Posted by Tr1 :laugh2:
By HOWARD FENDRICH (AP) – 46 minutes ago
ASHBURN, Va. – The booing fans and critical talk-radio yakkers are hardly the only ones giving the reeling Washington Commanders a hard time lately.
Members of the "Commanders family" are piling on, too.
Yes, with Washington at 2-3 despite a soft-as-can-be schedule, everyone from former stars Joe Theismann and John Riggins to people writing for the team's official Web site are ripping the Commanders.
"A lot of us have sort of tempered ourselves, to be honest with you. The expectations for this team were so much greater coming into the year — and they haven't come even close to living up to it," Theismann said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
"It's the little things that bother the living daylights out of me more than anything. ... They waste timeouts at an astounding rate. To me that's disgraceful. That's Football 101," Theismann said. "Ultimately, where does it have to fall on? It has to fall on coaching and teaching."
Don't think the current players aren't hearing the verbal shots being directed at them, at coach Jim Zorn, at front office chief Vinny Cerrato.
"I've heard guys come in and say, 'Can you believe what this guy said or that guy said?'" offensive lineman Chris Samuels said. "Even when we win, it's all negative."
Of course, it's not as though there isn't any internal finger-pointing or worrying.
As cornerback DeAngelo Hall put it Wednesday, "We're a couple steps from getting ready to panic right now."
Moments later, he acknowledged, "I don't know if we've got the right personnel in here."
Theismann, for one, said the team is "fundamentally not sound at all," referred to how Washington "mucks along in futility," called the offense "inept," and added, "What is unacceptable is the lack of effort to do more than just what is required."
Earlier in the week, during his show on a radio station belonging to Commanders owner Dan Snyder, Theismann expressed similar sentiments about the team he quarterbacked to a Super Bowl championship in the 1980s.
He's hardly alone.
Ex-players such as Hall of Fame members Sonny Jurgensen and Sam Huff — whose framed photos hang on a wall outside the locker room at Commanders Park — have questioned play-calling and individual players' fitness on game-day radio broadcasts. According to washingtonpost.com, Jurgensen was particularly critical of quarterback Jason Campbell, saying during a pregame show last weekend he would have used backup Todd Collins instead and that, "I think Collins would have won all four of these games."
Campbell's response to such thoughts coming from ex-Commanders?
"You can't get mad," the quarterback said. "You can't agree or disagree. They're entitled to their opinion."
Riggins, a Commanders teammate of Theismann's and member of the Hall of Fame, spared no one in a diatribe he posted as a video on YouTube, then linked to on his Twitter feed.
Riggins on Cerrato: "You're a great guy, Vin, but you're no GM."
On Zorn: "You're out of your league, Jim," and "you ... are not a head football coach in the NFL. High school? Definitely. You can coach in high school. You can coach my son in high school any time."
Through a team spokesman, Cerrato declined to respond.
Word of Theismann's — and others' — words spread among the Commanders.
"Riggins, he takes it a little overboard," receiver-returner Antwaan Randle El said. "I wouldn't call it fair or unfair. They can say a little bit more than the next person because they've played. They've been here. They want the team to be great. They were great. But at the same time, they should know there's a line."
It should not surprise anyone that the Commanders would be chastised for their showing so far. After all, Sunday's game against the visiting Kansas City Chiefs will be Washington's NFL-record sixth in a row against a team entering the matchup without a victory, and yet the Commanders have not taken advantage.
Two of their losses came against the otherwise-winless Detroit Lions and Carolina Panthers (the other was against the New York Giants). Their two victories came by a total of five points against the St. Louis Rams (0-5) and Tampa Bay Buccaneers (0-5), teams outscored by a combined 286-102 this season.
As Washington's full-time blogger noted on the team's official site: "There's very little uplifting Commanders-related news at the moment."
