“I believe I would’ve rivaled Lawrence Taylor if I had gone to Pittsburgh,” claims former Washington LB Lavar Arrington, chatting with The Unification Church’s the Washington Times’ Dan Elfin at the opening of the former’s new eatery, carefully located across the street from the Redskins’ Fed Ex Field. And what better way to promote said restaurant.. .than by torching the franchise? (link taken from The Sporting Blog).
“I called Joe Gibbs a coward for leaving,” Arrington said. “You came in, you made some money for your NASCAR team. No one else is going to say that. I’m sure more people thought I was a [jerk] for saying that. Joe wouldn’t call me because he knows. There are a lot of people who know the truth about what went down with me and the Redskins.”
As for owner Dan Snyder, Arrington called him after Sean Taylor’s funeral to try to heal their breach and greeted him at a luncheon last week, but to no avail, he believes.
“I think Dan Snyder is scared to death of me,” Arrington said. “He won’t look at me. I tried to shake his hand at that luncheon. He shook my hand and was like, ‘How you doing, LaVar?’ and kept moving. I’m probably the only person that’s ever stood up to him and never backed down. I actually humbled myself to call Dan after Sean passed away to try to bury whatever me and him had going on between us. He called me back, and it was almost like he was reading a script. I root for the Redskins because how I feel about the fans outweighs how the organization treated me. I always take pleasure in taking jabs at Dan because people like him need that. There’s got to be a person out there who’s not afraid to do it.”
http://gopsusports.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/111108aag.html
*Q. What have you told your players about 1999, and do you address that, specifically that season, with them? *
Well, that was a different kind of cast of characters. We had more superstars. We had the first and second guy drafted in the whole draft, and we just got a little bit…you know, again, that’s 1999. To me, that’s years ago because there’s been so many kids who we have had to work with and play football with. So it’s hard for me to remember exactly why we weren’t able to get that club to re-group and go on and win some games. But part of it is personality; the people that played were used to doing a lot of big time things and big time players, and I’m not so sure what happened, whether they got distracted by agents calling and all those kinds of things and all that happened. I don’t know, and it would be unfair for me to say it was that or what, when I really don’t remember. I do know we obviously took a real flop, and we’re going to try to prevent that (from happening) again, obviously.