At last, Scot McCloughan has given us a glimpse into his side of the story — through a secondhand source — and it paints a far different picture than the drunk “disaster” the Redskins made him out to be.
The former Redskins general manager, who was fired in early March just two years into his four-year contract, explained the messy breakup from his perspective on a phone call Wednesday with former Seahawks fullback Michael Robinson. The two have remained close since McCloughan signed Robinson in 2010 at the start of his front-office stint in Seattle.
Robinson, who now works for NFL Network, shared the details of their conversation on Fox Sports’ “The West McElroy Show” on Thursday, including McCloughan’s impression Redskins president Bruce Allen was biding his time until he could push McCloughan out the door along with all the blame.
“[McCloughan] knew the players loved him, and he started feeling the hate from Bruce Allen right around, well, he’s been feeling it, but when they didn’t let him speak [to reporters] at the Senior Bowl, he said to him that was his last straw, and he knew that he was on his way out,” Robinson said. “He said it was after a draft meeting, after the combine, Bruce called him up to his office and was just like, ‘Nobody likes you in this building. Nobody wants you here.’ And Scot was like, ‘Well, I guess I’m out of here.'”
The relationship devolved from there. The 46-year-old McCloughan was nowhere to be found at the NFL Combine with the rest of the Redskins staff at the beginning of March and again was absent during the first few days of NFL free agency. Soon after, the Redskins announced McCloughan’s ouster and tried, through back channels, to portray it as due to McCloughan’s out-of-control drinking on the job.
An anonymous official told the Washington Post that McCloughan’s alcoholism, which had cut short his previous front-office jobs with the 49ers and Seahawks, had been a “disaster for 18 months” and made it imperative Allen move on from his irresponsible behavior.
McCloughan, according to Robinson, said Allen’s account of his drinking is not only exaggerated but untrue.
“He said, ‘Mike, I don’t have an issue right now drinking. I haven’t touched a drink in a while,'” Robinson said. “But of course they wouldn’t let me say it because they silenced me.'”
A handful of Redskins insiders and players have seemed to back up McCloughan’s account and assured he was well-liked in the locker room. The way Washington’s executives handled his firing has been categorized as another blemish on a perpetually dysfunctional franchise.
McCloughan has not announced whether he plans to take the Redskins to arbitration to recover the $5 million to $6 million remaining on his contract.