The Haynesworth Saga

For anyone who is unaware with the Albert Haynesworth situation in the Washington, DC area, I must wonder for the sake of when Armageddon occurs... where is the rock you've been living under?

Haynesworth finally passed his conditioning test, apparently in a fairly impressive time. It sounds to me as though they've gotten Haynesworth in, as Shanahan has so aptly defined as, "football shape".

I took great interest in the fact that Haynesworth was in camp... even after failing the first two attempts at the sprint. I'll allow the injury excuse for missing several days on the basis that, Haynesworth sat and studied the defense. Throughout the offseason, Shanahan made it a very clear that what he worried about wasn't the setbacks Haynesworth could and probably would suffer physically, because he's a phenomenal athlete; but rather that he was worried about the mental lack Haynesworth would surely show when appearing for team activities.

Haynesworth played some catch-up mentally for a week and some change... and has now passed his conditioning test. Now all that needs to be done is displaying the physical aspect on top of the mental aspect of reading the assignment... something which I'm sure Haynesworth is fully capable of doing.

When it comes down to it, Haynesworth is going to need to have an absolutely incredible year. It could turn out that he works out his differences here, becomes the monster he's supposed to be, and stays on with Washington for the long-run (after all, as I've pointed out before, more than half of the league now runs a base 3-4 defense, and that number is expected to increase), or Haynesworth does not reconcile but understands he needs to impress to find another team willing to take a chance on him, and he'll want money. Regardless of how you look at the situation, Haynesworth's only choice is to play, and play great. Barring severe indisputable injury, Haynesworth cannot play this season on the sidelines because of pain. He needs to anchor the defense from whatever position he ends up playing.

And don't expect to see Haynesworth played to anything but his strengths... which means expect big of the $100M man, because he's got no choice but to not let you down.

The Saga continues...