Last Call: Bad Sports
Pleszczynski, Wladyslaw
"Last Call: Bad Sports" by Wladyslaw Pleszczynski Bad Sports THE WORD AROUND Washington is that Bob Dole is fed up with Newt Gingrich, so much so that he spends entire meetings railing about him to strangers....
...Himself...
...A rusty Frerotte took over from there, and led his team to a solid win...
...The message couldn't be clearer...
...As the story reported, "Team sources suggested yesterday that over the past two months, coaches have become increasingly frustrated with Frerotte...
...With any chance to make the playoffs gone, management benched Frerotte to give the recovered Shuler yet another try...
...As Redskin fans will remind you, Washington is supposed to be a one quarterback town, which roughly translates to mean there's always a controversy at the position...
...Maybe it's not a good sign for the GOP that its two quarterbacks aren't getting along—but maybe it's also to be expected...
...LAST CALL by Wladyslaw Pleszczynski Bad Sports THE WORD AROUND Washington is that Bob Dole is fed up with Newt Gingrich, so much so that he spends entire meetings railing about him to strangers...
...Under George Allen there was Sonny Jurgensen vs...
...Who knows what cover three is...
...How many people know what cover two is...
...Mark Rypien, Rypien vs...
...Billy Kilmer—a rivalry that ended only when the reins were handed over to a third party, mighty mouth Joe Theismann...
...After three or four games like this, he forgot himself in St...
...Then came Jay Schroeder vs...
...It was the sort of blackcat story once reserved for some Reagan nominee or other, one not long for Washington...
...This past season Frerotte kept his rebuilding team in game after game, engineering a number of clutch fourth-quarter drives, even though injuries to his linemen and key receivers and a porous defense left the team with a losing record...
...And like the political wars, it's not likely to be resolved until next fall, if then—if ever...
...But that hasn't stopped him from becoming a quintessential Washingtonian, adept at passing the buck if not the pigskin, and failing upward...
...Like other Washington big spenders, they're not about to admit incompetence when it comes to the programs they choose to super-fund...
...The fans know that Shuler makes their team look bad, and management knows Frerotte makes them look bad, outperforming Shuler time and again...
...Doug Williams, Williams vs...
...Fans never take kindly to holdout artists who don't deliver, and Shuler's been a doomed Redskin from the start...
...That's what I'm getting ready for...
...The offense was dumbed down, leaving Shuler with no greater challenge than handing off to a halfback or heaving a five-yard pass...
...When they didn't go well, Shuler found himself injured and out of commission, three times in his first two years as a professional...
...For a moment people thought Bill Clinton was playing for the Redskins...
...In a league short of quarterbacks, his future, as they say, is ahead of him...
...This is when Gus Frerotte stepped in, who was probably born already half of what Joe Montana is...
...Two YEARS AGO THE Redskins wasted the third choice in the entire NFL draft on a golden boy QB from the University of Tennessee named Heath Shuler...
...And so I'm facing what's happening right now...
...REDSKINS, FREROTTE ON EDGE: Coaches Said to Be Upset With QB," ran the ominous headline in the Post two days later...
...Since this had been the first time he'd ever been booed, he went on: "That's why I always say the UT fans are the greatest fans in the world, and until the Washington fans prove me differently, I'll always think that...
...Getting rid of Rypien set the stage for the current installment, which in December was an even bigger deal locally than the plight of furloughed government employees...
...Frerotte would have to go...
...AT OTHER TIMES, SHEER has lived up to a sketchy report that he scored well below average in a standard intelligence test given to prospective quarterbacks...
...He could roll out some, and he could hold out some—missing five weeks of essential preseason training before signing a multiyear contract for a gazillion dollars, including a $5 million bonus, a figure now memorialized as the number on his uniform...
...How many people know what the cover two man under is...
...A4 82 February 1996 • The American Spectator...
...Adding insult to injury, the story said that Frerotte would be starting the team's final game of the season only because of Shuler's broken pinkie...
...One time, a guy asked me, 'You going to your crib this weekend?' I'm like `Uh, no.— "Physically we had the turnovers," he said after another lousy game, but "things like tonight that we did mentally went very well...
...If people only knew the game of football," he told the Washington Post after being booed during his 61-yard, 9-22 performance in his first preseason game in August 1994...
...Drafted in the seventh round and signed to a three-year contract worth less than a tenth of Shuler's bonus, he's been treated by Redskin management about the same way that Redskin fans have treated Shuler...
...LIKE MONTANA, FREROT1E hails from that cradle of stoic quarterbacks, small-town western Pennsylvania...
...Recently he told the Post that back in college he'd had trouble understanding the slang of his black teammates...
...If you overshadow yourself, you look far beyond the reality...
...Louis, was promptly stripped of the ball, and suffered a broken pinkie after falling to the astroturf...
...In order to get half of what Joe Montana is, you have to deal with this, right now, and the present time," he said shortly before his opening game...
...Until they know what a 5o front is, what a 34 front is, then they can start complaining...
...Management was furious...
...As for the Redskins' future, let's hope that pinkie heals...
Vol. 29 • February 1996 • No. 2
