach had made to playing Haskins the whole season. But inside the team’s practice facility, momentum for the move had been growing, a person with knowledge of the situation said, in part because Haskins had fallen into poor study and practice habits. The person said Haskins’s lack of preparation was hurting him in games, leading to overthrown passes and missed opportunities to hit open receivers.”

“The concerns represented a departure from the effort Haskins had shown in winning the starting job during training camp, for which he had drawn praise from Rivera. Something seemed to happen to Haskins after he won the job, the person familiar with the situation said, and his work habits deteriorated. Another person who has seen Haskins at practice this season noticed Haskins being sloppy during pregame warmups, while Allen worked diligently in those same drills even though he was unlikely to play in the game.”

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Rivera tried to downplay the decision to reporters this week, placing more blame on the situation of the underperforming division and a bizarre offseason that didn’t allow for development because of the coronavirus pandemic, but the actions of the head coach spoke louder than any words he could muster.

“This is not as much an indictment on Dwayne as much as it is an indictment on the situation and circumstances that we are in,” Rivera told reporters Wednesday. “He did not have the benefit of [offseason workouts] and minicamp. He didn’t have the benefit of four preseason games to work through things. Because of that, he’s behind in his development in this system. Again, it’s an unfortunate situation.”

But yet here we are. It just goes to show you that no matter where a quarterback is in his development and career in the NFL, it’s a win-now league. You can show development slowly, and if the team isn’t following close behind, many coaches, suits, and stakeholders are much quicker to pull the plug on a guy than years ago. In this case, it took all of four games.

For Haskins, getting benched seems like the beginning of the end in Washington. Rivera seemed to dismiss that notion, but it sure doesn’t look good. Haskins now has a perception he’ll need to shake, and once that’s out there, it can be tough to battle back from.

Here’s to hoping this is just a speedbump in the road for the Big Ten’s all-time single-season passing leader. Apparently, drama comes more than just in the form of politics in the D.C. metro area.

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New report alleges Dan Snyder played major role in sexual harassment culture in Washington

A new report in Washington alleges that Snyder may have been at center of sexual harassment and abuse allegations.

A new ground-breaking story detailing sexual harassment and exploitation has come out in Washington, this time directly alleging that team owner Dan Snyder took part in some of the crude activities that he denied participating in earlier this offseason.

Separate from a report that 17 women had accused members of the Washington Football Team front office of sexual and verbal harassment, the Washington Post reported Wednesday that more than 100 current and former employees allege that Snyder has presided over an organization in which women say they have been marginalized, discriminated against and exploited during his 21 years as owner of the team.

Many of the women who came forward did so after seeing Snyder’s comments from the report last month in which he tried to distance himself from the situation and culture in the franchise, according to the Washington Post.

In the new report, The Post interviewed a former cheerleader in Washington who claims that Snyder directly humiliated her in 2004. Here is an excerpt from the report describing that situation:

One of the women interviewed for this story accused Snyder of directly humiliating her, the first such claim made to The Post. Former cheerleader Tiffany Bacon Scourby said Snyder approached her at a 2004 charity event at which the cheerleaders were performing and suggested she join his close friend in a hotel room so they “could get to know each other better.” Scourby’s account was supported by three friends she spoke to shortly afterward about the alleged incident, including the team’s former cheerleader director.

Another former employee, Brad Baker, who was a member of lead team broadcaster Larry Michael’s staff, told The Post that Michael instructed them to create a DVD containing graphic material from Washington’s cheerleader calendar shoot in 2008 at Snyder’s request.

The lewd outtakes were what Larry Michael, then the team’s lead broadcaster and a senior vice president, referred to as “the good bits” or “the good parts,” according to Brad Baker, a former member of Michael’s staff. Baker said in an interview that he was present when Michael told staffers to make the video for team owner Daniel Snyder.

It is unclear what will happen going forward, and whether or not the NFL will further look into this seemingly disastrous and destructive culture in Washington. This time around, however, it seems that Snyder will be more the target of investigation than he was in times past.

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Report: Washington Football Team owner Daniel Snyder files $10M defamation suit

Washington Football Team owner Dan Snyder has filed a defamation lawsuit seeking $10 million.

The Washington Football Team is front and center in the news on a nonstop basis.

