After heading to the Scouting Combine with a nonexistent P.R. plan for dealing with soon-to-be-ousted G.M. Scot McCloughan, Washington’s contingent to the league meetings in Phoenix consisted of team president Bruce Allen painting a positive picture to multiple reporters. (Despite multiple requests made this year and in prior years, the team has not made Allen available for an interview with PFT.)
Michael Robinson, a former NFL fullback, a current NFL Network analyst, and a friend of McCloughan, explained on a Richmond radio show a recent phone conversation with McCloughan.
“He knew the players loved him, and he started feeling the hate from Bruce Allen right around, well, he’s been feeling it, but when they didn’t let him speak [to reporters] at the Senior Bowl, he said to him that was his last straw, and he knew that he was on his way out,” Robinson said Thursday on The Wes McElroy Show, via the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “He said it was after a draft meeting, after the Combine, Bruce called him up to his office and was just like, ‘Nobody likes you in this building. Nobody wants you here.’ And Scot was like, ‘Well, I guess I’m out of here.’”
McCloughan also told Robinson he doesn’t have “an issue right now drinking,” and that “I haven’t touched a drink in a while.”
Amid the possibility of a grievance and/or litigation from McCloughan, it’s possible if not likely that the two sides are attempting to work something out informally. If McCloughan were hell bent on a legal pound of flesh, he’d already be seeking it; the fact that he hasn’t initiated proceedings strongly suggests that efforts are underway to resolve the situation before it gets to that point.
If litigation is looming, it probably makes sense for McCloughan not to do any further talking, either directly to the media or to friends who are in the media. When it comes to any form of court proceedings, anything you say and will be used against you, if the other side can find a way to spin what was said into a benefit.