While the rest of us fans and media members are playing the bongos with Albert Haynesworth’s vital organs this week, ESPN.com columnist Patrick Hruby decided to play devil’s advocate with the defensive end’s situation. Hruby even goes as far as to write that he’s sympathetic to Haynesworth.
Here’s the crux of Hruby’s argument:
Haynesworth’s argument essentially goes like this:
I signed with the Redskins expecting to be a havoc-creating, quarterback-attacking playmaker in a 4-3 defense. That’s the role in which I excel; that’s the style of play I enjoy; that’s what was promised during my free-agent courtship. Only now, the team has shifted to a new coaching staff and a new 3-4 scheme, which basically asks me to eat double-team blocks. Thanks, but no thanks. I’d like a little more excitement. A lot more glory. Please send me somewhere else.
Is that really so awful? So craven?
Because this column is about the 6-foot-6, 350-pound Haynesworth — and not, say, the 5-6, 185-pound Darren Sproles — let’s try a food analogy. Imagine you’re a pastry chef. The top pastry chef in New York. A bunch of restaurants want you. One restaurant offers you more money than the others, plus the opportunity to run the dessert menu. You take it. A year later, the same restaurant switches to an all-fondue format and demands that you become a sous chef, chopping chocolate-dippable fruit wedges in the back room.
Technically, you’re still preparing dessert. And you’re still working with sugar. Woo-hoo! But otherwise, it’s not exactly the gig you signed up for. Would you be annoyed? Feeling jerked around? Would you maybe call in sick and check the restaurant want ads, even though you’re perfectly healthy? Would you try to prepare apple tarts somewhere else, perhaps move to a soufflé-friendly city like Boston or Philadelphia?
You would? Good. ‘Cause all of the above is pretty much Haynesworth’s situation. A situation that makes his reaction both understandably human and adult, as opposed to that of the world’s largest pouting toddler.
It’s a fair point, but it only works if the Redskins promised Haynesworth that he wouldn’t have to play in the 3-4. He and his agent claim that’s what the Redskins told him, but there is no proof of that to my knowledge. (Side Note: If anyone has record of the Redskins telling Haynesworth he didn’t have to play in the 3-4, feel free to share it.)
Hruby goes on…