Team owner Daniel Snyder has filed a $10 million lawsuit in New Delhi and in federal court papers in California, Snyder said the news site, Media Entertainment Arts WorldWide, whose parent company is based in India, published stories that it knew were false and designed to malign him, some using information from anonymous posts on social news sites including Reddit, according to The New York Times.

The stories, which have since been removed from M.E.A. WorldWide’s website, asserted that Snyder was involved in sex trafficking and speculated that the team’s minority owners were “looking at bringing him down citing inappropriate and unchaste behavior as one of the major reasons,” according to parts of the story included in the complaint.

The suit comes on the same day Snyder’s team released its second-round pick in 2018, Derrius Guice, who was arrested on domestic-abuse charges.

As for the Snyder lawsuit, per The Times:

Snyder, who seeks $10 million in damages, wants to identify if, and by whom, M.E.A. WorldWide was paid to publish the articles, his lawyer, Rizwan A. Qureshi of the firm Reed Smith, said in a statement.

“While Mr. Snyder understands that truthful criticism about the Washington Football Team comes with the territory of owning the team, malicious criminal allegations cross the line. He intends to hold all of those responsible for this defamation accountable, and will donate any proceeds recovered in the lawsuit to charity.”

In a phone interview, Nirnay Chowdhary, a founder of MEA WorldWide, acknowledged “some sort of errors” were made in the stories about Snyder. “We are going to be launching an internal investigation,” he said.

SEC issues statement following audio of players speaking about concern of safety reported

The SEC issued a statement after a piece by The Washington Post detailed that student-athletes were conference about their safety.

On Saturday, The Washington Post published a pretty eye-opening article on SEC student-athletes voicing their concern about their safety if a college football season would be played only for only to be told that COVID-19 cases on teams were a “given.”

From the article:

“There are going to be outbreaks,” one official told players on the call. (The official didn’t identify himself, and the SEC spokesman declined to identify him to The Post.) “We’re going to have cases on every single team in the SEC. That’s a given. And we can’t prevent it…”

The players were especially concerned with what happens once their universities reopen. When they returned for workouts this summer, their campuses were largely empty. Most of the people they interacted with were those inside their cloistered and regimented football programs, where regular testing and the potential ire of their powerful coaches made adherence to public health guidelines a must for many athletes.

MoMo Sanogo, a linebacker at the University of Mississippi, asked the officials on the call why his school planned to bring thousands of students to campus for fall classes. Sanogo said he has four classes per week, and he fears some of those classmates will go to bars and parties at night, then unknowingly infect football players during class.

The answer Sanogo received shed light on the pressure that university presidents, who rely on college football for prestige and revenue, face to reopen their campuses this fall, even as the pandemic surges. “It’s one of those things where if students don’t come back to campus, then the chances of having a football season are almost zero,” an official who did not identify himself said.

The official told Sanogo that class sizes would be smaller so students can sit six feet apart from one another, and that face coverings should help keep students safe. But he admitted the arrangement was “not fair” to athletes, who might take every precaution but still be infected by the students who don’t.

He suggested that Sanogo, 21, remind the people around him to behave responsibly. “As un-fun as it sounds,” the official said, “the best thing that you can do is just try to encourage others to act more responsibly and not put yourself in those kinds of situations. I’m very comfortable with what we’ve done on campus. I’m concerned about what happens from 5 p.m. until 5 a.m.”

Sanogo kept pushing. “How can y’all help us?” he asked. He referenced the concept of a “bubble,” the insular playing environments employed by pro basketball and ice hockey, and compared it with his bustling college campus. Another member of the task force told him that his mask would offer protection, and he could be a role model for others to wear one. She told him to sit at the back of classrooms and not engage in close conversations.

The officials’ uncertainty was not lost on Keeath Magee II, a Texas A&M linebacker, who wondered aloud whether starting the season with so many unanswered questions would be something the officials would come to regret.

“You guys have answered a lot of questions the best way you could, and we really appreciate it. But as much as you guys don’t know … it’s not good enough,” he said. “We want to play. We want to see football. We want to return to normal as much as possible. But it’s just that with all this uncertainty, all this stuff that’s still circulating in the air, y’all know it kind of leaves some of us still scratching my head. … I feel like the college campus is the one thing that you can’t control.”

