Kevin Sheehan is among those unhappy with Jack Del Rio and he says if you are a Washington Commanders fan, you should be too.
“Forget his politics,” Sheehan said Monday of the team’s defensive coordinator defending the insurrection of January 6th as “a dust-up at the Capitol”. “He hurt their business last week.”
The Team 980 morning man says he expects that Del Rio had a number of conversations with higher-ups in the organization in the hours after talking to the media. He speculated that the Commanders may have looked into firing the coach with cause before realizing that isn’t exactly easy to do.
Del Rio deserves the bulk of the blame according to Sheehan, but he does reserve some for the franchise as well.
Del Rio had been on Twitter sharing his political beliefs for some time. The franchise is trying build a business from the ground up according to Sheehan and he said that everyone in the front office should have been thinking about that before making the coach available to reporters. They had to know what kind of questions were coming.
“There’s nothing that can convince me that putting him out there was anything other than what it was, which was a mistake.”
Sheehan explained that while both coordinators are required to talk to the media at least once during offseason activities, there was no reason to make the coach that has been tweeting about January 6th available the day before the highly publicized hearings on Capitol Hill. The franchise would have been better served by saying Del Rio had a personal issue to deal with and taking the fine from the NFL.
Jack Del Rio has since deleted his Twitter account. Kevin Sheehan says he has no proof it was at the request or urging of the Washington Commanders, but it is reasonable to think it was at least discussed.
“What he did last week was not debatable,” Sheehan said, arguing that no matter how you feel politically, it should be clear to see there was a problem with Del Rio talking to the media. “It was not good for the team. It hurt the team. That building and people in it on both sides, the football side and the business side, were not happy. It did not make their jobs easier.”
