So it turns out Mike Shanahan’s personality hasn’t completely gone underground. Thought he was in regular season shut-down mode last week, dropping a lot of references about evaluation and how it’s a process. He’ll still do that — about 15 times during every presser — but today he at least drew some laughter about Albert Haynesworth’s comments after the Jets game and how he was going to have drinks and smoke a cigar with Shanahan.
Shanahan’s response? “He made me buy the drinks and cigars.”
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And when asked about Haynesworth’s claim that he saved his life during the game when a ball was headed his way, Shanahan said, “He did. He yelled look out at the last second. He stood about two feet away from me and said, ‘Hey, I didn’t know you cared.’ I actually got him to smile a little bit.”
And then, when a reporter asked if he was sure it wasn’t Haynesworth who actually threw the ball, Shanahan laughed and said, “I’m not sure.”
But in a serious note about the whole situation with Haynesworth, Shanahan offered his philosophy on dealing with players.
“Everybody would like to be liked,” Shanahan said. “That’s part of being a head football coach. But you want to be respected as well. I have a job to do and Albert has a job to do. He wants to be the best player he can possibly be and it’s my job to see to it. Albert’s had a couple very good practices. He’s been working hard to get the defensive end position down and the nose tackle position down. It takes time when you miss practice. Hopefully he keeps on improving.”
This was quite a departure from last week when Shanahan refused to answer questions about Haynesworth’s comments following the Ravens game.