On Saturday afternoon, the conference issued a statement on the video call along with what it was trying to accomplish.

The conference has still yet to provide answers on how they will help protect the student-athletes with the decision to play a conference-only schedule starting Sept. 26 approved.

Righting the ship in Washington is now Ron Rivera’s job, unfair as that may be

With the culture in shambles and the spotlight on every aspect of the organization, it falls on Ron Rivera to right the ship in Washington.

Despite what former team president Bruce Allen said back in 2019, the culture is not ‘damn good’ in Washington. It’s actually about as far from it as possible.

A searing report from The Washington Post that surfaced on Thursday made sure that was clear, as 15 female former employees came forward and accused several staff members of verbal and sexual abuse that date back over a decade.

While none of the accusations centered on team owner Dan Snyder, a lot of the blame still rests on his shoulders, as he was surely complicit in creating and maintaining an unhealthy working environment for hundreds of people around him. Now that the dirty laundry has been aired out, it’s time for the organization to start cleaning things up and creating a new culture in Washington.

That job now falls to head coach Ron Rivera, unfortunate as that may be for him. It is sure to be a monumental task, and one that will potentially take years to bear any fruit. It may not have been what he signed up for when accepting the job months ago, but as he stated on Thursday evening, it’s what he aims to do going forward.

“We’re trying to create a new culture here,” Rivera said in a statement to The Post. “We’re hoping to get people to understand that they need to judge us on where we are and where we’re going as opposed to where we’ve been.”

Rivera may not hold any share of the blame for the misdeeds of others over the past decade, but he surely will have a hand in how things play out going forward. Ever since he was brought in as the head man, the classic line was that his goal was to build a new culture from the ground up, and a winning team would be the final product. As of Friday morning, that may seem like as big of an ask as it ever has. Not only will Rivera have to deal with a mediocre product on the field, filled with young players who are looking for guidance, but there is also a front office that lacks leadership and has had trouble staying out of the headlines in the past several years.

It may not be what he signed up for when accepting the job in Washington, but it’s a task that’s been given to him nonetheless. Judging by his track record in the past, there may not be a better man for the job, but it’s going to take every ounce of strength for him to right the ship in D.C.

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Brennan: “Time for NFL to get rid of Washington “cesspool” and dispose of Dan Snyder”

SportsPulse: The Washington Post revelations of rampant sexual harassment is more than enough to justify the removal of Dan Snyder as owner of the NFL’s Washington franchise, says Christine Brennan.

SportsPulse: The Washington Post revelations of rampant sexual harassment is more than enough to justify the removal of Dan Snyder as owner of the NFL’s Washington franchise, says Christine Brennan.

15 former female Redskins employees accuse the team of harassment in Washington Post report

15 former female employees, and more than one female sports journalist, have accused the Redskins of serial harassment.

Former Washington Redskins employee Emily Applegate, and 14 other female employees who spoke on terms of anonymity, have alleged that the franchise has long worked under a toxic spell of serial sexual harassment and verbal abuse. More than one female sports reporter has added their names to that list.

The report, written by Will Hobson and Liz Clarke of the Washington Post, alleges that several high-ranking members of the organization, including Larry Michael, the team’s longtime radio broadcaster, and Alex Santos, director of pro personnel.

Michael recently resigned from his position, and Santos was fired, along with assistant director of pro personnel Richard Mann II, earlier in the month.

In a statement response to the report, the team said it had hired D.C. attorney Beth Wilkinson and her firm, Wilkinson Walsh, “to conduct a thorough independent review of this entire matter and help the team set new employee standards for the future.”

“The Washington Redskins football team takes issues of employee conduct seriously … While we do not speak to specific employee situations publicly, when new allegations of conduct are brought forward that are contrary to these policies, we address them promptly.”

The allegations are staggering in their depth and breadth through the organization.

Per the report, seven former employees said Michael routinely discussed the physical appearance of female colleagues in sexual and disparaging overtones. In 2018, Michael was caught on a “hot mic” speaking about the attractiveness of a college-aged intern, according to six former employees who heard the recording. Michael declined an interview request from the Post before he retired on Wednesday.

