A year ago, the dominant story coming out of Redskins camp was the constant feuding between coach Mike Shanahan and defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth, who failed repeated attempts to pass Shanahan’s mandatory conditioning test.
This year, Haynesworth’s teammate Brian Orakpo says that won’t be an issue.
“This year, we’re not going through all that Albert nonsense,” Orakpo said, via Ryan O’Halloran of CSNwashington.com. “I don’t want to discuss it. I love Albert to death, wish him the best. If he’s here, there’s a role; if he’s not, we have to move on and forget about the saga with Albert, [Donovan] McNabb, you name it. We just have to start winning ballgames and forget about all the drama we go through each and every year.”
At the moment, however, it appears that Haynesworth will be with the Redskins in camp. Redskins coach Mike Shanahan wants to hold on to Haynesworth until the Redskins get what they want in a trade, and that could be a while.
Orakpo hopes that doesn’t mean another year of distractions.
“It wears you down; we try to say it don’t,” Orakpo said. “We want to focus on the team. I thought last year and the previous year, we talked too much about individuals that were having problems with the organization instead of trying to go out there and perform well. We need to forget about the nonsense and negativity.”