Thursday was a pretty bad day for Phillip Daniels. The longtime Redskins' defensive end, who takes great pride in still being a useful player at his advanced age, was told he would be cut so the Redskins could get younger, which especially upset him because he feels he is still valuable. When Daniels is upset, people know about it.
"To put in all this work in the offseason and be in the best shape I've been in a long time -- I felt as good as I've ever felt -- yes, it was a shock. I envisioned myself going out on my own terms," he said on "The Sports Reporters" on ESPN 980 on Thursday.
The one silver lining about being released, though, is that there's no real incentive to stay quiet about the Albert Haynesworth fiasco and the general circus that was the Redskins last year. On this issue, Daniels didn't hold back.
"That was a big distraction, man," Daniels said on "The Sports Reporters." "You can't focus on football and be distracted that way. Every week, we got questions about 'Albert this and Albert that,' with him not playing games. Those kinds of things, those distractions can kill a team, and that's what happened last year. It's going to be good for the Redskins that they moved away from that."
Then, in an interview on 106.7 The Fan, Daniels directed his criticism towards Mike Shanahan for the Haynesorth saga and the Donovan McNabb fiasco. Via D.C. Sports Bog.
"I really think it could have been handled a whole lot different. Also the Donovan situation, I feel like that could have happened a whole lot different. But yeah, a lot of that was [caused] by coaches not putting their foot down fast enough. But of course we're all grown men, we've got to learn how to act. You're a professional, you should know how to act. But [some] guys, they don't. So coaches got to realize, you can't let a man come in and run your team and run your defense. You've got to let him know where you stand and put your foot down and make that thing go away."
Daniels also predicted it's going to be a "long year" for the Redskins this year.