Santos was accused by six former employees and two reporters who covered the team of making inappropriate remarks about their bodies and asking them if they were romantically interested in him. In 2019, Santos was the subject of an internal investigation after Rhiannon Walker, a reporter for The Athletic, told the team that Santos had pinched her, told her she had “an ass like a wagon,” and asked her to date him. Nora Princiotti, a reporter for The Ringer, also said in an interview that she was harassed by Santos.

In a text message obtained by the Post, Mann told a female employee he and his colleagues debated whether her breasts had been surgically enhanced. In another text message told another female employee to expect an “inappropriate hug… And don’t worry that will be a stapler in my pocket, nothing else.”

Neither Santos nor Mann replied to requests for comment from the Post.

Dennis Greene, the team’s former president of business operations, told female sales staff to wear low-cut blouses, tight skirts and flirt with wealthy suite holders, according to five former employees, including Applegate. Greene’s 17-year career with the club ended in 2018 amid a scandal over the revelation he had sold access to Redskins cheerleaders — including attendance at a bikini calendar photo shoot in Costa Rica — as part of premium suite packages.

Mitch Gershman, the team’s former chief operating officer, routinely verbally abused Applegate for trivial problems such as printer malfunctions while also complimenting her body. Per the Post, two other former female employees supported Applegate’s account of her sexual harassment and verbal abuse by Gershman, who left the team in 2015.

“It was the most miserable experience of my life,” Applegate, now 31, said of her year working as a marketing coordinator for the club, which she left in 2015. “And we all tolerated it, because we knew if we complained — and they reminded us of this — there were 1,000 people out there who would take our job in a heartbeat.”

Gershman denied the allegations in a conversation with the Post. 

“I barely even remember who she is,” Gershman said. “I thought the Redskins was a great place to work … I would apologize to anyone who thought that I was verbally abusive.”

Nobody accused team owner Daniel Snyder or former team president Bruce Allen of any inappropriate behavior, but several women said there was little chance the two men didn’t know about what was happening.

Snyder did have a history of belittling employees, per the report.

“I have never been in a more hostile, manipulative, passive-aggressive environment… and I worked in politics,” said Julia Payne, former assistant press secretary in the Clinton Administration, who served as vice president of communications for the team in 2003.

Payne said that in the culture under Snyder, there would be little hope for any employee that reporting the abhorrent behavior would yield positive results.

“With such a toxic, mood-driven environment, and the owner behaving like he does,” said Payne, “How could anyone think these women would go to HR?”

In a phone interview with the Post, new head coach Ron Rivera declined to comment on Santos or Mann, and merely spoke to the desire to create a new culture.

“We’re hoping to get people to understand that they need to judge us on where we are and where we’re going, as opposed to where we’ve been,” Rivera said.

Snyder has been under fire of late from the league, the team’s minority owners, and several of the franchise’s most prominent advertisers due to his insistence that he would not change the team name. Snyder and the team said in a recent statement that the team would change its name, but no permanent action has been taken to date.

The precedent for this kind of behavior on this scale does not bode well for Snyder. In 2017, Jerry Richardson was forced to sell the Carolina Panthers following a December 2017 report from L. Jon Wertheim and Viv Bernstein of Sports Illustrated revealed that Richardson had settled several complaints of inappropriate behavior. Per the report, Richardson would ask his female employees to turn around so that he could admire their backsides and make comments such as: “Show me how you wiggle to get those jeans up. I bet you had to lay down on your bed to fit into those jeans. Did you step into those jeans or did you have to jump into them?”

At least four employees reached financial settlements with Richardson in exchange for their vows of silence.

Not that Snyder was directly involved in the ways that Richardson was, but given the heat already on the owner and the team, how much longer can the NFL accept this culture of constant embarrassment from one of its marquee franchises?

Washington hires attorney to ‘review organization’s protocals;’ frustrated with speculations

As the sporting world waits for a rumored groundbreaking report on the Washington front office, the team has hired an attorney.

With much of the Washington sports world waiting for a rumored story to break that might expose some of the inner workings of the franchise, the NFL team has reportedly hired a DC attorney to review organizational protocols, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

Schefter also noted that the team officials are frustrated with ‘speculation running amok,’ likely on social media where a bunch of fans and spectators are talking of rumored sexual and drug abuse.

The report has been rumored to be broken by The Washington Post at some point on Thursday, though it is not yet known when that will take place.

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