Washington player blames their nickname for bad calls

We’ve hit another watershed moment in the Washington Redskins nickname controversy, and this time it’s coming from the players themselves. On Sunday, Washington lost to the currently-undefeated Carolina Panthers 44-16. Now, you’d think that with a scoreline like that, it’d be kind of hard to find blame with the officials. However, Washington DE Jason Hatcher had a different idea.

In a postgame interview (with video courtesy of Carol Maloney on Twitter), Hatcher opined that the reason why the Redskins weren’t getting favorable calls was because the referees didn’t like Washington’s nickname. Here’s a quote from the video:

“I don’t know if it’s about the name or what…don’t single us out. At the end of the day, it’s the name. Don’t worry about the name…I’m just frustrated with it. We shouldn’t have to be punished for that…Every game, there have been calls after calls that should go in our favor but they go to them.”

This absolutely has to be the first time that a player in any sport has claimed that a team is losing out on officiating calls because of his team’s nickname. However, no other team in sports is dealing with this type of firestorm surrounding their nickname, so this is a fairly unique situation for Washington. I’m sure that the officials don’t care about this and are doing their best to call the games evenly, but if it’s getting in your players’ heads, then maybe it’s a sign that something should change.

It hasn’t been a good weekend for the team from the nation’s capital. First they lose the game, then this happens, and then there was also the situation where their official Twitter account got burned in a major way by the Panthers’ Twitter account regarding their nickname.

This weekend should’ve just been another major sign that they should change the name, but since we all know exactly who the owner of the team is, they probably won’t.