Mike Shanahan’s wide-ranging and at-times rambling Wednesday press conference included plenty of intriguing nuggets. MDS has done a great job of distilling the most salient points.
There’s another point that relates back to the report that got this giant ball of dysfunction rolling. Shanahan still hasn’t denied the ESPN bombshell that Shanahan nearly quit in January due to the relationship between owner Daniel Snyder and quarterback Robert Griffin III.
“What I said is there’s always bits and pieces of an article that are true,” Shanahan told reporters. “I’m not going to go into detail what was true about the article. I don’t think it’s fair to the organization and I would speak to that person first before I would speak to anybody else. But when you get partial truths -- and I’m not one to say somebody is lying or this isn’t reported correctly -- but I’ve heard that my whole life. I think everybody in this room knows that I don’t talk to anybody off the record.”
If Shanahan truly doesn’t talk to anybody off the record, he’s the only person connected to the NFL in any significant capacity who doesn’t.
Everybody talks to somebody off the record. With local and national media more prevalent and aggressive than ever, everyone knows someone they’ll talk to without attaching their name to it.
In this case, Shanahan or someone close to him was talking off the record to someone at ESPN. The fact that Shanahan has failed to dispute the notion that he was ready to quit in January proves it.