John Riggins’ latest anti-Redskins diatribe starts with an appeal to owner Dan Snyder to jettison GM Vinny Cerrato. The advice is delivered thusly: “Linus. You’ve got to lose the blanket.”
The Hall of Fame running back, perched on a pile of firewood somewhere in Maryland, starts out with deadpan nasty when addressing Snyder and Cerrato then gets mercilessly insulting when going after head coach Jim Zorn.
“Jim, you are not a head coach in the NFL. High school? Definitely. You can coach in high school, you can coach my son in high school anytime. Ankle-biters [youth football teams, we guess] for sure. You’re a very compassionate guy. You’re still, ‘Gee whiz, aw, shucks 21 games into your career. You come out of these games, crippling and mind-boggling losses and if I didn’t know better I’d think you won the game.”
Riggins also added that he would have put his foot “this far up [DeAngelo Hall’s] rectum” after a poor tackling effort on Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme last week.
Riggins concludes by saying, “You’re out of your league, Jim. But I wish you luck and you are gone.”
No doubt, there will be many that applaud Riggins’ candor. Just as many may wonder why we’d call attention to his rantings since they’re becoming desperately repetitive and he fails to prescribe antidotes to the problems he’s diagnosing. It’s also worth wondering why Riggins didn’t get on the coaching/personnel track himself a long time ago. Our guess is he would have declared he had no stomach for the politics and back-slapping he would have had to engage in to get far in that line of work. Or been willing to put in the time. Zorn has. And it’s hard to argue that Riggins has done more for the NFL since retirement than Zorn has.
Riggins is smart, reasonably funny and a loose cannon. That combination works pretty well in today’s media. But when you drift too close to becoming a cartoonish, one-note parody of yourself, it might be a good idea to add a little depth to your schtick.