UPDATE: A team source denied the incident to CSN's Kelli Johnson, but that sure took a while.
Here's an interesting little nugget to pass along. We all remember how Donovan McNabb was benched on two separate occasions by Mike Shanahan, right? At the time, there were a whole lot of random reasons involved, none of which particularly made much sense. Now, we can add another possible reason to the list.
In Thursday's episode of "The Sports Junkies" on 106.7 The Fan, Eric Bickel (E.B.) and Jason Bishop (aka "Lurch") passed on a story they heard about just how bad the McNabb-Shanahan relationship had gotten. According to the story, Shanahan asked McNabb to wear a wristband to help him remember the plays, and McNabb refused. Eventually, Dan Snyder got wind of that, and ... yeah, just read on.
"During the season, at some point, not sure when, Shanahan asked McNabb to wear a wristband with the plays on it," Bishop began. "Tons of quarterbacks do it."
So when Shanahan actually asked McNabb to do it initially, he said 'Look. I can't do this.'" Bishop continued. "It's bad for my image. So McNabb thought it was bad for his image to have a wristband with the plays on it. He said it made it look like he wasn't familiar with the playbook, made him look stupid. That's what he thought."
"And the coach is like, 'What are you talking about?'" Bickel jumped in. "Tom Brady wears a wristband. Drew Brees wears a wristband."
"And Kyle [Shanahan] is saying, 'Look, it's better for you," Bishop continued. "It helps you. It doesn't mean you're stupid. It doesn't mean you don't know the plays. Hall of Famers wear wristbands. But he said, 'No.'"
A ton of outrage follows, until Bishop reveals the second part of the story.
"So they're having this power lunch, power dinner at the Super Bowl with Fletcher Smith (McNabb's agent), Bruce Allen, Mike Shanahan and Dan Snyder. At some point, this topic comes up," he said.
"At that point, when Snyder heard that, Snyder apparently went ballistic and said, 'Are you effing kidding me?' Why did I hire you as the head coach? I'm paying you $7 million a year to be the head coach, and you can't get your guy to wear a wristband? Are you serious? If he's on the team next year, you're making him wear the wristband," he said.
Bishop said Shanahan and Snyder then began arguing, and Smith and Allen "didn't know what to do." Again, take this for what you will, but the whole thing is so Redskins if you think about it.
(via Pro Football Talk).