The Redskins Blog

Phillip Daniels Clarifies His Haynesworth Comments Via Message Board

Phillip Daniels is something of an under-the-radar leader on the Redskins. The training camp injury that cost him the 2008 season occurred on one of my very first days working on this blog, and I remember that all anyone could talk about was how important he was. Not on the field, although of course he was valuable there, but in the locker room. And in the seasons since then, I’ve been able to see how true that is.

So when he does talk publicly, people listen. And then those people write columns in the Washington Post, and those comments in the Post become posts on ProFootballTalk, and the whole thing boils down to a simple headline with quote excerpt.

In the case of Daniels’ most recent comments that headline + excerpt read: Phillip Daniels: Albert Haynesworth “should definitely be here”.

And Daniels felt like that didn’t quite capture the nuances of what he was trying to say. Some players, at this point, would call a friendly reporter. Others might post responses on their personal blogs. Daniels had a different approach: he went straight to ExtremeSkins, the Redskins’ official message boards.
In a post entitled, ‘Hello Skins Fans. This is PD’, Daniels wrote:

Just wanted to drop in and say that I have read a lot of the comments on here and some of the fans on here really do believe everything that they read. Articles tend to leave things out and when you talk general stuff sometimes it comes out a different way. I am not upset with Albert at all but the whole team would love for him to be here with us getting ready to win a championship. When a reporter asks a question, we answer it but sometimes that answer is twisted in so many ways. None of the good stuff you say ever comes out in the article. They chop your words as they see fit and in the best way to sell papers or go public. Albert is a key part of the team and he will be ready to go. Just wanted to clear things up a little for the people who believe everything that writers put out there. Like the old saying goes: Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see.

And he wasn’t done yet. Daniels later returned to the thread and addressed a few questions, including one about how it feels to have your words taken out of context, and to see negative comments on the boards:

I have tough skin and that don’t bother me. Albert and I are cool and he knows the truth. I wish some of the fans could have been on the other end answering questions that later get chopped up in a negative manner. I laugh at the comments because really they don’t know and take things way to seriously before knowing the truth. I think if they knew me personally then they would be the other way. It’s all good. I love my fans and them anyway.

There was also some discussion of having Donovan McNabb suddenly become a teammate instead of an opponent, and still more Haynesworth chatter. As a way of getting your message out to the fans, heading to a fan message board is tough to beat.

And now I’m eagerly awaiting the PFT headline that reads Phillip Daniels: Albert Haynesworth ‘will be ready to go’. We’ll see if it actually happens.