Washington Redskins president Bruce Allen says he and former general manager Scot McCloughan spoke to radio host Chris Cooley about his speculation about McCloughan’s alcoholism, but offered an interesting response when asked why nothing was said publicly.
Allen told Liz Clarke and Gregory S. Schneider of the Washington Post that he spoke to Cooley in private over his on-air speculation that McCloughan was abusing alcohol, with the then-GM on hand for the discussion. Allen and the Redskins issued no public denial of Cooley’s claims, and the team president’s defense was strange.
“There was someone who said on the radio that there was jealousy. Then, there was somebody who said we were trading Kirk Cousins for Tony Romo and giving the Cowboys draft picks. Then Chris said what he said. Then somebody said ‘X, Y and Z.’ I can’t keep up with sports-talk radio; I don’t ever want to keep up with sports-talk radio,” Allen said. “If I had Twitter, maybe I would say, ‘This is false! This is false! This is false!’ . . . Every time somebody throws something against the wall to speculate, we’re not going to respond to all that. That’s what the media does. It’s impossible to answer all of the foolishness that’s out there.”
Nobody expects Allen or the franchise to rebut every false report, but this was not your average falsehood. This was a team employee — Cooley does radio work for Washington games, and the station he works for is owned by Dan Snyder — openly speculating that McCloughan was being pushed out due to his alcoholism, which is a pretty loaded accusation. He apologized for his role in the proliferation of the story, but Allen did his former general manager a disservice by letting that rumor fester without a denial.
